discovery

name	discovery
description	Create dense execution packets. Fold target for brainstorm + design (goal clarification, product-fit pressure testing). Triggers: "run discovery", "shape intent as BDD", "scope a feature into an execution packet".

$discovery - Dense Discovery Phase Adapter

Codex Lifecycle Guard

When this skill runs in Codex hookless mode (CODEX_THREAD_ID is set or CODEX_INTERNAL_ORIGINATOR_OVERRIDE is Codex Desktop), run:

ao codex ensure-start 2>/dev/null || true

The CLI records startup once per thread and skips duplicates automatically.

Absorbed skills (ag-s43tg)

• brainstorm — Separate goals from implementation; clarify goals and explore the problem space before planning.
• design — Validate product fit before discovery; use when framing a problem, checking product/market fit, or pressure-testing user value before writing a discovery packet or any code.

YOU MUST EXECUTE THIS WORKFLOW. Do not just describe it.

Loop position: move 1 (shape intent as BDD) plus the seed for move 3 (slice candidates) of the operating loop. Discovery turns a goal plus delegated child artifacts into one dense execution packet for $crank and $validate. It is also the re-plan engine for $rpi's Agile Re-Plan Loop: invoked again at each wave boundary to mutate the remaining waves from what the last wave taught — not only at the start.

Folded-In Trigger Surface (brainstorm, design)

Discovery is the fold target for the retired standalone brainstorm and design skills (skill-prune phase 2). Fire $discovery for their use-cases:

• Brainstorm — Separate goals from implementation. Clarify goals before planning: separate WHAT from HOW, explore the problem space before committing to a solution, and capture Given/When/Then acceptance examples. Open-ended ideation (generate-winnow, --ideate) is the Open-Ended Path below.
• Design — Validate product fit before discovery. Use when framing a problem, checking product/market fit, or pressure-testing user value before writing a discovery packet or any code. The product-validation gate (PRODUCT.md alignment, council --preset=product) runs as discovery's conditional design delegation step.

Strict Delegation Contract (default)

Discovery runs brainstorm and design as internal modes (absorbed, ag-s43tg) and delegates to $research, $plan, and $pre-mortem as separate skill invocations. Strict delegation is the default.

Anti-pattern to reject: inlining $research work (grep + read + synthesize), collapsing $plan into an inline decomposition, skipping $pre-mortem. See ../shared/references/strict-delegation-contract.md for the full contract, supported compression escapes (--quick, --skip-brainstorm, --interactive/--auto, --no-scaffold), and the Pre-Mortem Anti-Rationalization Clause (what does NOT count as a pre-mortem: an inline risk section you wrote, a prior adversarial pass on an input/premise rather than this plan, or "a related council already ran").

Re-baseline before you scope (mandatory for "improve X" / "build the missing Y"): $research MUST confirm a capability doesn't already exist before scoping new construction. The --auto trap is author-as-researcher scoping "what's unbuilt" from memory without grepping — existing machinery gets re-estimated as net-new. Every "X is missing" claim carries the search that proved it; no search → $pre-mortem's re-baseline check (2.4–2.8) WARN/FAILs it.

See docs/learnings/orchestrator-compression-anti-pattern.md for the live compression signature. See references/isolation-contract.md for the mechanical four-lever model and the compression patterns flagged by scripts/check-skill-isolation.sh. See references/best-practices.md for the lifecycle principle + anti-pattern citation table.

Narrow Waist

Discovery does not carry raw child-skill output forward. It records artifact paths, verdicts, the hexagon: boundary block from docs/architecture/intent-to-loop-hexagon.md, and the six Context Density Rule fields:

Field	Meaning
intent	Behavior or capability to produce
boundary	Bounded context, non-goals, write scope
evidence	Acceptance examples, tests, gates, verdicts
decision	Why this plan shape was chosen
constraint	Safety, runtime, token, and process limits
next_action	Exact $crank or follow-up command

Everything else stays in child artifacts and is linked by path.

Discovery To Plan Port

Use the Skill Ports and Adapters vocabulary and the Intent-to-Loop Hexagon for the boundary between Discovery and Plan:

Boundary piece	Discovery contract
Inbound port	shape_intent from operator goal or BDD intent
Outbound port	plan_slices into $plan
Driving adapter	$discovery skill invocation
Driven adapter	$plan skill invocation plus br/file persistence
Context packet	density block, artifact links, acceptance examples, non-goals, constraints
Guard adapter	plan-pawl duel verdict (fanout) or $pre-mortem verdict (MVP-slice) before packet handoff

Executable acceptance: references/discovery.feature — Discovery hands dense intent across the plan_slices port (promoted from inline; soc-qk4b.2).

Plan-Pawl Duel Gate

Risk-class routing: MVP vertical slice vs fanout (decide FIRST)

The duel is for one-way doors, not every slice. Route first:

• Fanout class (architecture forks, one-way-door decisions, cross-agent coordination contracts, product decisions): run the plan-pawl duel below — the multi-model pawl over the PLAN artifact (docs/contracts/pawls.md). It SUBSUMES the old single-judge Codex fanout approval AND the $pre-mortem council into one cross-family gate (--duel, auto-on for fanout/--complexity=full).
• MVP vertical slice (default for routine runtime/CLI work): skip the duel (--no-duel). Run the discovery DAG under a hard time-box — ~15 min discovery, ~90 min slice — then stop; the slice gets only the inline --quick pre-mortem. Work surfaced mid-slice becomes follow-up beads, never absorbed into the active bead.

The plan-pawl gates plan SHAPE, never behavior: the 2026-06-12 runtime review found a coherent fanout+approval set that still missed an auth bypass one adversarial test would have caught (learning).

The gate (fanout-class work only)

Insert the duel before $plan creates beads. The two-judge ApprovalEdge shape is docs/contracts/codex-fanout-approval-packet.md; the DAG step is STEP 3.5 in references/dag.md.

1. Write at least three independent PerspectivePlan artifacts with different lenses (product/user value, architecture/gate integrity, operations/migration).
2. Winnow those into one SynthesisPacket (selected plan, rejected alternatives, rationale, open questions, risks).
3. Run the cross-family DUEL: two distinct-family judge panes (e.g. Claude + Codex via dual-pane-atm, --no-user, fresh-context by construction) each write one judge verdict to .agents/duel/<run-id>/.
4. Decide deterministically — never read the panes yourself: ao plan-pawl decide --dir .agents/duel/<run-id> --round <N> --max-rounds <duel-rounds>. exit 0 PASS (quorum: no FAIL, >=2 distinct families) -> $plan; exit 3 REDO -> auto-redo (a FAIL re-synthesizes; a mechanical WARN auto-applies + re-judges; a judgment WARN is surfaced, non-blocking); exit 4 BLOCKED -> breaker tripped (round > max / judgment flag / oscillation), stop (the andon).
5. Persist a duel ApprovalEdge (both judge panes, the duel_verdict_dir, the decision). For fanout this verdict IS the pre-mortem verdict — do not run a second council.

Approval evidence must survive the worktree: before the gated bead/epic closes, mirror the council/duel artifacts (or a compact proof packet) to a tracked durable surface (see codex-approval) — .agents/ in a temp worktree is ignored.

Open-Ended Path (generate-winnow → operationalize → refine)

Additive to the default flow — it does not replace the strict-delegation contract or the artifact-first DAG. This path activates for open-ended "improve the project"-style goals ("improve the project", "what should we build next", "make X more robust") OR when --ideate is passed. For a specific goal, the default flow (brainstorm-clarify → research → plan → pre-mortem) is unchanged.

On the open-ended path, Discovery prepends the generate-winnow methodology before research/plan and adds two steps after planning. Full detail lives in references/bead-operationalization.md and references/ideation-mode.md.

1. Ideate (delegate to brainstorm --ideate). Invoke brainstorm in ideation mode (a real skill invocation — strict delegation still applies; do NOT inline the 30-idea generation). It returns a ranked portfolio of 15 ideas (top 5 + next 10) with how/perceive/implement notes, rubric scores, and red-team findings.
2. Research + plan-pawl duel + Plan. Run research over the selected portfolio. Open-ended/high-risk work is fanout class: produce PerspectivePlan artifacts and a SynthesisPacket, then run the STEP 3.5 plan-pawl duel (two distinct families, ao plan-pawl decide) before $plan creates tracker rows — that duel verdict subsumes the pre-mortem. Then run the normal artifact-first DAG over the approved packet rather than a single goal.
3. Operationalize. Turn the ranked portfolio into a comprehensive, granular set of self-documenting br beads — tasks, subtasks, dependency structure (br dep add), and explicit test tasks (unit + e2e with detailed logging). Each bead carries what/why/how/risks/success so the original plan markdown never needs to be consulted again. Overlap-check against existing beads (br list --json) before creating — merge, don't duplicate.
4. Refine in plan space (4-5 passes). Before handing the packet to $crank, run 4-5 refinement passes over the bead set. Each pass: re-read AGENTS.md (especially after compaction), check every bead for sense and optimality, and DO NOT OVERSIMPLIFY / DO NOT LOSE FEATURES OR FUNCTIONALITY. Validate between passes (no dependency cycles; every leaf actionable via br ready).

Tracking is br with bv triage — this is AgentOps. The operationalize and refine steps consume brainstorm's ideation output; see references/bead-operationalization.md.

Executable acceptance for this path: references/discovery.feature (ideation/operationalize/refine scenarios, ag-yw0).

Execution

Run the artifact-first DAG in references/dag.md. That file owns the executable workflow, state shape, gate detail, per-step detail, and the acceptance-criteria YAML contract.

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--auto	on	Fully autonomous (no human gates). Inverse of --interactive. Passed through to $research and $plan.
--interactive	off	Human gates in research and plan (STEP 3, STEP 4). Does NOT affect pre-mortem gate.
--skip-brainstorm	auto	Skip STEP 1 brainstorm when goal is already specific
--ideate	auto	Force the open-ended generate-winnow path: delegate to brainstorm --ideate (30→5→15), then operationalize into self-documenting br beads and refine 4-5x in plan space. Auto-on for open-ended goals. See Open-Ended Path.
--complexity=<level>	auto	Force complexity level (fast / standard / full)
--no-budget	off	Disable phase time budgets
--no-scaffold	off	Skip scaffold auto-invocation in STEP 4.5
--duel	auto	Run the plan-pawl cross-family duel at STEP 3.5. Auto-on for fanout class and --complexity=full; opt-in elsewhere. Subsumes the single-judge fanout approval + pre-mortem council.
--no-duel	off	Skip the duel (MVP-slice class): single-Fable ApprovalEdge if approval is needed, plus the inline --quick pre-mortem at STEP 5.
--duel-rounds=<N>	3	Max duel rounds before the max-attempts breaker trips (ao plan-pawl decide --max-rounds).

Quick Start

$discovery "add user authentication"              # full discovery
$discovery --interactive "refactor payment module" # human gates in research + plan
$discovery --skip-brainstorm "fix login bug"       # skip brainstorm for specific goals
$discovery --complexity=full "migrate to v2 API"   # force full council ceremony

Output Specification

Format: compact markdown phase summary to stdout plus JSON execution packet on disk.

Files written:

• .agents/research/<topic-slug>.md - research artifact path only
• .agents/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<goal-slug>.md - plan document path only
• .agents/council/YYYY-MM-DD-pre-mortem-<topic>.md - pre-mortem verdict path only
• .agents/rpi/execution-packet.json - latest dense packet
• .agents/rpi/runs/<run-id>/execution-packet.json - per-run archive when run_id is set
• .agents/rpi/phase-1-summary-YYYY-MM-DD-<goal-slug>.md - compact discovery summary

Exit signal: completion marker (<promise>DONE</promise> or <promise>BLOCKED</promise>) — see Completion Markers below.

Completion Markers

<promise>DONE</promise>      # Discovery complete, epic-id + execution-packet ready
<promise>BLOCKED</promise>   # Pre-mortem failed 3x, manual intervention needed

Troubleshooting

Read references/troubleshooting.md for common problems and solutions.

Reference Documents

• references/goal-clarification-brainstorm.md — absorbed brainstorm body (four-phase clarification + ideation funnel)
• references/idea-rubric.md — absorbed brainstorm idea rubric
• references/brainstorm.feature — absorbed brainstorm executable spec
• references/red-team-checklist.md — absorbed brainstorm red-team checklist
• references/dag.md — executable workflow, state shape, gate detail, per-step detail, acceptance-criteria YAML contract
• references/complexity-auto-detect.md — precedence contract for keyword vs issue-count classification
• references/idempotency-and-resume.md — re-run safety and resume behavior
• references/phase-budgets.md — time budgets per complexity level
• references/troubleshooting.md — common problems and solutions
• references/output-templates.md — execution packet and phase summary formats
• references/phase-data-contracts.md — phase artifact data contracts (cited from references/isolation-contract.md)

See also: research, plan, pre-mortem, crank, rpi, scaffold