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eryzerzeryzerz/prime-pstack/skills/principle-make-operations-idempotent/SKILL.md

principle-make-operations-idempotent

Skill0 starsChanged 3 months agoMITView on GitHub

Apply when designing commands, lifecycle steps, or processing loops that run amid crashes, restarts, and retries. Converge to the same end state regardless of partial prior runs.

47 other projects use a version of this, 33 of them edited.

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Projects with it also use principle-explain-the-number, poteto-help and 8 more.

Other files people use alongside this one.

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  • ianclearySkill

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    Also in 14 projects that use this

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  • Xia-AtaraxiaSkill

    benchmark-checklist

    Vets performance measurements for the limiter, tuning, physical limits, errors, repeatability, relevance, and proof that timed work happened. It applies to 'check this benchmark', 'report this speedup', measured regressions, and choosing a library or configuration from numbers. It reports spread and gaps before drawing a conclusion. Not for general testing policy or choosing test oracles - use principle-testing.

    Also in 29 projects that use this

  • drafaelSkill

    in-your-own-words

    Restate the user's goals and the problem they are trying to solve to check understanding. Manual invocation only; use when the user explicitly invokes in-your-own-words or requests this understanding check. Do not solve the task or rewrite the assistant's last answer.

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  • TheOnlyFusionCubeSkill

    maintain-formal-verification-skill

    Bring a project's formal verification back in line with the code after the code changes: find the commits that touched verified code, update the model, harness, or properties to describe the code as it is now, rerun, and say whether each failure is drift in the verification or a bug in the code. Use for /maintain-formal-verification-skill, \"is the model still true to the code\", or after merges and refactors that touched verified code without rechecking it.

    Also in 16 projects that use this

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

1 rule. 1 is common, 0 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.

  • 1

    Common

    Most of the 36 edited versions we read keep these.

  • 0

    Distinctive

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 0

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Common:

    If any answer is "it depends on what state was left behind," the operation needs a reconciliation step.

    line 24

“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 36 edited versions of this file we could read. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Make Operations Idempotent

Design operations so they converge to the correct state regardless of how many times they run or where they start from. Every state-mutating operation should answer: "What happens if this runs twice? What happens if the previous run crashed halfway?"

Why: Commands, lifecycle operations, and processing loops run where crashes, restarts, and retries are normal. If partial state changes the next run's outcome, every restart becomes a debugging session.

The pattern:

  • Convergent startup: scan for existing state, clean stale artifacts, adopt live sessions
  • Content-based cleanup: compare by content equivalence, not creation order
  • Self-healing locks: use PID-based stale lock detection
  • Idempotent scheduling: failed work respawns cleanly, fresh input regenerated after each cycle

The test:

  1. What happens if this runs twice in a row?
  2. What happens if the previous run crashed at every possible point?
  3. Does re-execution converge to the same end state?

If any answer is "it depends on what state was left behind," the operation needs a reconciliation step.

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