Work ONE 3-5 ticket related cluster to a verified colony-score gate. Discovers a cluster off the top of the ready queue (just next + just similar), confirms a plan with the user BEFORE any work, works it track-aware (swarm-safe polecats / substrate-sensitive sessions), then gates on exactly one out-of-sample soak + just verdict + a separate-model skeptic audit. Use when the user types `/colony-loop`, or asks "run a colony-improvement chunk", "work a related ticket cluster", "advance the colony score", "pick a cluster and land it against the gate". One chunk per invocation; ad-hoc, never scheduled. Do NOT fire for ticket recommendation only (use `/next`), single-session orchestration (use `/work`), balance hypothesis testing (use `/hypothesize`), or run diagnosis (use `/diagnose-run`).
Friction-log breadcrumb (`just agent-feedback "<note>"`) — appends one JSON line to `logs/agent-friction.jsonl` capturing what was tried, where it broke, and how severe. Fire at the *moment of friction*, not as a TODO list. Trigger conditions — "you tried two things and they both failed", "a tool's output didn't match its SKILL.md description", "you can't figure out which `just` command serves the user's intent", "you misread an envelope and had to retry after a course-correction". Do NOT fire for — routine errors that resolve on the first retry, syntax mistakes the user corrects in stride, gaps in your codebase knowledge that aren't tooling gaps, or as a venting channel.
Build a versioned baseline dataset (`just baseline-dataset <label>`) — five-phase orchestrator that runs a probe pass, an aggregate sweep, focal-cat traces, conditional weather variants, and a REPORT.md generation. Use when the user wants to lock in a new comparison baseline (the kind `just verdict` will read via `logs/baselines/current.json` or `just promote`). Trigger phrases — "build a versioned baseline", "rebuild the baseline dataset", "promote a new healthy baseline", "we need a fresh baseline against which to measure". Do NOT fire for — single-seed verification (use `just soak` + `just verdict`), one-off sweep work (use `just sweep`), drift checks against an existing baseline (use `just verdict` or `just sweep-stats --vs`).
Collapse overview for a failing Clowder soak — names the cluster pattern (e.g. "189-style schedule-edge"), surfaces the collapse trajectory, and suggests next-step drills. Use when the user asks "why did the colony collapse?", "what kind of failure is this?", or "does this look like a prior cluster?". Do NOT fire for — pass/concern/fail gating (that's `just verdict`), per-tick drilling (that's `just q`/`/logq`), or cross-run SQL (that's `just logdb-query`).
Explain a tuning constant (`just explain <constants.path>`) — doc comment + current value (from a recent `events.jsonl` header) + every read-site in `src/` + (if `logs/sensitivity-map.json` exists) per-metric Spearman rho. Use whenever the user asks what a knob does, what its current value is, where it's read, or what it would shift if tuned. Trigger phrases — "what does FOOD_DECAY_RATE do", "where is X read", "what knob controls Y", "what's the current value of …", "show me the doc comment for …", "list all the constants". Do NOT fire for — multi-knob hypothesis testing (use `just hypothesize`), wanting to *change* a constant (this tool is read-only — edit `src/resources/sim_constants.rs` directly), or runtime-derived values that aren't `SimConstants` fields.
Master-orchestrator skill for spawning swarm-safe polecats (Stage 2 of ticket 354). Reads in-flight polecat state + ready swarm-safe queue + disk, presents a conversational menu, dispatches to `just foreman-*` primitives. Use when the user types `/foreman`, or asks "spawn polecats", "drain the swarm-safe queue", "fire off N parallel sessions", "what are my polecats doing", "shut down all polecats", "tail polecat X". Polecats are headless child `Codex` CLI processes — they run swarm-safe-only tickets (docs / frontmatter / atomic refactor / verified-layer-walk bugfix), exit via `/handoff` + `jj git push --bookmark`, and the master foreman auto-lands their bookmarks via `just refinery --auto`. Do NOT fire for substrate-sensitive or coherent-block work (those need human-gated landing — use `/work`).
Per-DSE focal-cat trace diff (`just frame-diff <baseline> <new> [hypothesis.md]`) — ranks every DSE by |Δ mean(final_score)| between two trace sidecars and optionally classifies each row's concordance against a phase balance doc's hypothesis table. Use when comparing two focal-cat traces to attribute a behavior change to specific DSEs. Trigger phrases — "did the substrate refactor change DSE behavior", "compare focal traces between baselines", "which DSE moved between commits", "is the L1 invariant holding", "did Mate stop firing after the patch". Do NOT fire for — footer-field comparisons (use `just verdict` or `just sweep-stats --vs`), single-trace inspection (use `just q trace`), constants-only diffs (use `diff <(jq …)`).
Run a balance hypothesis end-to-end (`just hypothesize <spec.yaml>`) — baseline + treatment sweeps, concordance check, draft balance doc. Use whenever the user wants to test a balance prediction with the four-artifact methodology (hypothesis · prediction · observation · concordance) that AGENTS.md mandates for any drift > ±10% on a characteristic metric. Trigger phrases — "test if X causes Y", "validate the prediction that…", "run the four-artifact thing on…", "does increasing K shift the metric we expect", "I want to ship a balance change". Do NOT fire for — verdict checks on a single run (use `just verdict`), one-knob constant lookups (use `just explain`), per-DSE drift inspection (use `just frame-diff`), single-seed sanity checks (use `just soak` + `just verdict`).