laws

name	laws
description	Rules for editing the laws skills in THIS repo. Use when creating, editing, or reviewing any `skills/*/SKILL.md`, any `skills/*/references/craft.md`, or any `design-docs/design-goals-*.md`. Says which content belongs in which file. How to write the prose well is laws:prompt's job, not this skill's.

Editing the laws skills

Each medium - code, prose, ticket, chat, prompt, application-spec - is made of three files. These rules keep each file's content in the right place. That's all this skill does. It does not teach you how to write well in any medium; that's laws:prompt.

Say it plainly

The problems here are simple: content is in the wrong file, or a rule from one medium got copied into another. Say that, in plain words. When content is wrong, delete it - don't coin a term, build a taxonomy, or reach for a metaphor to make a simple call sound rigorous. Jargon that hides the simple reality is the failure, not a sign of care. Simple is the goal, not a step toward something more impressive.

The three files

• design-docs/design-goals-<medium>.md - what the skill is for, in plain prose. This is the source of intent; the skill is written to match it. Change this first when you change a skill.
• SKILL.md - what to settle before writing, and how to check the result. Nearly the same for every medium. It says nothing about how to write well.
• references/craft.md - how to write well in this one medium. Read by whoever writes the change - normally the session doing the work, and a disposable subagent only when the craft conflicts with one already engaged. Never loaded next to a conflicting craft.

The rules

1. Compatible crafts coexist; incompatible ones do not. Each craft.md loads a whole medium's standard; most standards are complementary (code, its ticket, its docs), but an incompatible pair stacks and corrupts each other - laws:code with laws:prompt is the known one, and the guard refuses the second of that pair. A session may hold several compatible crafts, and a session whose whole job is one skill may load that skill's craft and edit it directly - holding the whole craft is how a change integrates instead of bolting on. When you need a craft that conflicts with one already engaged, you don't load it here; that one you dispatch to a disposable subagent. (design-docs/working-with-skills.md has the details.)
2. craft.md has no setup or verify steps - what to settle before writing, where the artifact goes, how to check it afterward. Those belong in SKILL.md.
3. SKILL.md has no writing advice - not how to write, and not the reasons behind how to write. Those go in craft.md.
4. The SKILL.md files are the same across media except the medium name and path. If a change to one is more than that, either it's wrong or it's a shared improvement that belongs in all of them. (One real exception today: application-spec's setup step needs extra content - where to find the app, and what a finished spec must be. That's fine. A medium can add what its setup actually needs; it just can't differ for no reason.)
5. A rule from one medium stays in that medium's files. Don't copy it into another - a ticket rule can be false for a report. Check by grepping a rule's distinctive phrase; it should appear under one medium only.

Workflow

The full order is in design-docs/working-with-skills.md. In short:

1. Edit the goals doc first.
2. Bring the craft into line. If editing this skill is the session's whole job, load its craft and edit directly, holding the whole so the change integrates. If the craft is incompatible with one already engaged here, dispatch a subagent that loads only that craft; never stack an incompatible pair in one session.
3. Read the file it produced - not its summary - and check it against the goals doc.

The failure this prevents

Someone added a "keep your own solutioning out of it" paragraph to three SKILL.md files (prompt, prose, ticket). In the ticket one they wrote it using a ticket-specific rule - leave the "how" to the implementer. Then they copied that ticket-worded paragraph into prose and prompt, where the rule is false: a report is supposed to carry the answer, not leave it open.

Two mistakes: writing advice ended up in SKILL.md (rule 3), and a ticket rule got copied into other media (rule 5). The fix: the point belongs to the craft, not the body. The ticket-specific reasoning lives in ticket/craft.md; a medium that needs its own version writes it in its own craft, in its own words.

Watch the reflex that let it ship: reviewing the copies, the reviewer called it "the right kind of duplication." Repeating a point in different words inside one craft.md is fine. Copying one medium's rule into another medium's files is not.