| name | consigliere-bootstrap |
| description | Scaffold the private manager-workspace (consigliere knowledge base) at a configured path: directory contract (sources/contexts/projects/people), per- node state/journal/playbook, schemas, README, recorded in consigliere.workspace. Establishes the write-guard — writes stay inside the private workspace, never a code repo. Foundation for digest-source/context- status/playbook-review. Manual; consigliere bundle.
|
| triggers | {"keywords":["consigliere bootstrap","set up manager workspace","scaffold manager-workspace","init consigliere","create my consigliere"]} |
Consigliere Bootstrap
Overview
The consigliere capability digests a manager's diverse inputs into a private
knowledge workspace. Before any digesting or querying can happen, that workspace
must exist with a well-defined shape that every other consigliere skill reads and
writes. This skill creates it — and only it. It does no digesting, no querying, no
heuristics; it is the scaffold.
The artifacts (this skill, the templates) are generic and ship as part of the
toolkit, while all managerial data lives in the private workspace whose path is
recorded in the consigliere.workspace config key. This skill belongs to a
separate consigliere bundle, not tech-lead.
When to Engage
Manual, operator-run. Engage once, when the manager wants to stand up their
workspace, or to re-scaffold a missing piece. Not auto-invoked.
The workspace contract
<manager-workspace>/ # a PRIVATE repo; path → consigliere.workspace
├── README.md
├── .gitignore
├── sources/YYYY/MM/<date>-<slug>.<ext> # raw inputs, IMMUTABLE — the grounding base
├── contexts/<ctx>/[<subctx>/...] # perennial tree, arbitrary depth
│ ├── state.md # materialized current state (6 fixed sections)
│ ├── journal.md # append-only, dated
│ └── playbook.md # heuristics (optional)
├── projects/<proj>/ # temporal, cross-cutting (M:N to contexts)
│ ├── meta.yml
│ ├── state.md
│ ├── journal.md
│ └── playbook.md
└── people/<person>.md
Every node — context or project — carries the same trio: state.md
(materialized) + journal.md (append-only, dated) + playbook.md (optional). This
uniformity is the contract the other consigliere skills depend on; treat changes to
it as breaking.
state.md — the 6-field digest contract
Fixed section headers, so context-status consults are deterministic: Status by workstream ·
Blockers · Decisions · System & area map · Actions · Political risk. A
leading <!-- updated: … · sources: [...] --> marker records provenance.
journal.md — append-only with citation anchors
One dated block per digest; every extracted line ends with (src: sources/…#Ln) so
each claim traces back to the immutable raw input (the grounding hook for digest-source).
projects/<proj>/meta.yml — the project schema
title: Checkout Revamp
status: active
contexts: [payments, fulfillment]
started: 2026-05-31
due: null
The contexts list drives the fan-out pointer in digest-source.
sources/ frontmatter schema
Every file written under sources/ (by digest-source) carries:
---
origin: <url | JIRA-123 | filename>
kind: meeting | slack | jira | confluence | pdf | text
fetched_at: 2026-05-31
ingested_by: digest-source
---
Config key + write-guard (non-negotiable)
This section is the canonical write-guard contract. digest-source,
context-status and playbook-review cite it by reference
rather than restating it — they inherit these rules, they do not re-derive them.
Changing the rules here changes them for the whole bundle.
consigliere.workspace stores the absolute path of the private workspace.
- Resolution: every consigliere skill reads
consigliere.workspace; if it is
unset, the skill refuses to run and tells the user to run this bootstrap.
- Write-guard: a consigliere skill may write only inside the resolved
consigliere.workspace path. Before any write, assert the absolute target is a
descendant of that path; otherwise abort. This is the hard rule that keeps
managerial data out of a team repo. The consigliere never writes outside the
configured workspace.
Bootstrap flow
- Resolve the target path. Ask the manager for the private workspace path (or
read
consigliere.workspace if already set).
- Refuse / warn on a code repo. If the target contains
package.json, a
*.csproj, src/, or other signs it looks like a code repo, warn and
require explicit confirmation before continuing — managerial data must not land
in a team/code repo.
- Materialize the contract from
templates/consigliere/: create
sources/ contexts/ projects/ people/ (with .gitkeeps), write README.md and
.gitignore, and seed one sample context and one sample project as
living documentation.
- Record the config. Write the absolute path into
consigliere.workspace.
- Confirm and hint. Print the resulting tree and point the manager to
/octopus:digest-source as the next step.
Anti-patterns
- Writing any managerial content to the Octopus repo or a team repo — only the
configured private workspace.
- Scaffolding into an apparent code repo without explicit confirmation.
- Drifting the directory/trio/schema contract after the other skills build on it —
that is a breaking change and needs its own note.
Related
- Next:
digest-source, the consigliere role, context-status, playbook-review.