| name | ask-matt |
| author | mattpocock |
| upstream | mattpocock/skills |
| upstreamPath | skills/engineering/ask-matt |
| upstreamSha | e9fcdf95b402d360f90f1db8d776d5dd450f9234 |
| lastUpdated | 2026-07-02T01:06:55.000Z |
| tags | ["Planning","Productivity","Matt Pocock"] |
| description | Ask which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the skills in this repo. |
| 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.
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/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 /grill-me — see Standalone. Both run the same /grilling primitive; grill-with-docs is the one that leaves a paper trail.)
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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 /handoff in both directions (see Crossing sessions):
/handoff out, then open a fresh session against that file,/prototype to answer the question with throwaway code,/handoff back what you learned, and reference it from the original idea thread.
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Branch — is this a multi-session build?
- Yes →
/to-spec (turn the thread into a spec), then /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 /implement per ticket, clearing context between each one.
- No →
/implement right here, in the same context window.
Either way, /implement builds each issue by driving /tdd internally — one red-green slice at a time — then closes out by running /code-review, a two-axis review (Standards + Spec) of the diff, before committing. Reach for /tdd on its own when you just want to build a concrete behaviour test-first without a full spec, and /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 /to-tickets — so the grilling, spec, and tickets all build on the same thinking. Each /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 /to-tickets, don't push on degraded — /handoff and continue in a fresh thread.
On-ramps
A starting situation that generates work, then merges onto the main flow.
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Bugs and requests piling up → /triage. It moves issues through triage roles and produces agent-ready issues, which /implement later picks up.
Triage is only for issues you didn't create — bug reports, incoming feature requests, anything that arrives raw. Tickets that /to-tickets produced are already agent-ready, so don't triage them.
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Something's broken → /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 /improve-codebase-architecture when the real finding is that there's no good seam to lock the bug down.
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A huge, foggy effort — a greenfield project or a huge feature build, too big for one session → /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 /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 /to-spec, which collapses the map's linked decisions into a buildable plan, then /to-tickets and /implement as usual. Looping the map straight into /implement skips that collapse and throws the linked detail away — go straight to /implement only when the effort turned out genuinely small.
Codebase health
Not feature work — upkeep.
/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 /grill-with-docs. It's the survey that finds the candidates; /codebase-design (below) is the bench you design the chosen one on.
Vocabulary underneath
Two 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.
/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 /grill-with-docs drives to keep CONTEXT.md a clean glossary./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. /tdd and /improve-codebase-architecture both speak it.
Crossing sessions
/handoff — when a thread is full or you need to branch off (e.g. into a /prototype session), this compacts the conversation into a markdown file. You don't continue in place — you open a new session and reference that file to carry the context across. It's the bridge between context windows, in either direction. Use it when you want a fresh session but need the current conversation preserved./compact (built-in) — stay in the same conversation, letting the earlier turns be summarized. Use it at intentional breaks between phases, when you don't mind losing the verbatim history. Don't compact mid-phase — the agent can lose its way. /handoff forks; /compact continues.
Standalone
Off the main flow entirely.
/grill-me — the same relentless interview as /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./prototype — a small, throwaway program that answers one design question: does this state model feel right, or what should this UI look like. Throwaway from day one — keep the answer, delete the code. 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./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 /grill-with-docs — research feeds the thinking, it doesn't replace it./teach — learn a concept over multiple sessions, using the current directory as a stateful workspace./writing-great-skills — reference for writing and editing skills well.
Precondition
/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.
