scaffold-workspace

name	scaffold-workspace
description	Create the directory structure a spec-led certification search writes into — profile/, scorecard/, research/, report/ — by copying the plugin's bundled template into the working directory. Idempotent and non-destructive: it never overwrites a file that already has content. Run this first when starting a search outside a clone of the Spec-Led-Certification template repo.

Scaffold the workspace

Every other skill in this plugin reads and writes files. This one puts them there.

The workflow's whole design is that its state lives on disk rather than in an agent's memory, so before anything can be captured there has to be somewhere to capture it to. If the user is working inside a clone of the Spec-Led-Certification template repo, the structure is already present and this skill has nothing to do.

Consider create-workspace instead. It makes a private GitHub repo from the template and clones it, which is the better default for a search the user intends to keep: it survives the machine, and its history shows when the scorecard was frozen relative to when the research ran. Use this skill when the search belongs inside an existing repo, when gh is unavailable, or when the user does not want a remote.

Decide where it goes

Ask, unless it is obvious:

• Current directory — right when the user has made a directory for this search, or is in a repo dedicated to it.
• A subdirectory — right when the search is part of a larger repo. certification/ is the usual name. The workflow does not care what it is called.

One workspace per search. Two subjects in one directory means one profile/ describing two different asks, and the scorecard cannot be derived from that.

Copy

The bundled template is at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/template/. Copy its contents to the chosen workspace root:

profile/     five unfilled intake files, plus the README explaining the volatility model
scorecard/   header-only criteria.csv and filters.csv, and the methodology to fill
research/    header-only candidates.csv and scores.csv, the candidate template, sources.md
report/      report.typ, build.sh, and the two YAML files the recommend skill writes
docs/        the method, so the workspace explains itself without the plugin
AGENTS.md    the rules any agent working in that directory must follow

Never overwrite a file that already exists with content in it. A re-scaffold over a run in progress must leave profile/, the CSVs and the report YAML exactly as they are. If a file exists, skip it and say which ones you skipped. The one exception is a file that is byte-identical to the template, which is safe to leave alone anyway.

Make report/build.sh executable.

By default, include the skills

Also copy the plugin's skills/ and agents/ into the workspace, unless the user asks for a lean scaffold.

This looks like duplication and it is deliberate. The point of writing the profile to disk is that the user can pick the work up months later with whatever assistant they are using then — and a workspace that needs this plugin installed to be re-runnable does not deliver that. Nine markdown files is a cheap price for a directory that explains its own process to any agent that opens it.

--lean skips them, which is right when the workspace lives inside a repo that is already committed to using this plugin.

Write the marker

Create .spec-led-certification at the workspace root:

created: <today, YYYY-MM-DD>
plugin_version: <from ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/.claude-plugin/plugin.json>
workspace_root: .
standalone: true    # false if --lean

Two jobs. It marks the directory as a workspace, so the other skills can find the root by looking for it in the current directory and then upward — this is what lets a user invoke a stage from a subdirectory without every path breaking. And it records which version of the template the workspace was built from, which is the only way to tell later whether a stale-looking file is a workspace that predates a template change.

Then

Report what was created and what was skipped, and say the next step is the intake — define-spec first, or the /cert-search command to run the whole sequence.

Do not begin interviewing in the same breath. Scaffolding is a filesystem operation and the user may want to look at what appeared before answering questions about themselves.