| name | metis-walk-open-items |
| description | Walk captured open items one at a time, resolving each into the relevant source doc. |
$metis-walk-open-items
Walk open items — contradictions and gray areas — one at a time, resolving each into the source doc it points at and appending a minimal pointer to .metis/RESOLVED.md.
Preflight
Run this skill's references/walk-open-items-preflight.sh before starting. It exits non-zero if docs/ is missing or if neither .metis/CONTRADICTIONS.md nor .metis/QUESTIONS.md exists (surface the error, point the user at $metis-reconcile, and stop). Otherwise it reports OPEN, OPEN_CONTRADICTIONS, OPEN_QUESTIONS, DEFERRED, STALE, and RESOLVED_PRIOR.
If OPEN + DEFERRED + STALE == 0, report the empty set and suggest $metis-build-spec. Otherwise show the counts and present a lettered navigation menu:
[A] - Continue from the next open item
[B] - List all items
[C] - Pick by number (type a number or item id)
[Q] - Quit
After resolving an out-of-order item, ask whether to continue or pick another using the same lettered format.
Pacing
After each item: present the proposal in the lettered-menu format from this skill's references/walking-open-items.md, then wait for the user's input — pick a letter, type a custom answer, type defer, or type quit. The user has unbounded thinking time; do not chain items. The narrow auto-land carve-out in this skill's references/walking-open-items.md is the exception; the rhythm is one item, one user response.
Load (per item)
- The one open item being walked — its status header, cited passages, and framing from the active file.
- The source-doc passages it cites. Re-open the source at the cited section; do not work off the capture's paraphrase.
Do not load
.metis/RESOLVED.md..metis/BUILD.md.- Other open items.
Read first
This skill's references/walking-open-items.md — read before offering options on the first item.
Write scope
Walks are item-by-item, so prefer Edit for surgical operations: remove one resolved item, update one item's status, append one new item, append one pointer. Avoid Write where Edit suffices — re-emitting unchanged items as Write output is the cost we're avoiding.
- Source docs under
docs/ — the smallest edit per resolution.
.metis/CONTRADICTIONS.md and .metis/QUESTIONS.md — Edit to remove resolved items, update status on deferred or stale, append newly surfaced items when a resolution spawned one..metis/RESOLVED.md — append the minimal pointer per resolved item. Create the file if absent (no preflight stub for this one — it earns existence on the first resolution).
Do not write to .metis/BUILD.md.
Invocation prompt
Trailing prompt: see this skill's references/command-prompts.md.
Return
When the user quits the walk or the open set is empty:
- Resolved this session — count plus the pointers appended to
.metis/RESOLVED.md.
- Remaining — open, deferred, stale counts split by file.
- Doc edits — list of source docs changed, one line per edit.
- Next step —
$metis-build-spec when the open set is empty (or consciously deferred); otherwise a note that the walk can be resumed next session.
