Idea — Lightweight Idea Capture

skills/j-idea/ is the canonical, hand-edited directory for this skill, per CLAUDE.md's "The Canonical Naming Contract" (the E50 reopening of 2026-09-09, which promoted skills/j-idea/ from generated twin to sole canonical form). The j- prefix is there for collision safety — a real directory under a distinct name, so a host tool shipping its own same-named built-in command cannot shadow it (Claude Code's native skill resolution is a literal-string, directory-name-based match; see project/documentation/skill-authoring.md's "Invocation Convention").

⚠️ scripts/generate-j-alias.sh was retired by E50_S14 and no longer exists — there is nothing to run. This file was previously generated from a bare skills/idea/SKILL.md source; E50_S15 deleted that directory. This file is now the sole canonical, hand-edited source for this skill — edit it directly.

Instructions

1. Ensure project/ideas.md exists — If it doesn't exist, it will be auto-created by idea_manager.sh from skills/j-idea/assets/idea_template.md — no manual action needed.

2. Ask the user about the idea:

   • What's the idea?
   • Any known context worth noting (why it came up, what it might relate to)?

   Keep this light — /idea is a low-overhead capture, not a structured mission intake like /todo.

3. Add to project/ideas.md by running:

   bash "$([ -f scripts/idea_manager.sh ] && echo scripts/idea_manager.sh || echo node_modules/@jenga-ai/agent/scripts/idea_manager.sh)" add '<idea>'

4. Ask the user: "Capture another idea, or done?"

   • If another — go back to step 2.
   • If done — exit.

   Unlike /todo, /idea never offers to execute, refine, or promote the captured idea(s) at the end. There is no /do-style follow-up here — /idea has no refine or promotion logic of its own.

For Reference Only — Promotion Convention (not implemented here)

/idea does not implement any refine or promotion mechanism. This section documents, for reference, how promotion is expected to work elsewhere so future flows stay consistent:

• Promoting an idea means re-running /brainstorm on it, which routes onward to /btw or /todo as normal. That routing behavior already exists and is out of scope for /idea.
• Terminal idea states are marked directly in project/ideas.md using the same HTML-comment tag convention project/todo.md uses for RECONCILED:
  • PROMOTED — the idea was picked up via /brainstorm and turned into board work.
  • REJECTED — the idea was reviewed and dropped.

Embedded Board ID

PROMOTED/REJECTED tags support an embedded board ID, so the idea→board-item link is machine-readable directly from the tag itself, without needing a separate lookup:

• <!-- PROMOTED: E##_S##[_T##] --> — the _T## task suffix is optional; use whichever level the idea was actually promoted into (an epic, a story, or a specific task).
• <!-- REJECTED --> — stays bare, with no embedded ID. A rejection has no resulting board item to point at.

Example (mirroring project/todo.md's tagging style):

Add dark mode toggle to settings page <!-- PROMOTED: E12_S03 -->
Add a settings-page keyboard shortcut cheat sheet <!-- PROMOTED: E12_S03_T02 -->
Rewrite onboarding copy in a more casual tone <!-- REJECTED -->

Source-Rapport Link Convention

Some ideas originate from a rapport rather than being manually captured via /idea — e.g. when scrum-master's rapport_review step (E35_S03) detects a distinct idea surfaced inside a problem rapport and, on user confirmation, appends it to project/ideas.md the same way /idea does. When that happens, the entry's source rapport is recorded with a second inline HTML comment on the same line:

<!-- rapport: <path/to/rapport.md> -->

Rules:

• Written at capture time, alongside the idea text, by whichever flow is adding the entry (scrum-master's rapport-derived capture path; /idea's own manual capture never has a source rapport and omits this comment entirely).
• Left in place through promotion/rejection — the rapport: comment and the terminal PROMOTED/REJECTED comment coexist on the same line, e.g.:

  Extract shared retry logic into a utility <!-- rapport: project/rapports/problems/E40_S02_T01-segment-remarks.md --> <!-- PROMOTED: E61_S01 -->

• Consumed by the outcome-record mechanism at promotion/rejection time: if a rapport: comment is present on the line, that rapport is updated with the decision (and [SPIKE]-prefixed in its title/header if not already, per templates/SCRUM_BOARD_SCHEMA.md's [SPIKE] section); if absent (a manually-captured /idea entry with no source rapport), a project/documentation/plans/<slug>_PROMOTED.md or _REJECTED.md file is created instead.
• Verified compatible with scripts/idea_manager.sh's real_entries() filtering: that function only strips lines whose first non-whitespace characters are <!--; a trailing inline comment on an otherwise real entry line is untouched and the line still counts as a real entry.

No agent invoked by /idea applies terminal (PROMOTED/REJECTED) tags or acts on them — that is reserved for the promotion step (e.g. within /brainstorm) and, for rapport-sourced ideas, scrum-master's rapport-review flow.

Outcome-Record Mechanism (idea_manager.sh) — E35_S03_T03

scripts/idea_manager.sh implements the tagging and outcome-record behavior described above, via four additional subcommands beyond add/list:

• tag "<idea-text>" <PROMOTED:E##_S##[_T##]|REJECTED> — writes the terminal tag onto the project/ideas.md line matching <idea-text> (an exact/literal match; errors if zero or more than one line matches, and errors if the line is already tagged).
• get-id "<idea-text>" — prints the embedded board ID from that line's PROMOTED tag (errors if the line has no PROMOTED tag).
• get-rapport "<idea-text>" — prints the rapport: path recorded on that line, or nothing (exit 0) if the line has no source-rapport comment.

• resolve "<idea-text>" <promoted|rejected> [board_id] — the full outcome-record mechanism in one call: tags the line (as tag does), then either updates the idea's source rapport or, if none is recorded, creates the project/documentation/plans/ fallback file:

  • Source rapport present: the rapport's # Rapport: ... title line is prefixed [SPIKE] if not already, and an ## Idea Outcome Record section (decision, date, resulting board ID if promoted, and the idea text) is appended to the rapport file.
  • No source rapport: project/documentation/plans/<slug>_PROMOTED.md or _REJECTED.md is created (idea text slugified, lowercased, capped at 60 characters), containing the same decision/date/board-ID/idea-text content.

  board_id is required for promoted (validated to start with E<digits>) and must be omitted for rejected (a rejection has no resulting board item).

This is the mechanism itself, not the trigger — nothing currently calls resolve automatically. A future promotion step (e.g. within /brainstorm's routing, or scrum-master acting on a rapport-sourced idea) is expected to invoke it once that trigger exists.