setup-engineering-workflow

name

setup-engineering-workflow

description

Sets up the engineering workflow's per-repo context — an `## Agent skills` block in AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md plus `docs/agents/` — capturing this repo's issue tracker (GitHub, GitLab, or local markdown), triage label vocabulary, and domain doc layout, and recording the full workflow skill map as a reference inventory. Run before first use of the engineering workflow or its skills (`to-issues`, `to-prd`, `triage`, `diagnose`, `tdd`, `improve-codebase-architecture`, `zoom-out`), or if those skills appear to be missing context about the issue tracker, triage labels, or domain docs.

Set Up Engineering Workflow

Scaffold the per-repo configuration the engineering workflow's skills assume, and record the workflow's skill map:

• Issue tracker — where issues live (GitHub by default; GitLab and local markdown are also supported out of the box)
• Triage labels — the strings used for the five canonical triage roles
• Domain docs — where CONTEXT.md and ADRs live, and the consumer rules for reading them
• Workflow skill map — a reference inventory of every skill the engineering workflow can load (recorded as-is, not an interactive decision)

This is a prompt-driven skill, not a deterministic script. Explore, present what you found, confirm with the user, then write.

Process

1. Explore

Look at the current repo to understand its starting state. Read whatever exists; don't assume:

• git remote -v and .git/config — is this a GitHub repo? Which one?
• AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md at the repo root — does either exist? Is there already an ## Agent skills section in either?
• CONTEXT.md and CONTEXT-MAP.md at the repo root
• docs/adr/ and any src/*/docs/adr/ directories
• docs/agents/ — does this skill's prior output already exist?
• .scratch/ — sign that a local-markdown issue tracker convention is already in use

2. Present findings and ask

Summarise what's present and what's missing. Then walk the user through the three decisions one at a time — present a section, get the user's answer, then move to the next. Don't dump all three at once.

Assume the user does not know what these terms mean. Each section starts with a short explainer (what it is, why these skills need it, what changes if they pick differently). Then show the choices and the default.

Section A — Issue tracker.

Explainer: The "issue tracker" is where issues live for this repo. Skills like to-issues, triage, and to-prd read from and write to it — they need to know whether to call gh issue create, write a markdown file under .scratch/, or follow some other workflow you describe. Pick the place you actually track work for this repo.

Default posture: these skills were designed for GitHub. If a git remote points at GitHub, propose that. If a git remote points at GitLab (gitlab.com or a self-hosted host), propose GitLab. Otherwise (or if the user prefers), offer:

• GitHub — issues live in the repo's GitHub Issues (uses the gh CLI)
• GitLab — issues live in the repo's GitLab Issues (uses the glab CLI)
• Local markdown — issues live as files under .scratch/<feature>/ in this repo (good for solo projects or repos without a remote)
• Other (Jira, Linear, etc.) — ask the user to describe the workflow in one paragraph; the skill will record it as freeform prose

Section B — Triage label vocabulary.

Explainer: When the triage skill processes an incoming issue, it moves it through a state machine — needs evaluation, waiting on reporter, ready for an AFK agent to pick up, ready for a human, or won't fix. To do that, it needs to apply labels (or the equivalent in your issue tracker) that match strings you've actually configured. If your repo already uses different label names (e.g. bug:triage instead of needs-triage), map them here so the skill applies the right ones instead of creating duplicates.

The five canonical roles:

• needs-triage — maintainer needs to evaluate
• needs-info — waiting on reporter
• ready-for-agent — fully specified, AFK-ready (an agent can pick it up with no human context)
• ready-for-human — needs human implementation
• wontfix — will not be actioned

Default: each role's string equals its name. Ask the user if they want to override any. If their issue tracker has no existing labels, the defaults are fine.

Section C — Domain docs.

Explainer: Some skills (improve-codebase-architecture, diagnose, tdd) read a CONTEXT.md file to learn the project's domain language, and docs/adr/ for past architectural decisions. They need to know whether the repo has one global context or multiple (e.g. a monorepo with separate frontend/backend contexts) so they look in the right place.

Confirm the layout:

• Single-context — one CONTEXT.md + docs/adr/ at the repo root. Most repos are this.
• Multi-context — CONTEXT-MAP.md at the root pointing to per-context CONTEXT.md files (typically a monorepo).

3. Confirm and edit

Show the user a draft of:

• The ## Agent skills block to add to whichever of CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md is being edited (see step 4 for selection rules)
• The contents of docs/agents/issue-tracker.md, docs/agents/triage-labels.md, docs/agents/domain.md

Let them edit before writing.

4. Write

Pick the file to edit:

• If CLAUDE.md exists, edit it.
• Else if AGENTS.md exists, edit it.
• If neither exists, ask the user which one to create — don't pick for them.

Never create AGENTS.md when CLAUDE.md already exists (or vice versa) — always edit the one that's already there.

If an ## Agent skills block already exists in the chosen file, update its contents in-place rather than appending a duplicate. Don't overwrite user edits to the surrounding sections.

The block:

## Agent skills

### Issue tracker

[one-line summary of where issues are tracked]. See `docs/agents/issue-tracker.md`.

### Triage labels

[one-line summary of the label vocabulary]. See `docs/agents/triage-labels.md`.

### Domain docs

[one-line summary of layout — "single-context" or "multi-context"]. See `docs/agents/domain.md`.

### Workflow skills

Engineering-workflow skills, loaded by trigger on the agent's own judgment (model-invocable). Availability depends on the plugins being installed, not on this block:

- **Alignment & planning:** `grill-with-docs`, `grill-me`, `prototype`, `to-prd`, `to-issues`
- **Tracker & triage:** `linear`, `triage`
- **Code & diagnosis:** `tdd`, `diagnose`, `zoom-out`, `improve-codebase-architecture`
- **UI:** `frontend-design`, `shadcn-ui`
- **Live browser:** `agent-web-interface-guide`
- **Exploration:** `map-feature-scope`, `capture-feature-evidence`
- **Test design:** `plan-test-coverage`, `generate-test-cases`, `review-test-cases`, `exploratory-test-writer`
- **Test automation:** `analyze-test-codebase`, `add-playwright-tests`, `write-test-code`, `review-test-code`, `fix-flaky-tests`
- **Release scope:** `define-smoke-scope`, `define-regression-scope`
- **Handoff:** `handoff`

The ### Workflow skills section is a fixed inventory — write it as-is; it is not one of the interactive decisions above. Then write the three docs files using the seed templates in this skill folder as a starting point:

• issue-tracker-github.md — GitHub issue tracker
• issue-tracker-gitlab.md — GitLab issue tracker
• issue-tracker-local.md — local-markdown issue tracker
• triage-labels.md — label mapping
• domain.md — domain doc consumer rules + layout

For "other" issue trackers, write docs/agents/issue-tracker.md from scratch using the user's description.

5. Done

Tell the user the setup is complete and which engineering skills will now read from these files. Mention they can edit docs/agents/*.md directly later — re-running this skill is only necessary if they want to switch issue trackers or restart from scratch.