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retro

Skill3 starsChanged 43 days agoMITView on GitHub

Conduct a retrospective on a coding session.

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

5 rules. 0 are common, 4 are distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.

  • 0

    Common

    Most of the 166 edited versions we read keep these.

  • 4

    Distinctive

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 1

    Very specific

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

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Very specific:

    When proposing changes to agent instructions, read write-skills for the installed authoring guidance.

    line 11
  2. Distinctive:

    Read the primary sources for the session the user specifies.

    line 13
  3. Distinctive:

    Look for candidates for improvement in these categories.

    line 15
  4. Distinctive:

    No-ops: look for instructions in steering files that don't modify the agent's behavior.

    line 22
  5. Distinctive:

    Information access: look for opportunities to increase the agent's access to information.

    line 23

“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 166 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

The user has asked for a retrospective. You are suggesting improvements to the coding agent's environment to improve future runs.

Steps

  1. When proposing changes to agent instructions, read write-skills for the installed authoring guidance.
  2. Read the primary sources for the session the user specifies. This may mean searching through session logs on this machine. If the user doesn't specify a session, default to the current one.
  3. Look for candidates for improvement in these categories.
  • Navigation: how easy was it for the agent to find the right files? Are there hidden dependencies between files? Would a navigation pointer make it easier? Use when the session took a long time to find a piece of information.
  • Automated checks: are there automated checks that could catch errors the agent made? Linting, typing, tests, filesystem linters? Read the repo's own check command first (its package.json/build-tool lint/check scripts, its CI workflow), so a check that already exists but sits unwired or silently broken is the finding, not a reinvention. A repo with no guardrail (no pre-commit hook and no CI job running its lint/typecheck/test command) is itself a finding: an un-linted repo is a standing missed opportunity, not a neutral default. Use when the agent made a mistake an automated check could have caught, or the repo has no guardrail at all.
  • Coding standards: should the reviewer agent be given a new rule to enforce? Should an existing rule be removed or clarified? Classify the violation first: a mechanical one (a fixed syntactic pattern, a banned API, an import shape, a file-location rule) gets a deterministic check, full stop: a custom rule in the repo's own linter, a new pre-commit hook, or a new CI job, whichever the repo's language and existing guardrail make cheapest. Default to building the check over writing the rule. Reserve CODING_STANDARDS.md for genuine judgement calls (cross-file consistency, "matches the surrounding style," anything no guardrail could ever substitute for). Use when the reviewer agent failed to catch a mistake.
  • Global AGENTS.md: are there any steering instructions that should be moved to coding standards (or automated checks) instead? Use when the AGENTS.md file is particularly large - in the repo OR the user's global scope.
  • Tool economy: did the agent make expensive tool calls that could be streamlined? Is there any custom tooling (CLI's, MCP's) that is particularly token-inefficient? Use when the agent made an expensive tool call.
  • No-ops: look for instructions in steering files that don't modify the agent's behavior. Use when the steering files are large and unwieldy.
  • Information access: look for opportunities to increase the agent's access to information. Teeing dev server logs, readonly access to third-party services. Use when a crucial piece of information was not available to the agent.
  1. Present these candidates to the user, in order of severity.

Reference

Implementation vs Review

Remember that all work goes through two stages: implementation and review. The implementation agent has the most context pressure. They are responsible for exploration, writing code, and debugging failures.

The review agent has the least context pressure - it receives a diff, so no exploration needed. It often does not need to write code or debug.

This means that the review agent should be responsible for imposing coding standards, not the implementation agent.

Files

You have access to several files in the repo:

  • CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md: these files are pushed to the context window of any agent working in this repo. They should be used incredibly sparingly, usually only for navigation pointers to other files.
  • CODING_STANDARDS.md: this file is read during review, not implementation. Add navigation pointers to docs folders if the standards file gets more than 1,000 lines long.
  • Docs: use docs as references files, pointed to by other files. Look for existing docs before writing new ones.
  • Skills: use skills for docs (since their description goes into the agent's context window), or for user-invoked commands. Use the installed write-skills authoring guidance.

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