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fix(skill-authoring): make goal-first the default when authoring and reviewing skills - #1391

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Aug 15, 2026
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fix(skill-authoring): make goal-first the default when authoring and reviewing skills#1391
tmchow merged 1 commit into
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@tmchow tmchow commented Aug 15, 2026

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Summary

Agents authoring or reviewing skills in this repo kept needing the same reminders: state the condition instead of the command, don't build a state machine in a skill that delegates the work, and stop patching a block case by case. The doctrine already existed — in portable-agent-skill-authoring.md, and as step 5 of "Applying Feedback to Skills" — but it did not fire at the moment of authoring or review. #1385 is the measured cost: six prescribed-command revisions of one ship gate, each wrong for some git configuration, none of 22 review threads finding the intent unclear.

This PR moves the idea to where it fires, and makes "delete the commands" a legitimate review outcome. It adds no new rules beyond what #1386 recorded; it replaces placement.

What changes

  • AGENTS.md "Cross-Model Skill Authoring" now opens with one posture sentence — a skill hands the agent the goal, the done condition, the safe failure direction, and the non-derivable facts; when you find yourself adding cases to make a block hold, name the condition they proxy for — followed by two citable rules: prescribe a mechanism only where it is owned and repeated case-specific repair is the defect signal, the latter with an explicit reviewer clause. The old accretion step in "Applying Feedback" collapses to a pointer, so the region ends smaller, not larger.
  • ce-code-review reviewer template — a deletion or restatement is now an admissible concrete suggested_fix when a prescribed step in agent-instruction prose fails under some state and the mechanism belongs to a component the prose delegates to. Previously the "always propose a concrete fix under imperfect information" rule pushed reviewers toward the next corrected command — the loop fix(ce-debug): stop asking at the handoff, stop shipping unoffered work #1385 ran.
  • Authoring guide compact review prompt — item 5 carries the ownership clause for people who load the guide instead of AGENTS.md.
  • git-workflow-skills-need-explicit-state-machines.md — Prevention is scoped to skills that own git mechanics, with an explicit negative for delegators. docs(solutions): record why skill gates state conditions, not git commands #1386 records this doc being cited against the ship-gate simplification; left unscoped it beats the new posture the next time someone greps "state machine".

Deliberately not done: a PR-template checklist (templates are prompts, not gates, and gh pr create --body bypasses them) and a mechanical state-machine detector (it cannot tell an owned mechanism from a leaked prescription).

Validation

  • Behavioral check, fresh contexts on Claude Code and Codex CLI with the revised AGENTS.md section as instructions: a delegating-skill fixture (ship gate, "@{u} errors with no upstream" finding) produced a stated condition plus safe failure direction on both hosts and refused the corrected command; an owning-skill fixture (ce-commit-push-pr PR detection, fork-collision finding) kept and refined the mechanism on both, citing ownership. 4/4.
  • Independent cross-model review of the diff (Codex, Grok): both proceed after two edits, both applied — the posture clause was categorical ("enumerating cases") and could license deleting legitimate coverage menus, so it now triggers on repair rather than enumeration; a stale "Three rules" count in the reviewer template became four.
  • bun run test 3102 pass / 0 fail; release:validate clean.

Related: #1385, #1386.

Security Disclosure

No security-relevant changes.

Agent Disclosure

  • Model: Claude Code · claude-fable-5

…reviewing skills

Put the posture agents keep needing to be reminded of into the always-loaded
authoring section: state the condition, prescribe a mechanism only where the
skill owns it, and treat repeated case-specific repair as the defect signal.
Admit deletion/restatement as a concrete suggested_fix in the review template
and scope the git state-machine doc to skills that own git mechanics.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JcEuQMoTHf8ZEyRTfTZcma
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@tmchow
tmchow merged commit b116a76 into main Aug 15, 2026
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@github-actions github-actions Bot mentioned this pull request Aug 15, 2026
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tmchow commented Aug 15, 2026

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ethras added a commit to ethras/compound-engineering-orca that referenced this pull request Aug 16, 2026
* fix(ce-commit-push-pr): root PR stacks on the parent PR the user named (EveryInc#1365)

* fix(ce-babysit-pr): decode gh output as UTF-8 on Windows (EveryInc#1368)

* fix(ce-prototype): cover decisions settled by seeing, not just driving (EveryInc#1369)

* perf(tests): cut suite wall time by splitting the largest test file (EveryInc#1370)

* fix(tests): stop the cross-model routes test reading the working tree (EveryInc#1371)

* fix(ce-doc-review): ask only where a real choice exists, batch the rest (EveryInc#1373)

* chore(orca): re-pin upstream provenance baseline to 421a337

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>

* fix(ce-doc-review): align Orca ownership wording with Apply routing

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>

* feat(ce-prototype): add a seeing-mode craft floor and durable storage (EveryInc#1374)

* fix(ce-pov): stop the panel guessing the cross-model host argument (EveryInc#1375)

* chore(cross-model): pin the Grok peer to 4.6 (EveryInc#1376)

* docs(skills): rewrite user skill pages for accuracy and clearer use (EveryInc#1377)

* fix(commit): append known plan unit ids to commit subjects (EveryInc#1379)

* fix(ce-work): stop sandboxed workers committing in linked worktrees (EveryInc#1382)

* fix(ce-doc-review): edit HTML plans in native format (EveryInc#1381)

* fix(ce-code-review): cover adversarial after quota or auth no-review (EveryInc#1380)

* fix(skills): correct a rejected dispatch instead of spending the fallback (EveryInc#1383)

* fix(ce-compound): find Claude sessions started outside the repo root (EveryInc#1378)

* ci(windows-native): retry peer-job-runner smoke on ctypes flake (EveryInc#1384)

* fix(ce-debug): stop asking at the handoff, stop shipping unoffered work (EveryInc#1385)

* docs(solutions): record why skill gates state conditions, not git commands (EveryInc#1386)

* fix(skills): drop the residual-findings record file for real sinks (EveryInc#1387)

* fix(ce-doc-review): run the cross-model pass when CROSS_MODEL_PEERS is unset (EveryInc#1389)

* fix(ce-proof): sync with current Proof v3 contract (EveryInc#1390)

* fix(skill-authoring): make goal-first the default when authoring and reviewing skills (EveryInc#1391)

* fix(cross-model): let reviews run on Fable and pin model/effort from CE config (EveryInc#1392)

* docs(cross-model): point superseded peer benchmarks at the luna/xhigh decision (EveryInc#1393)

* fix(cross-model): discover the Codex.app-bundled codex CLI and name the peer-CLI requirement (EveryInc#1395)

* feat(cross-model): add cross_model_review_mode checkout egress gate (EveryInc#1396)

* fix(ce-compound-refresh): compare knowledge-track learnings against guidance they name (EveryInc#1399)

* docs(solutions): capture the named-guidance contradiction-check learning (EveryInc#1400)

* fix(ce-compound): prefer the repo's own frontmatter vocabulary over the Rails-era enums (EveryInc#1394)

* fix(ce-work): stop asking about branches before starting work (EveryInc#1397)

* fix(review): answer covered cases on skill prose with the condition, not a patch (EveryInc#1401)

* fix(scratch): fall back to $TMPDIR when /tmp cannot host the scratch root (EveryInc#1398)

* feat(ce-skill-work): repo-local skill for authoring, editing, reviewing, and responding to review on skills (EveryInc#1402)

* fix(ce-pov): reject non-final peer positions instead of folding them in (EveryInc#1403)

* feat(manifest): add Agent Plugins v1.0.0 manifest support (EveryInc#1345)

* chore: release main (EveryInc#1354)

* fix(ce-work): run cross-model verification on warm checkouts (EveryInc#1404)

* fix(orca): reconcile upstream skill contracts

* fix(orca): preserve additive Codex session roots

---------

Co-authored-by: Trevin Chow <trevin@trevinchow.com>
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Co-authored-by: github-actions[bot] <41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
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