Find why something isn't working — the real cause, not just the symptom. Use this skill when a bug, failure, or unexpected behavior needs to be diagnosed before it can be fixed. Covers hypothesis-driven debugging, evidence gathering, root cause isolation, and verification. Trigger phrases: "why isn't this working?", "find the root cause", "something is broken but I don't know why", "debug this", "the error doesn't make sense", "it works locally but not in production", "intermittent failure", "trace this bug", "what's causing this?". This skill finds WHY — work-audit finds WHAT IS WRONG, project-monitor detects THAT something is wrong. DISAMBIGUATION — use a different skill instead when: the problem is in production NOW with users affected, needing coordinated crisis response (use incident-response; it calls this skill for its diagnosis step); the problem is specifically slowness or capacity under load (use performance-scaling); reviewing not-yet-broken work for latent defects (use work-audit). Choose debuggin
Diagnose performance problems, optimize bottlenecks, and plan for scale. Covers profiling, load testing, capacity planning, and scaling decisions (vertical vs horizontal, caching, CDN, database read replicas, etc.). Use this skill when something is too slow, when preparing for growth, when load testing before a launch, or when deciding how to scale a system. Trigger phrases: "this is too slow", "optimize performance", "load test this", "prepare for 10x traffic", "capacity planning", "the system is struggling under load", "should we scale horizontally or vertically?", "where is the bottleneck?", "performance profiling", "latency is too high". DISAMBIGUATION — use a different skill instead when: the slowness is a sudden production incident affecting users now (use incident-response); the cause is a specific bug rather than capacity or load (use debugging-rootcause); the slowness is specifically database queries or schema (use database-maintenance). Choose performance-scaling for profiling, optimization, load te
Extract actionable learning from completed work — what went well, what didn't, and what will actually change as a result. Use after a project, sprint, release, or significant event. Produces concrete action items, not just discussion. Trigger phrases: "retrospective", "retro", "what did we learn from this project?", "what went wrong?", "how do we improve?", "post-project review", "what should we do differently next time?", "team reflection", "lessons learned". A retrospective without action items is a venting session. This skill produces change. DISAMBIGUATION — "what went wrong" is ambiguous: learning from a COMPLETED project or sprint to improve future work → retrospective (this skill); finding the technical cause of a SPECIFIC failure or bug → debugging-rootcause; deciding the future DIRECTION of an ongoing project → project-compass. Choose retrospective when the work is done and the goal is team learning.
Plan and implement a complete testing approach — unit tests, coverage analysis, verification, and validation. Use this skill when writing tests for new code, when coverage is insufficient, when tests don't catch real bugs, when validating that work meets requirements, or when setting up a testing strategy for a project. Trigger phrases: "write unit tests", "test this code", "improve test coverage", "coverage analysis", "verify this works", "validate this meets requirements", "testing strategy", "how do we test this?", "tests aren't catching bugs", "what should we test?", "is this correct?", "does this do what was asked?". Covers V&V — Verification ("built it right") and Validation ("built the right thing"). DISAMBIGUATION — choose by test level: unit tests, coverage analysis, and verification/validation of individual components → testing-strategy (this skill); full system flows from user input to output, integration test strategy → e2e-testing; finding defects in an already-produced deliverable → work-audit.
Detect, prevent, and verify hallucinations in agent outputs — especially numerical calculations, factual claims, data references, citations, and reasoning chains. Use this skill whenever an agent produces numbers, statistics, dates, names, quotes, or data-derived conclusions that could be fabricated or wrong. Trigger when the user says "verify this output", "the agent made up numbers", "check these calculations", "fact-check the agent", "the agent cited something wrong", "I don't trust this output", or when reviewing any agent output that will be used for decisions, reports, or communications. Also trigger proactively when designing agents that handle financial data, medical information, legal content, or any high-stakes numerical work. Anti-hallucination has three modes: PREVENT (before), DETECT (during), VERIFY (after).
Evaluate whether a goal, feature, project, or investment is worth pursuing — before committing resources to it. Covers ROI, opportunity cost, timing, reversibility, strategic fit, bias correction, and exit criteria. Use this skill when deciding whether to start something new, when a goal feels compelling but unclear, when you need to justify a commitment, or when you suspect the real cost or value hasn't been honestly assessed. Trigger phrases: "is this worth doing", "should we pursue this", "evaluate this goal", "is the ROI good enough", "is the scope too small to bother", "help us decide if this is worth it", "we're thinking of doing X — is it a good idea", "is this the right thing to focus on", "assess this opportunity", "should we invest in this". Outputs one of five verdicts: PURSUE / REFINE / DEFER / DESCOPE / DROP. Use before project-compass (direction) and working-standards (execution).
Transfer work, context, and responsibility between people, teams, or phases with nothing lost in translation. Use this skill whenever ownership or work moves from one party to another — design to engineering, engineering to QA, team to team, person to person, or phase to phase. Trigger phrases: "hand this off", "transfer ownership", "design handoff", "dev handoff to QA", "knowledge transfer", "someone else is taking over", "document this for the next person", "onboarding the new owner", "passing the baton", "what does the next team need to know?", "prepare for handoff". A handoff is not done when the giver says "it's ready." It is done when the receiver confirms they have everything they need.
Identify what to improve, which direction to develop, what to continue or cut, and what to do next to unlock a project's potential. Use this skill when a project needs strategic direction rather than defect-fixing — when the question is not "is this broken?" but "where should this go and how do we get there?" Trigger phrases: "what should we focus on next", "where should this project go", "what's worth improving", "should we continue or pivot", "what's holding this back", "help us prioritize", "what has the most potential", "what should we cut", "what's the next big move", "how do we make this better", "improve this project", "what direction should we take", or any question about what to build, keep, or drop. This skill gives strategic direction — not defect lists (work-audit) or scope checks (project-qa). It answers: what next, and why. DISAMBIGUATION — choose by what "next" means: strategic direction for an EXISTING project (grow/cut/pivot) → project-compass (this skill); sequencing MULTIPLE goals onto a ti