| name | retrieve-before-task |
| description | Pull a token-budgeted context pack from Trellis (prior traces, precedents, evidence, knowledge graph) before starting non-trivial work. Use whenever the task is more than a one-line tweak — investigations, refactors, new features, debugging, design decisions. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| status | preview |
Retrieve Before Task
Status: preview. Tool signatures are in flux while parallel work lands. Expect revisions before the next minor release.
Before doing real work, check what's already known. Trellis is a shared experience store — past agents and humans have left traces, precedents, and graph knowledge that you should not re-derive from scratch.
When to invoke
Trigger this skill at the start of any task that is more than trivial. Concrete signals:
- The user describes work that touches more than one file.
- The task involves a service, system, or concept that might already be tracked.
- You're about to debug something — past incidents are gold.
- You're about to make a design decision — past precedents constrain the space.
Do not invoke for: greetings, single-character edits, "what does this code do" reads of the current buffer.
How to invoke
Call the Trellis MCP get_context tool. Recommended starting parameters:
get_context(
intent="<one sentence describing what you're about to do>",
domain="<optional: backend / frontend / data-platform / infra / ...>",
max_tokens=1500
)
The tool returns pre-formatted markdown — drop it into your context window and reason from it.
What to do with the result
- Skim it before generating any plan. If a precedent already covers the task, use it as the spine of your approach.
- Cite specific items by id when explaining your plan to the user. ("Trace 01JRK… shows the team already added retry-with-backoff to the payments client; I'll mirror that.")
- Adjust your approach if you see warnings. Advisories in the pack flag patterns that have failed before.
- If the pack is empty, say so explicitly. That's a signal to the user that this is genuinely greenfield work.
Example
User: "Add rate limiting to the orders API."
get_context(intent="add rate limiting to the orders API", domain="backend")
Then read the returned markdown, summarize the relevant prior art in 2-3 sentences, and propose a plan grounded in it. After the work is done, follow up with the record-after-task skill.
Failure modes to avoid
- Don't skip retrieval to "save time". A 1500-token retrieval saves you from re-deriving work that already exists, and from repeating mistakes the team has already made.
- Don't paraphrase the result back to the user verbatim. Use it as input to your own plan.
- Don't stop at one query. If the first
get_context call doesn't surface what you need, follow up with search or get_lessons for targeted lookups.
