onboard

name	onboard
description	Onboard an AI agent to a new project by initializing ThoughtCabinet thoughts repo and bootstrapping agent memory. Use when starting work on a new repository, setting up a fresh project for AI-assisted development, or when the user asks to onboard, bootstrap, or initialize a project.

Onboarding a New Project

Set up a new project for AI-assisted development: initialize the thoughts repo and bootstrap agent memory in one workflow.

Workflow Context

This skill orchestrates two capabilities that are normally run separately:

• thc init — connects the project to a thoughts repo
• init-agent-memory skill — creates AGENTS.md and supporting docs

After onboarding, the project is ready for skills like creating-plan, research-codebase, and implementing-plan.

Workflow Overview

1. Pre-flight + Initialize thoughts - Run onboard.sh: check environment, run thc init
2. Bootstrap agent memory - Invoke init-agent-memory skill (if needed)
3. Verify - Run onboard.sh --verify-only: confirm everything is wired up

Step 1: Pre-flight and Initialize Thoughts

Run: bash onboard.sh

Exit codes determine next action:

• 1 — Fatal error (not a git repo, thc missing, init failed). Stop and report.
• 2 — Thoughts ready, AGENTS.md not found. Proceed to Step 2.
• 3 — Thoughts + AGENTS.md both exist. Ask user if they want to regenerate memory or skip to Step 3.

If thoughts was already initialized and user wants to re-initialize:

bash onboard.sh --force

Step 2: Bootstrap Agent Memory

If AGENTS.md already exists: Ask the user whether to regenerate or skip.

If AGENTS.md does not exist: Invoke the init-agent-memory skill.

Note: thoughts/CLAUDE.md (from Step 1) and root CLAUDE.md (from this step) serve different purposes:

• thoughts/CLAUDE.md — thoughts directory usage rules
• ./CLAUDE.md — project memory for the AI agent (symlink to AGENTS.md)

Step 3: Verify and Present

Run: bash onboard.sh --verify-only

Present results to user:

Project onboarding complete!

- thoughts/ connected to [thoughts repo path]
- AGENTS.md created with project context
- Git hooks installed (auto-sync on commit)

You're ready to use skills like /creating-plan, /research-codebase, and /implementing-plan.

If any step was skipped or failed, note it clearly with suggested remediation.

Guidelines

Be incremental: Re-running the skill should be safe — each step skips if already done.

Fail fast: If a critical step fails, stop and report rather than continuing with a broken setup.

Minimal prompting: Only ask questions when the answer cannot be inferred from the environment.

Respect existing work: Never overwrite AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or thoughts/ without explicit user confirmation.