Kickstart Pathfinder

Use this skill to turn an idea or existing repository into durable, human-approved project context.

Assumed role

Unless the human explicitly activated a role, assume planner for this invocation: read roles/planner.md and follow it. An explicit role overrides this default. A role narrows responsibility and never grants human authority.

Rules

• Do not install packages or write product code.
• Inspect existing repositories lightly and preserve established facts.
• Ask progressively; do not dump a giant questionnaire.
• Classify answers as requirements, preferences, constraints, or open decisions.
• Distinguish recommendations from approved choices.
• Never silently resolve TBD decisions.

Discovery Areas

Ask only what materially affects the project:

1. Product, audience, first useful outcome, success signal
2. MVP boundary and explicit exclusions
3. Platform and experience type
4. Existing technical constraints or preferred technologies
5. Data, backend, database, auth, APIs, AI, payments, files, offline needs
6. Architecture and repository shape
7. Quality priorities: security, accessibility, performance, reliability, privacy, localization
8. Deployment, environments, cost limits, and external services
9. Git, review, CI/CD, versioning, changelog, and release preferences
10. Prototype direction and learning goals
11. AI tools and actions requiring human approval

When the user is unsure, provide a small recommendation with reasoning and alternatives.

Process

1. If the project is missing kit files, and this session loaded this skill from the Pathfinder plugin, offer to install the kit before going further. See Kit Bootstrap below. Otherwise start at the next step.
2. Read the kit context — including the execution mode, as skills/ticket/SKILL.md §Execution mode defines it — and inspect relevant repository facts.
3. Ask the minimum unresolved questions in small groups.
4. Summarize requirements, preferences, constraints, open decisions, and contradictions.
5. Route uncertain product/technical choices to debate-me when useful.
6. Present the proposed context and request human corrections or approval.
7. Update context/project-overview.md, context/coding-standards.md, context/ai-interaction.md, CLAUDE.md, and AGENTS.md only after the choices are sufficiently clear. context/project-overview.md does not ship; create it from templates/project-overview.template.md at this step. Project facts go there; approval rules and tool actions requiring a human go in context/ai-interaction.md. Fill the sections the project has and mark the rest TBD or None. Do not add sections the template does not carry, and do not leave a field blank. Name the execution mode in the proposed context as a fact read from context/execution-mode.md. Do not ask the mode question here: the installer asks it once, and npx create-pathfinder --mode <value> changes it.
8. Recommend debate-me, prototype, or to-specs as the next action.

Kit Bootstrap

The Pathfinder plugin distributes commands. It does not distribute project state. A repository reached through /plugin install therefore has every Pathfinder command and none of the files those commands read.

This step applies only when both are true: the project is missing kit files, and this skill was loaded from the plugin, which is what makes ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} — the plugin's install directory — a real path. When the kit installed this skill into the repository instead, there is no plugin root, the condition is false, and this whole section is skipped without being raised or quoted.

When it does apply:

• Copy from the plugin root into the project root, and copy only the kit. That list is not restated here: packages/create-pathfinder/copy-list.json, inside the plugin root, is the one statement of it. Read that file and copy the entries it names.
• Exclude exactly what the installer excludes, and read that from the installer too: NEVER_SHIPS in packages/create-pathfinder/src/kit.mjs, also inside the plugin root, is the one statement of it. Skip every kit-relative path it holds. Those files are one repository's own working state and would be wrong in any other project. Restating them here would be a second list to keep in step, and the first time it drifted this step would hand a project what npx create-pathfinder refuses to.
• Name every file before writing it, and wait for approval.
• Overwrite nothing without asking about that file by name. Delete nothing.
• Report exactly what was written, what was skipped, and what was left alone.
• Generate no harness adapters. Plugin commands stay namespaced /<plugin-name>:<skill>, and that is the intended plugin form. npx create-pathfinder --agents claude-code is what generates adapters and the bare command names, for a human who wants both.

When the project already has the kit, change nothing and say so.

Stop Condition

Stop before feature specs, dependency installation, scaffolding, or implementation.