| name | spark-steering |
| description | Diagnose which SPARK axis (Skills, Personalities, Approaches, Resources, Knowledge) is actually short before reaching for a fix, and move only that one. Invoke by name when stuck mid-task, when output is shallow despite a clean tool run, or before adding a permission rule, MCP server, plugin, subagent, CLAUDE.md, memory file, or new skill. Also for steering, adapting, tuning, or reconfiguring an agent's SPARK coordinates. |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
SPARK Steering
Diagnose before you configure. Reaching for a fix without locating which axis is short adds permanent capability to solve a temporary problem — the wrong-axis move doesn't merely fail to help, it stays installed and charges rent every future turn.
This body carries the judgment. The data lives in references/ and is pulled on demand — never load a reference file whole when a targeted read answers the question.
The question is location, not fitness
Ask which axis is short. Do not ask will this help finish the task — the task's goal is not a SPARK coordinate, and scoring a move against it misfires identically every time.
- S — Skills: the right tool ran, returned a correct-shaped result, nothing blocked; output is shallow or wrong anyway and re-running won't fix it.
- P — Personalities: the friction is about who decides and when they're told. More access or more facts would not change it.
- A — Approaches: the work would be identical inline, delegated, or parallel — only ownership or ordering is wrong.
- R — Resources: a call fails on permission or denial, a path sits outside the working directory, a name throws
InputValidationError, no connector exists.
- K — Knowledge: re-deriving the same fact each time, asking the user to repaste what they already said, guessing a convention instead of citing it.
Ask first — the un-tool
The cheapest lever is not a tool call. Declining to call anything and instead putting the question to the user in the chat channel is a P-axis move with no schema, no install, and no recurring cost.
It is easy to miss precisely because it has no surface. If the diagnosis is "this should have asked and didn't," the move is available now and costs one turn of attention. Reach for it before any lever that installs permanent configuration — it resolves ambiguity at the source instead of routing around it.
Formally this is a cover in the base category of user instructions rather than a capability on any axis, which is why enumerating axes cannot find it. See references/steer-1-levers.md § The un-tool for the construction and its provenance.
Rule out the adjacent axis first
A confident diagnosis on the wrong axis is worse than none — it installs a fix that never touches the gap and charges rent anyway. Pass the relevant gate before committing.
- S vs R — "I can't do this," with the tool already in the roster and already called, is S (weak result), not R (missing resource). Check the roster before hunting a new connector.
- R vs K — a query returning nothing looks like "the resource doesn't exist" (R) when it is a retrieval-formulation gap (K). Reissue with different terms before concluding absence.
- P vs A — a pause to ask gets "fixed" by reordering steps (A) when the real issue is the question shouldn't have interrupted, or should have and didn't (P). Test: a values or scope call only the user can make is P; ordering of independent steps is A.
- A vs R — many subagents running slow reads as "need more budget" (R) when the fix is fewer, better-sequenced calls (A). Test: if identical work fits in fewer calls with no new tool or permission, it was decomposition.
Weight against R. It holds 40.1% of the mapped capability mass and is dominant in 233 of 373 primitives, which makes it the cheapest and most reachable class of move — and therefore the default guess even when the gap sits elsewhere.
Pull the lever, don't recall it
Once the axis is named, extract the current levers rather than working from memory:
Grep "^## {AXIS_LETTER} — " references/steer-1-levers.md -A 20
For what a move costs on every subsequent turn, and for the self-observable signs an axis is already oversubscribed:
Grep "{cost_class_or_symptom_keyword}" references/steer-3-costs.md -A 6
Read only the matching block. These files carry 25 costed levers, 12 cost classes, and 8 saturation tells — loading them whole spends the context the diagnosis exists to protect.
Self-check before you move
Fill this in about actual session state, not a hypothetical. Act on the lever line only.
Symptom: {Concrete_Observable_Behavior_Just_Happened_Not_A_Feeling}
Axis: {S|P|A|R|K}
Confusable ruled out: {Adjacent_Axis} — {One_Clause_Discriminating_Test_And_Its_Result}
Cheaper move considered: {Asking_The_User|Named_Cheaper_Lever} — {Why_It_Does_Not_Suffice}
Lever: {Exact_Primitive_Name_From_Reference} — {What_It_Concretely_Changes}
Spends: {Cost_Tag}, paid {Once_At_Install|Every_Turn|Every_Matching_Call}
Left unmoved: {Other_Axis_That_Looked_Tempting} — {Why_Moving_It_Would_Not_Fix_This_Symptom}
The last two lines are not optional. An axis named and deliberately left alone, and a cheaper move considered and rejected for a stated reason, are the difference between steering and reflexive accumulation.
What a flag or setting actually does once flipped — as opposed to what its name implies — is the harness-traps skill's concern, not this one.
