setup-skills

name	setup-skills
description	Configure this repo for the engineering skills — set up its issue tracker, triage label vocabulary, and domain doc layout. Run once before first use of the other engineering skills.
disable-model-invocation	true

Set up this repo for the skills

Scaffold the per-repo configuration that the engineering skills assume:

• Issue tracker — where issues live (GitHub by default; local markdown is also supported out of the box)
• Triage labels — the strings used for the five canonical triage roles
• Domain & user docs — where CONTEXT.md, USER-BRIEF.md, and ADRs live, and the consumer rules for reading them

All three live under one shared root, chosen once (docs/agents/ by default) — see Section 0 below.

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? If both exist, you can reference AGENTS.md in CLAUDE.md with @. Is there already an ## Agent skills section in either? If so, it states the artifacts root — read it from there, don't guess at a path.
• docs/agents/ at the repo root — does it exist from a prior or partial run, even without an ## Agent skills section yet?
• CONTEXT.md, CONTEXT-MAP.md, USER-BRIEF.md, docs/adr/ — check both the repo root and any artifacts root found above; either may hold pre-existing docs from before this skill was used.
• .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 decisions one at a time — present a section, get the user's answer, then move to the next. Don't dump them all 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 0 — Where these artifacts live.

Explainer: Everything this skill manages — issue tracker config, triage labels, and the domain & user docs (CONTEXT.md, USER-BRIEF.md, docs/adr/) — lives under one shared root, so it's all in one place rather than scattered. By default that's docs/agents/ at the repo root, committed like any other source file. Some people would rather keep it out of version control — agent-maintained working notes, not something the team reviews in a PR. If that's you, name any directory and everything below moves there instead.

• docs/agents/ (default) — committed.
• A directory you name — any path you want (.agents/, notes/, a relocated docs/agents/, …). Adds it to .gitignore (creating the file if it doesn't exist).

Call the answer {root} for the rest of this skill — every file below is {root}/<name>.

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

If — and only if — the user picked GitHub or GitLab, ask one follow-up:

Explainer: Open-source repos often receive feature requests as pull requests, not just issues — a PR is an issue with attached code. If you turn this on, /triage pulls external PRs into the same queue and runs them through the same labels and states as issues (collaborators' in-flight PRs are left alone). Leave it off if PRs aren't a request surface for you.

• PRs as a request surface — yes / no (default: no). Record the answer in {root}/issue-tracker.md. For local-markdown and other trackers, skip this question — there are no PRs.

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 & user docs.

Explainer: Some skills (improve-codebase-architecture, diagnosing-bugs, tdd) read a CONTEXT.md file to learn the project's domain language, and docs/adr/ for past architectural decisions. A companion doc, USER-BRIEF.md, holds the project's personas, jobs-to-be-done, and user mental models — written by understand-the-user, read by to-prd, ux-flows, and ux-review. Both are project-wide living docs; 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 — it governs CONTEXT.md and USER-BRIEF.md together:

• Single-context — one CONTEXT.md + USER-BRIEF.md + docs/adr/ under {root}. Most repos are this.
• Multi-context — CONTEXT-MAP.md under {root} pointing to per-context CONTEXT.md files (typically a monorepo). USER-BRIEF.md stays under {root} unless contexts genuinely serve different users.

Both docs are created lazily by the skills that own them — setup-skills only records where they live. {root} is recorded in two places: {root}/domain.md (the detail), and the ## Agent skills block's Artifacts root line in CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md — the one fact every skill already has in context every session, so none of them need to look anything up to find {root} first.

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 {root}/issue-tracker.md, {root}/triage-labels.md, {root}/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. This file always stays at the repo root regardless of {root} — it's the fixed anchor every skill reads first, which is what makes {root} discoverable without a lookup.

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 (substitute the literal {root} path, not the placeholder):

## Agent skills

Artifacts root: `{root}`

### Issue tracker

[one-line summary of where issues are tracked, plus whether external PRs are a triage surface]. See `{root}/issue-tracker.md`.

### Triage labels

[one-line summary of the label vocabulary]. See `{root}/triage-labels.md`.

### Domain & user docs

[layout — "single-context" or "multi-context"]. See `{root}/domain.md`.

Then write the docs files under {root} 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 {root}/issue-tracker.md from scratch using the user's description.

If {root} isn't the default docs/agents/, append it to .gitignore (create the file if it doesn't exist).

5. Done

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