using-fauna-skills

name	using-fauna-skills
description	Discovers and invokes Fauna skills. Use when starting a session or deciding which skill applies to the current task. This is the meta-skill that governs how all other skills are loaded via fauna_list_skills / fauna_get_skill.

Using Fauna Skills

Overview

Fauna ships a small set of lifecycle skills that encode senior-engineering discipline for autonomous tasks. Each skill is a workflow with explicit verification — not a reference doc. This meta-skill tells you when to load which one.

When to Use

• Starting a new autonomous task and unsure which skill applies
• A Kanban card is moving between columns and you need to know the gates
• The model is about to declare TASK_COMPLETE and you want to know what evidence the verification gate expects

Discovery

Tasks arrive with a column or intent. Map to a skill:

Card in backlog  → spec-driven-development   (write acceptance criteria first)
Card in todo     → planning-and-task-breakdown
Card in_progress → incremental-implementation + test-driven-development
Card in review   → code-review-and-quality
Anything failing → debugging-and-error-recovery

The active skills for the current task are listed in your system prompt under "ACTIVE SKILLS for this task". Load full bodies with fauna_get_skill(name) — or fetch just one section with fauna_get_skill(name, "Verification") to keep tokens low.

Process

These behaviors apply at all times, across all skills. They are non-negotiable:

1. Surface assumptions before acting on ambiguous requirements.
2. Manage confusion — stop and name it rather than guessing through it.
3. Push back when warranted — sycophancy is a failure mode.
4. Enforce simplicity — if 100 lines suffice, do not write 1000.
5. Scope discipline — touch only what you were asked to touch.
6. Verify, do not assume — "seems right" is never sufficient.

Common Rationalizations

Rationalization	Reality
"The skill is too generic for this task"	Skills are guardrails, not templates. Apply the discipline; skip steps that don't apply with a one-line note.
"I know how to do this without loading the skill"	Then loading it costs nothing. Load it anyway — the Verification section is what catches the mistakes you didn't think of.
"This task is too small for a verification gate"	Verification of a small task is cheap. Verification debt of a big task is expensive.

Red Flags

• Declaring TASK_COMPLETE without citing evidence from the active skill's Verification checklist
• Loading the same skill repeatedly within one task (load once, refer back)
• Picking a skill that doesn't match the task's actual phase (e.g. shipping-and-launch for a debug task)

Verification

This is a meta-skill — it has no exit criteria of its own. Its presence is verified by the autonomous loop: every TASK_COMPLETE goes through the anti-rationalization gate, which reads the active skill's Verification section and requires cited evidence for each item.