Skills For Real EngineersSAFE

From the repository's own README, as read at the audited commit. Badges and raw HTML are left out.

claude plugin install mattpocock-skills@claude-plugins-official

codex plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills
codex plugin add mattpocock-skills@mattpocock

The instruction file, verbatim from the audited commit — this is the text the model reads, and the surface the audit's instruction layer examines. Quoted here so you can judge it without cloning anything.

---
name: ask-matt
description: Ask which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the skills in this repo.
disable-model-invocation: true
---

# Ask Matt

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 a prototype, bridged by **`/handoff`** in both directions (a prototype lives in its own directory, which is exactly what `/handoff` is for; see Phase boundaries):
   - **`/handoff`** out, then open a fresh session against that file,
   - **`/prototype`** to answer the question with throwaway code,
   - **`/handoff`** back what you learned, and reference it from the original 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 work the tickets one of two ways:
     - **`/implement`** per ticket, **`/clear`ing context between each one**. On a local tracker that's one file per ticket under `.scratch/<feature>/issues/`, worked blockers-first by hand; on a real tracker the edges become native 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.
     - **`/implement-spec`** for the whole spec in one run. It reads the tickets as a **task graph**, runs implementer subagents across the ready **frontier** in parallel, and lands everything on one **integration branch**. Reach for it when you'd rather orchestrate the build than drive each ticket yourself.
   - **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 **`/code-review`**, a two-axis review (Standards + Spec) of the diff. `/implement` runs both per ticket; `/implement-spec`'s implementers each drive `/tdd`, and it runs one `/code-review` over the integration branch. Reach for **`/tdd`** on its own when you just want to build a concrete behaviour test-first without a full spec, and **`/code-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.

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 `/code-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](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/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 moves issues through triage roles and produces agent-ready issues, which **`/implement`** later picks up.

  Triage is only for issues **you didn't create**: bug reports, incoming feature requests, anything that arrives raw. Tickets that `/to-tickets` produced are already agent-ready, so **don't triage them**.

- **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`**.

- **A huge, foggy effort: a greenfield project or a huge feature build, too big for one session** → **`/wayfinder`**, the most cognitively demanding flow here. When the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet, it charts a **shared map** of **decision tickets** on the issue tracker and resolves them one at a time, producing **decisions, not deliverables**, until the fog

SAFEgrade B · trust 89/100 Nothing in the source contradicts what it says it does. Grade A is reserved for packages that have also passed the behavioural sandbox.

What the source does

Filesystem

none-observed

Network

none-observed

Shell

none-observed

Dependencies

not all pinned

Secrets in source

none-found

Findings (8)

AGENTS.md

@changesets/changelog-github, @changesets/cli

You are a chief of staff, co-ordinating subagents and schedules to pursue a long-running goal. This session will run for a long time, accruing tribal knowledge and helping you make long-term strategic

This is also a real bug, and also not fixed. The router answers from its own one-line summary of each skill rather than from the skill. One detailed report tracked three instances in a single session,

Not with `/implement`: one invocation, one ticket. For a whole spec in one run, use [implement-spec](https://aihero.dev/skills-implement-spec), which gives each ticket on the ready frontier to a [suba

Use one candidate per session. If you work through several in one conversation, the [context window](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/context-window) fills with the report, the grilling, th

One caveat from a user report on parallel worktrees: when sibling [sessions](https://www.aihero.dev/ai-coding-dictionary/session) each build a ticket in their own tree, the merge back is best done by

The frontier shows you which tickets you can take, and blocking edges make parallel work safe on paper. In practice, one ticket at a time is the safer default. If you work two grilling tickets at once

Gates applied: no_behavioural_pass.

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