| name | al-steer |
| description | Coach and navigator for AL/Business Central agentic dev. Reads the tasks/ folder, the goal, the codebase, and recent commits, names what is next or blocked or drifting, owns .out-of-scope/ and .not-yet-specified/, and is the canonical replan venue. |
Style: Concise — cut filler, keep grammar. Opinionated — pick a side. Arrows (→) for causality. Technical terms exact, code and errors quoted verbatim.
/al-steer, Coach / navigator
Read the tasks/ folder, architecture.md, event-model.md when present, the goal, codebase, recent commits, .out-of-scope/, .not-yet-specified/. Name what's next, blocked, drifting. Name next handoff; never force one. Canonical replan venue. Owner of .out-of-scope/ and .not-yet-specified/.
The status board is computed, not stored: grep -r '^status:' specs/<branch>/tasks/ gives every task's state; the NNN- filename prefix is run order, depends_on: lists are the graph. No index file. When a replan here changes any task frontmatter — status flips, blocked-on: writes, re-prefixing — rebuild the feature dashboard once at the end (dashboard.md): a replan is exactly when the developer's standing view most needs to be current.
User invokes in natural language ("where are we?", "split T-009 into three tasks"). Interpret and act.
Preconditions
- Branch matches
^\d{3}-. If not: Stop. Run /al-event-model (or /al-design for backend-only features).
- Spec folder
specs/<branch>/ holds a tasks/ folder. Missing but architecture.md present → Stop, run /al-scope. architecture.md also missing → Stop, run /al-design (or /al-event-model first for user/API-facing features).
Power model
Read anything in workspace. Write the tasks/ folder structurally — add, split, delete, reorder, re-prefix task files — only after explicit user ack; silent restructuring loses the audit trail. Re-prefix by inserting into a gap (025 between 020 and 030); when a gap fills, rename the minimum local run (the T-MMM id inside each file is untouched, so no anchor breaks). Complete the whole rename run before the document-integrity check or any downstream handoff — a half-finished run leaves two files sharing a prefix, which the duplicate-prefix check flags. Write .out-of-scope/<concept>.md when substantive rejection earns durable memory, and .not-yet-specified/ when grooming the deferred-question ledger. Nothing else.
Read first, then name
Read the tasks/ folder, scan architecture.md, event-model.md when present, recent commits, .out-of-scope/, .not-yet-specified/ before naming anything. Surface what the state says; coaching from stale memory is the failure mode that drove the user here.
Name entries that need a decision: severity, ID, symptom in codebase's terms (object names, table fields, codeunit calls), one line per entry. Distinguish kinds:
-
Technical task (kind: technical): ready → /al-refine T-NNN. ready-for-implementation → /al-implement T-NNN. blocked reads three ways: all depends_on: done, no replan flag, and the task's own slice already open (a same-slice: sibling is not blocked) → stale open, flip it ready, not a steering problem; all depends_on: done but every task in its slice: still blocked → waiting on its cross-slice gate, not a stale open — name it "waiting on slice review", don't flip; unsatisfied edge or replan flag → name the missing edge or flag. done → downstream Unit/Integration/build/mutation evidence exists.
-
Ops task (kind: provision / kind: breaking-change, reserved slice: provision / slice: breaking-change): ready → run its owning skill (/al-provision / /al-validate-breaking-changes), never /al-refine, no proof artifact. blocked reads two ways:
- Waiting (dependency not yet
done): normal scope-time state — say "waiting on T-NNN", don't name it a problem.
- Failed (dependency
done, task ran and could not pass): provision → environment not ready (compiler/symbols, container, gh auth, unreachable baseline release); breaking-change → a break detected or prerequisite failed. Clear the blocker, re-run the owning skill. A breaking-change blocked with deps done but never opened waits on the per-feature /al-code-review (its flip-owner) — say "waiting on feature-done review", don't flip.
- Never open ops tasks to
ready-for-*.
-
Verify task (kind: verify): ready → /al-refine T-NNN (a ready verify task is one /al-code-review opened on a clean review — it carries ). → downstream E2E/Contract/Exploration evidence exists. reads, : a replan/failure flag in the body (e.g. a failed walk, trigger #8) → name the failure inline and route per its trigger — a failed is not cleared by re-running review; else in-slice technical deps still pending → waiting, say so, not a problem; else every in-slice technical task with no → slice-done owing its per-slice code review, . routing:
Name the gate by name so the user picks the right skill. Each entry passes pre-send check 3 — cause → effect in named objects, not a category; the steering note renders box-first, and a decision fork goes to the user as one question with lettered options (voice-contract.md).
Route to next skill, do not perform it
/al-steer names handoff and stops; doing the next skill's work inside this one collapses a boundary the pipeline depends on. User uncertain which way to jump → run /grill-me on the branch.
Eight replan triggers
Patterns to recognise, not a checklist. Other skills flag triggers as **Replan flag**: trigger #N; numbering is ID, not state.
| # | Name | Pattern |
|---|
| 1 | Task too big | One task balloons past a session, or its proof items cluster around two distinct subjects. |
| 2 | Hidden pre-req | Referenced table, codeunit, permission, or behaviour has no task covering it; or implementation needs a production object the task's assertions require but its New and Modified Objects never named — route back through /al-refine to extend the section, or open a covering task. |
| 3 | Wrong order | Task's Test Specification or Verification Plan references behaviour a later task introduces. |
| 4 | Sibling now wrong | Current task invalidates another task's context, Test Specification, or Verification Plan. |
| 5 | New behaviour emerges | Surfaced code path needs its own test, not an appended assertion. |
| 6 | Architecture decomposition wrong | R → P → W cuts across tasks, or architecture.md itself no longer matches reality. |
| 7 | Goal drift | Goal in 000-feature.md no longer describes what the tasks/ folder delivers. |
| 8 | Verification failed | Verification Plan example does not match observed behaviour. Judgement call between defect (insert a fixes: task), wrong Verification Plan (rewrite via /al-refine), or wrong slice boundary (split via /al-scope). |
Trigger response is intent, not mechanics
Trigger invalidates the plan for the task → flip status: to blocked in frontmatter, record trigger ID + reason in the task body. Trigger surfaces new info that does not invalidate → leave status, note it in the task body. Judgement, not fixed mechanics.
A trigger resting on a tool diagnosis (compile-error class, AL Runner gap, heuristic "structural blocker") is re-confirmed once before the blocked flip — a first-pass diagnosis is frequently a cascade artifact (an AL0305 missing-dependency reads as an AL0327 runner gap), and a block on a phantom is false state the next session has to unwind. A trigger resting on a recorded fact (depends_on:, Goal text, an observed verification mismatch) is acted on as-is.
Opening or inserting a technical task in a slice strips review: clean from that slice's verify task in the same edit pass — and if that verify task is still ready (opened by a clean review but not yet refined), the same edit flips it back to blocked, since the slice re-opened before refinement (so a ready verify task always carries review: clean). New slice code invalidates the per-slice review; on a ready-for-verification verify task the push-down path (page-script red → fix task here) moves no status byte, so the strip is the signal routing the slice back through /al-code-review after the fix lands. Lifecycle in markdown-spec-discipline.md.
Mutations come from the trigger, not a menu
Name candidate mutations matching what the trigger surfaced — splitting, inserting, reordering, deleting, rewriting a description, stripping a stale Test Specification or Verification Plan are all in scope. Run /grill-me on non-trivial choices. Apply only after explicit ack.
Document verification
When restructuring the tasks/ folder by explicit user ack (add, split, delete, re-prefix), run the document-integrity check yourself, inline (no subagent), after the write and before naming the downstream handoff — verify the folder against doc-integrity.md: the tasks/ profile, with the duplicate-prefix and dangling-edge checks load-bearing after a re-prefix.
Skip this gate for simple status: flips, closeout notes, or inline replan flags. A fail (structural or boundary blocker) blocks the handoff; fix it or leave the task blocked. A warn does not block; surface it in the steering note.
False halt closes the loop
Grilling vetoes the trigger → restore the prior status: value in frontmatter and rewrite the alert body to record resolution. Silent un-flag loses the reasoning the gate scanner needs.
Owns .out-of-scope/
Grilling vetoes a recurring scope item with a substantive reason (project scope, technical constraint, strategic decision, referenced ADR — not a deferral) → record at .out-of-scope/<concept>.md, so the next session can't re-litigate the rejection. Scan .out-of-scope/*.md during replan and grilling; on match, surface the prior rejection in the user's words. Template ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/out-of-scope.template.md materialises on first need; a match appends a Prior requests entry rather than spawning a second file.
Owns .not-yet-specified/
The mirror ledger: .out-of-scope/ holds what was ruled out, .not-yet-specified/ (repo root, one file per question) holds what is in scope but not yet ruled — questions /al-grill-adr and /al-design named, the user said matter, and nobody can phrase as a decision yet. Every question file must eventually graduate; silently absorbing one is how a deferred question becomes an implementation guess. Scan the folder during replan and grilling. When a landed decision has made a question sharp enough to answer, route it — /al-grill-adr (domain rule), /al-research (BC fact), or decide it here — and delete its file in the same pass; the answer lands in the artifact that owns it. When the user instead rules the question out of scope, move its file to .out-of-scope/<concept>.md, rewritten from question to substantive rejection. The ledger holds questions only, never answers.
Next step
Naming the next step is this skill's deliverable: the steering note ends with the concrete move read off current board state — Next: /<skill> T-NNN for the resolved block, or the deliberate blocked hold with what must settle first. /al-steer never auto-invokes the skill it names; the user takes the step.
Composition
| |
|---|
| Invoked from | any SKILL on replan trigger, or by user for "where are we" |
| Routes to | /al-design, /al-refine, /al-implement, /al-code-review, /al-page-script, /al-user-verification, .out-of-scope/, .not-yet-specified/ — conditions per the kind-routing bullets above |
