ask-matt

name	ask-matt
description	Recommends the skill or flow that fits the user's situation. A router over the skills in this repo. Use when the user asks which skill to use, is unsure what fits, or needs a pointer to the right workflow.
disable-model-invocation	true

Ask Matt

You don't remember every skill, so ask.

A flow is a path through the skills. Most paths run along one main flow, and two on-ramps merge onto it. Everything else is standalone, or a vocabulary layer that runs underneath.

The main flow: idea → ship

The route most work travels. You have an idea and want it built.

1. /mattpocock:grill-with-docs — sharpen the idea by interview. Start here when you have a codebase: it's stateful, retaining what it learns in CONTEXT.md and ADRs. (No codebase? Use /mattpocock:grill-me — see Standalone. Both run the same /mattpocock:grilling primitive; grill-with-docs is the one that leaves a paper trail.)

2. Branch — can you settle every question in conversation? If a question needs a runnable answer (state, business logic, a UI you have to see), detour through a prototype, bridged by /mattpocock:handoff in both directions (see Crossing sessions):

   • /mattpocock:handoff out, then open a fresh session against that file,
   • /mattpocock:prototype to answer the question with throwaway code,
   • /mattpocock:handoff back what you learned, and reference it from the original idea thread.

3. Branch — is this a multi-session build?

   • Yes → /mattpocock:to-spec (turn the thread into a spec), then /mattpocock:to-tickets to split it into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges. On a local tracker that's one file per ticket under .scratch/<feature>/issues/, worked blockers-first by hand; on a real tracker the edges become native blocking links, so any ticket whose blockers are done can be grabbed — kick off /mattpocock:implement per ticket, clearing context between each one.
   • No → /mattpocock:implement right here, in the same context window.

   Either way, /mattpocock:implement builds each issue by driving /mattpocock:bdd internally (Discovery → Formulation, then Automation delegated to /mattpocock:tdd) — one vertical slice at a time — then closes out by running /mattpocock:code-review, a two-axis review (Standards + Spec) of the diff, before committing. Reach for /mattpocock:bdd on its own when you want to define Gherkin scenarios for a feature, and /mattpocock:tdd on its own when you want to write tests within the BDD Automation phase. Reach for /mattpocock:code-review on its own whenever you want to review a branch or PR against a fixed point.

Context hygiene

Keep steps 1–3 in one unbroken context window — don't compact or clear until after /mattpocock:to-tickets — so the grilling, spec, and tickets all build on the same thinking. Each /mattpocock:implement then starts fresh, working from the ticket.

The limit on this is the smart zone: the window (~120k tokens on state-of-the-art models) within which the model still reasons sharply. If a session approaches it before /mattpocock:to-tickets, don't push on degraded — /mattpocock:handoff and continue in a fresh thread.

CRITICAL: Route by scenario, not by habit

Wayfinder is only for work too big for one session — never a well-scoped feature. Triage is only for issues the user didn't create — never for the tickets /mattpocock:to-tickets produced. Keep steps 1–3 in one unbroken context window: no compact or clear until after /mattpocock:to-tickets.

On-ramps

A starting situation that generates work, then merges onto the main flow.

• Bugs and requests piling up → /mattpocock:triage. It moves issues through triage roles and produces agent-ready issues, which /mattpocock:implement later picks up.

  Triage is only for issues you didn't create — bug reports, incoming feature requests, anything that arrives raw. Tickets that /mattpocock:to-tickets produced are already agent-ready, so don't triage them.

• Something's broken → /mattpocock:diagnosing-bugs. For the hard ones: the bug that resists a first glance, the intermittent flake, the regression that crept in between two known-good states. It refuses to theorise until it has a tight feedback loop — one command that already goes red on this bug — then fixes with a regression test. Its post-mortem hands off to /mattpocock:improve-codebase-architecture when the real finding is that there's no good seam to lock the bug down.

• A huge, foggy effort — a greenfield project or a huge feature build, too big for one session → /mattpocock:wayfinder, the most cognitively demanding flow here. When the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet, it charts a shared map of decision tickets on the issue tracker and resolves them one at a time — producing decisions, not deliverables — until the fog is pushed back and the way is clear. Where /mattpocock:grill-with-docs sharpens an idea you can hold in one session, wayfinder is for the idea you can't — and it's slower and denser, so save it for exactly that, never a well-scoped feature.

  When the map clears, it hands off, it doesn't build: merge onto the main flow at /mattpocock:to-spec, which collapses the map's linked decisions into a buildable plan, then /mattpocock:to-tickets and /mattpocock:implement as usual. Looping the map straight into /mattpocock:implement skips that collapse and throws the linked detail away — go straight to /mattpocock:implement only when the effort turned out genuinely small.

Codebase health

Not feature work — upkeep.

• /mattpocock:improve-codebase-architecture — run whenever you have a spare moment to keep the codebase good for agents to operate in. It surfaces deepening opportunities; picking one generates an idea you can take into the main flow at /mattpocock:grill-with-docs. It's the survey that finds the candidates; /mattpocock:codebase-design (below) is the bench you design the chosen one on.

Vocabulary underneath

Model-invoked references that run beneath the other skills — each the single source of truth for its vocabulary. Reach for them directly when the words, not the process, are the problem; or let the skills above pull them in.

• /mattpocock:codebase-design — the deep-module vocabulary (module, interface, depth, seam, adapter, leverage, locality) for designing a module's shape: a lot of behaviour behind a small interface at a clean seam. /mattpocock:bdd, /mattpocock:tdd (BDD-driven), and /mattpocock:improve-codebase-architecture all speak it.
• /mattpocock:domain-modeling — sharpen the project's domain language: challenge a fuzzy term, resolve an overloaded word ("account" doing three jobs), record a hard-to-reverse decision as an ADR. It's the active discipline /mattpocock:grill-with-docs drives to keep CONTEXT.md a clean glossary.

Crossing sessions

A phase is a chunk of work inside a session — the grilling, the implementation, the QA. At the boundary between two of them you have five options, and picking between them is the fuzziest decision in this whole map:

• Continue — stay put. Costs nothing, loses nothing.
• /clear — empty the window, when nothing here matters to what's next.
• /mattpocock:handoff — write a portable markdown file. Narrow: only for a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, or forking a side task mid-phase. What it buys is portability. It's the bridge between context windows, in either direction.
• Subagent — send a tightly-scoped task to its own window and get a report back.
• /compact (built-in) — compress this context and seed a fresh session with it. The default, at the bottom of the tree rather than the first reach.

Read PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md for the ordered tree — the five questions, the reasoning behind each branch, and why the primary-source cost makes Continue the one to rule out first. Make the decision at a boundary; mid-phase, continue or split the rest into subagents. /mattpocock:handoff forks; /compact continues.

Standalone

Off the main flow entirely.

• /mattpocock:grill-me — the same relentless interview as /mattpocock:grill-with-docs, but for when you have no codebase. Stateless: it saves nothing locally, builds no CONTEXT.md. Reach for it to sharpen any plan or design that doesn't live in a repo.
• /mattpocock:grilling — the interview primitive itself: one question at a time via the AskUserQuestion tool, facts are the agent's job and decisions are yours. /mattpocock:grill-me and /mattpocock:grill-with-docs are the two named ways in, and /mattpocock:triage, /mattpocock:wayfinder and /mattpocock:improve-codebase-architecture all run it internally. Reach for it directly only when you want the interview with no wrapper around it.
• /mattpocock:resolving-merge-conflicts — work an in-progress merge or rebase conflict hunk by hunk, resolving by intent traced to each side's primary source rather than by picking lines, then finish the operation. It never runs --abort. Standalone and off every flow: reach for it when you are already mid-conflict.
• /mattpocock:prototype — a small, throwaway program that answers one design question: does this state model feel right, or what should this UI look like. It's the detour in step 2 of the main flow, but reach for it any time a design question is hard to settle on paper.
• /mattpocock:research — delegate reading legwork to a background agent: it investigates a question against primary sources, then leaves a cited Markdown file in the repo. Keep working while it reads. The file it produces is something to take into the main flow at /mattpocock:grill-with-docs — research feeds the thinking, it doesn't replace it.
• /mattpocock:to-questionnaire — when the thing blocking you isn't in your head or the codebase but in someone else's, this writes them a questionnaire to fill in. It's the inverse of /mattpocock:grill-me: instead of interviewing you about the subject, it interviews you about the send — who it's going to, what you need back — and aims the questions at the gap. What comes back is material for /mattpocock:grill-with-docs or /mattpocock:to-spec.
• /mattpocock:wizard — for the steps only a can take: provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, clicking through an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, running a one-off migration or cutover. It generates an interactive bash script that opens each URL, captures each value, and writes it into and GitHub secrets — so the procedure stops being something you re-explain to an agent every time. Model-invoked, so the agent reaches for it the moment it hits a wall only you can pass. If the agent could just do it itself, it should; this is for where a human is genuinely in the loop.

Precondition

/mattpocock:setup-matt-pocock-skills — run before your first engineering flow to configure the issue tracker, triage labels, and doc layout the other skills assume. Custom issue trackers also work.