Which skill

You don't remember every skill, so ask.

Before stating what a skill does or recommending a step be skipped, read that skill's SKILL.md: the summaries here are for orientation only.

A flow is a path through the skills. Most paths run along one main flow, and two on-ramps merge onto it. Everything else is standalone, or a vocabulary layer that runs underneath.

The main flow: idea → ship

The route most work travels. You have an idea and want it built.

1. /grill-with-docs sharpens the idea by interview. Start here whenever you are working in a working directory: it's stateful, retaining what it learns in GLOSSARY.md and ADRs. (No working directory? Use /grill-me instead, covered under Standalone. Both run the same /grilling primitive; grill-with-docs is the one that leaves a paper trail, which makes it the better of the two whenever a repo is there to leave it in.)
2. Branch: can you settle every question in conversation? If a question needs a runnable answer (state, business logic, a UI you have to see), detour through /prototype to answer the question with throwaway code, then point at its prototype/<name> branch from the idea thread.

3. Branch: is this a multi-session build?

   • Yes → /to-spec (turn the thread into a spec), then /to-tickets to split it into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges. Then /implement per ticket, /clearing context between each one. The edges are native GitHub blocking links, so any ticket whose blockers are done can be grabbed. Each ticket is self-contained, so the last one's context is disposable.
   • No → /implement right here, in the same context window.

   Either way, the code gets built by driving /tdd (one red-green slice at a time) and closes out with /spec-review, a two-axis review (Standards + Spec) of the diff. /implement runs both per ticket. Reach for /tdd on its own when you just want to build a concrete behaviour test-first without a full spec, and /spec-review on its own whenever you want to review a branch or PR against a fixed point.

   When the work goes up as a pull request, /pr shapes the body: the smallest visual that shows the change, before/after evidence that it works, and a one-way or two-way door call. It's model-invoked, so the agent reaches for it whenever it writes a PR. Every PR ships through ~/.claude/bin/pr-cycle: start the branch, reviewed once /spec-review has passed, then ship, which is the user's call.

4. /retro closes the loop. After a build, and especially one that went sideways, it looks back over the session and suggests changes to the agent's environment, not the code: navigation pointers, automated checks, the coding standards /spec-review enforces, steering files, tooling. Mechanical mistakes become deterministic checks; judgement calls become coding standards. The next build then starts from a better environment.

Context hygiene

Keep steps 1–3 in one unbroken context window (don't compact or clear until after /to-tickets) so the grilling, spec, and tickets all build on the same thinking. Each /implement then starts fresh, working from the ticket. Run /retro in the session it's looking back on, before you clear; after clearing, point it at that session's log instead.

The limit on this is the smart zone: the window (~150k tokens on state-of-the-art models) within which the model still reasons sharply. If a session approaches it before /to-tickets, don't push on degraded; /compact at the nearest phase boundary and carry on (see Phase boundaries).

On-ramps

A starting situation that generates work, then merges onto the main flow.

• Bugs and requests piling up → /triage. It gives every open issue a disposition (fix, close, or defer with a reason) and writes an agent brief for each fix, which /implement later picks up.

  Triage is for issues that arrive raw: bug reports, feature requests, audit findings. A pass still gives every open issue a disposition, but tickets from /to-spec and /to-tickets are already specified: they count as fix with no new brief.

• Something's broken → /diagnosing-bugs. For the hard ones: the bug that resists a first glance, the intermittent flake, the regression that crept in between two known-good states. It refuses to theorise until it has a tight feedback loop (one command that already goes red on this bug), then fixes with a regression test. Once the fix is in, run /retro in the same session to ask what would have prevented the bug; where the real finding is that there's no good seam to lock it down, that's a job for /improve-codebase-architecture.

Codebase health

Not feature work, just upkeep.

• /improve-codebase-architecture runs whenever you have a spare moment to keep the codebase good for agents to operate in. It surfaces deepening opportunities; picking one generates an idea you can take into the main flow at /grill-with-docs. It's the survey that finds the candidates; /codebase-design (below) is the bench you design the chosen one on.

Vocabulary underneath

Two model-invoked references that run beneath the other skills, each the single source of truth for its vocabulary. Reach for them directly when the words, not the process, are the problem; or let the skills above pull them in.

• /domain-modeling: sharpen the project's domain language: challenge a fuzzy term, resolve an overloaded word ("account" doing three jobs), record a hard-to-reverse decision as an ADR. It's the active discipline /grill-with-docs drives to keep GLOSSARY.md a clean glossary.
• /codebase-design is the deep-module vocabulary (module, interface, depth, seam, adapter, leverage, locality) for designing a module's shape: a lot of behaviour behind a small interface at a clean seam. /tdd and /improve-codebase-architecture both speak it.

Phase boundaries

A phase is a chunk of work inside a session: the grilling, the implementation, the QA. At the boundary between two of them you have four options, and picking between them is the fuzziest decision in this whole map:

• Continue: stay put. Costs nothing, loses nothing.
• /clear: empty the window, when nothing here matters to what's next.
• Subagent: send a tightly-scoped task to its own window and get a report back.
• /compact compresses this context and seeds a fresh session with it. The default, at the bottom of the tree rather than the first reach.

Read PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md for the ordered tree: the four questions, the reasoning behind each branch, and why the primary-source cost makes Continue the one to rule out first. Make the decision at a boundary; mid-phase, continue or split the rest into subagents.

Standalone

Off the main flow entirely.

• /grill-me: the same relentless interview as /grill-with-docs, but stateless: it saves nothing locally and builds no GLOSSARY.md. Reach for it when you are not working in a working directory (sharpening a plan, a design, a piece of writing, anything with no repo under it). If you are in a working directory, use /grill-with-docs instead: it runs the same interview and leaves a paper trail, so it is strictly the better one.
• /grilling is the interview primitive itself: rounds, the frontier, facts are the agent's job and decisions are yours. /grill-me and /grill-with-docs are the two named ways in, and /triage and /improve-codebase-architecture all run it internally. Reach for it directly only when you want the interview with no wrapper around it.
• /prototype is a small, throwaway program that answers one design question: does this state model feel right, or what should this UI look like. Throwaway is a constraint on how the code is written, not a promise to destroy it: the answer folds into the real code, and the prototype itself is kept as a primary source on a prototype/<name> branch out of main, pointed at from the implementation issue. It's the detour in step 2 of the main flow, but reach for it any time a design question is hard to settle on paper.
• /wizard is for the steps only a human can take: provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, clicking through an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, running a one-off migration or cutover. It generates an interactive bash script that opens each URL, captures each value, and writes it into .env and GitHub secrets, so the procedure stops being something you re-explain to an agent every time. Model-invoked, so the agent reaches for it the moment it hits a wall only you can pass. If the agent could just do it itself, it should; this is for where a human is genuinely in the loop.
• /writing-for-agents is the reference for writing documents agents consume: skills, AGENTS.md, pointed-at docs.