agentic-engineering

name	agentic-engineering
description	Structured multi-agent software engineering workflow for planning, delegation, review, risk classification, quality gates, and shipping code. Use for software development tasks, implementation planning, code review, debugging, refactoring, and release work.

IMPORTANT - READ THIS FIRST: If skill_auto_load: true is set in ~/.claude/agentic-engineering.json, this skill is configured to auto-load. Read this entire SKILL.md before taking any action on software development tasks. Do not start implementing until you have read the Rules section below.

The Agentic Engineering system defines how to plan, delegate, review, and ship software using a structured multi-agent workflow. It covers risk classification, adversarial review, task decomposition, and quality gates so that changes are correct, safe, and reviewable. Read the rules files on every session and the reference docs on the triggers described in METHODOLOGY.md §Protocol Details (read on trigger).

Conductor default: act, don't ask. The conductor's job is to complete the goal, not to approve every step. Stop and ask only for destructive/irreversible actions, missing information only the user has, materially ambiguous acceptance criteria, or scope-completion decisions. Repeated stops within one task are a planning signal, not a virtue. See Proactive autonomy in METHODOLOGY.md §Delegation for the full rule, anti-patterns, and stop-frequency thresholds.

Rules (read these files)

• METHODOLOGY.md - the assembled kernel: delegation, risk classification, activation preflight, planning gate, task decomposition, and worktree lifecycle; the core rules for when to act directly vs. spawn Workers and Skeptics.

• rules/code-standards.md - documentation lookups via Context7, tool discipline (Read always primary; prefer Glob/Grep when available, Bash rg/grep/find as the sanctioned fallback otherwise), code quality gates, package management conventions, and browser verification with agent-browser.

• rules/conventions.md - writing style, project structure, session context and memory handling, and git workflow including protected branches and worktree-per-feature conventions.

Commands (invoke by name)

• /ds-help - static, zero-token command reference; lists every slash command with a one-line description.
• /ds-status - read-only resolver dump; shows the resolved mode, profile, and marker with provenance plus a plain-English explainer of what they do and how to change them.
• /ds-brief - interactive planning dialogue; produces the Brief artifact before architect and engineer are spawned. Invoke when operator implies planning intent at session start, or use /ds-brief --from <path> to extract a Brief from an existing PRD.
• /ds-pull-and-install - update an existing agentic-engineering/DinoStack install (or fresh-install if none exists); invoke when the user says "pull and install DinoStack", "update DinoStack", "install the latest DinoStack", "reinstall agentic-engineering", or "update my AE install".

Run /ds-help for the full command inventory.

Reference Docs (read on trigger - see Protocol Details in METHODOLOGY.md)

• references/skeptic-protocol.md - Skeptic loop orchestration, findings classification (Critical/Major/Minor), sign-off format, adversarial briefs, and the Elevated + Cleanup path.

• references/subagent-protocol.md - parallel spawning rules, worktree isolation, check-in behavior, phase breadcrumbs, and task decomposition rules for multi-Worker plans.

• references/agent-team.md - named agent roles (engineer, architect, investigator, debugger, security-auditor, orchestration-planner), composed flows, decision rules, and spawn requirements.

• references/design-goals.md - design principles and goals of the Agentic Engineering system; read when evaluating whether a proposed change aligns with the system's intent.

• references/regression-test-obligation.md - per-finding regression-test obligation: every Skeptic finding fixed during a task must come with a regression test that would have caught it; read when fixing a Skeptic finding to confirm what counts as a valid regression test.

• references/doc-sync-obligation.md - per-change doc-sync obligation: a reality-asserting change (alters a count/list/path/convention/behavior an intent-layer doc states) must update the affected docs in the same change; read when a change touches a documented surface.

• references/role-models.md - Pi / oh-my-pi per-role model routing and antagonist reviewer model diversity; read when resolving role-models.yml or spawning reviewers on Pi/omp.

• references/model-discovery.md - Pi/oh-my-pi model selection paths (ask-user wizard, harness-native, pin-by-hand) and the per-role ranking heuristics in bin/agentic-models; read when seeding role-models.yml.

• references/cross-harness-teams.md - agentic-team CLI and team.yml schema for orchestrating parallel agent teams across multiple AI harnesses; read when using agentic-team or configuring cross-harness dispatch with team.yml.

• references/digest-return-pattern.md - digest-return discipline: when a background loop-running spawn (multi-iteration Skeptic/QA, long investigation) returns, the conductor reads the structured digest and acts - it does not re-read the internal transcript; read when running a multi-unit plan with parallel background loops.

Rules (read on trigger)

• rules/module-manifest.md - required manifest header format for non-trivial source files; read when creating or substantially modifying a file that exports a public symbol, exceeds ~50 LOC, or implements a side-effecting operation.

Pi coding agent usage

Pi discovers this skill from .pi/skills/agentic-engineering/ for project-local use and from ~/.pi/agent/skills/agentic-engineering/ after global install.

• Force-load with /skill:agentic-engineering when you want the methodology active immediately.
• Pi prompt templates in .pi/prompts/ provide slash-command equivalents for the markdown commands in content/commands/.
• Read METHODOLOGY.md at skill load before applying the workflow.
• Read command details from commands/<name>.md when a prompt template asks you to run a command.
• Read references from references/ and rules from rules/ on their documented triggers.