| name | kata-session |
| description | Toyota Kata coaching protocol for facilitated sessions. Used by the improvement coach (facilitator) and by domain agents who participate via the Ask/Answer/Announce orchestration tools. Same five coaching kata questions across team storyboard meetings and 1-on-1 coaching sessions; mode-specific guidance lives in references/team-storyboard.md and references/one-on-one.md.
|
Kata Session
Shared entry-point skill for Toyota Kata coaching sessions. The improvement
coach facilitates (Facilitator Process); domain agents participate (Participant
Protocol). The mode-specific artifact surface lives in two overlays,
team-storyboard.md and
one-on-one.md.
When to Use
Facilitator: Entry point for the improvement coach's two contexts — team
storyboard meetings and 1-on-1 coaching sessions (the storyboard and coaching
workflows generated by kata-setup).
Participant: The coach's session-open briefing covers most runs; load this
skill only for the full Participant Protocol below.
Checklists
Facilitator
<read_do_checklist goal="Prepare for the coaching session">
</read_do_checklist>
<do_confirm_checklist goal="Verify coaching session quality">
</do_confirm_checklist>
Participant
<do_confirm_checklist goal="Verify participation quality">
</do_confirm_checklist>
The Five Kata Questions
These questions structure every coaching interaction. The coach asks via
Ask; the participant replies via Answer.
- What is the target condition? Where the team (or the agent) is headed.
- What is the actual condition now? Measured, not narrative — counts and
durations from live data, recorded in CSV.
- What obstacles prevent us from reaching the target? Each participant
names the obstacles in their domain.
- What is the next step? What do you expect? Propose the next experiment
and its expected outcome.
- When can we see what we learned? The next meeting opens by reviewing
what was learned.
What an obstacle and an experiment are is defined in
work-definition.md § Classification tests;
mode-specific question wording (team vs. 1-on-1) lives in the overlays.
Facilitator Process
- Detect mode. Call RollCall. If it succeeds, you are in facilitated mode —
use orchestration tools (
Ask, Answer, Announce, Conclude) for all
participant interaction. If the call fails with tool-not-found, you are in
solo mode — use direct file reads.
- Select the overlay. For team storyboard runs, load
references/team-storyboard.md. For 1-on-1
coaching runs, load references/one-on-one.md.
The overlay owns the artifact surface, question wording, and briefing
template.
- Brief participants. Deliver the overlay's briefing template before Q1.
Team mode: broadcast once via
Announce at session open. 1-on-1: prepend
it to the Q1 Ask body.
- Collect XmR analysis from participants. Participants run
fit-xmr analyze on their own CSVs (Participant Protocol step 2) and
report status, fired-rule signals, and latest in their Q2 Answer. The
facilitator has no Bash — it relays what they report, flagging any
insufficient_data metric.
- Run the five questions. Follow the overlay's wording. In facilitated
mode, pose each question via
Ask and collect Answer replies before
advancing. After Q3/Q4, Ask each participant to record its obstacle and
experiment as labeled issues per
issue-lifecycle.md and return the #NNNs.
Use Announce between questions. When an Ask's receiver commits in the
shared checkout, carry edit-intent and serialize same-surface asks
(dispatch-discipline.md).
- Collect, don't write. The facilitator writes no files — participants own
every write (CSVs, weekly-log memory, issues). Collect reported
#NNNs and
numbers via Answer for the summary.
- Route Q3 obstacles (team meetings only; skip 1-on-1). For each obstacle
the facilitator picks one route (parallel allowed) and logs it; it runs no
gh itself. Triggers and worked example:
team-storyboard.md.
- Discussion — shared-artifact change (metric, rule, boundary, policy) or
same question in ≥2 agents' Q3 answers. The owning agent opens an RFC per
coordination-protocol.md.
- Coaching — participant-scoped blocker / unanalyzed trace / stalled
experiment: not dispatched here. The obstacle issue stands; the coach
dispatches the coaching workflow in its Assess run.
- Before dispatching follow-on work for a reviewed artifact, run the
route-taken check in
dispatch-discipline.md — an
unexpired same-run continuation announcement means do not re-dispatch.
- Conclude (facilitated mode only). Call
Conclude with a session summary
covering meeting type, key metrics, obstacles addressed, experiments planned,
and any obstacle handed off for coaching. (Wiki pushes automatically.)
Participant Protocol
Applies in both modes; expands the coach's session-open briefing.
- Prepare for Q2. Gather your domain's current measured state from live
data (
gh, repository files) — not memory or narrative.
- Record metrics to CSV and analyze them. Before answering, append one row
per metric to
wiki/metrics/{skill}/{YYYY}.csv per the skill's
references/metrics.md, creating the directory and header if needed. Then
run fit-xmr analyze <csv> --format json. The CSV is authoritative; your
Answer summarizes it.
- Answer with measured data. Report numbers via
Answer(askId=N, message=…), quoting the askId from the [ask#N] header.
Reference the CSV rows; include each metric's XmR status, μ, and any
fired-rule signals from your fit-xmr analyze run. Use counts and
durations — not narratives like "improving." Use Announce only for
team-wide context.
- Identify obstacles, then record them. For Q3, each participant names the
obstacles in its domain, then creates an obstacle issue per
issue-lifecycle.md and reports its #NNN.
- Propose experiments, then record them. For Q4, propose the next
experiment (scoped to one or two daily cycles) and its expected outcome, then
create an experiment issue (
experiment + agent:{self}) per
issue-lifecycle.md and report its #NNN.
Hold participant writes to
Citation integrity.
Memory: What to Record
Append to the current week's log (see agent profile for the file path):
- Session type — Team storyboard, review, or 1-on-1 (which agent)
- Current condition — Key numbers from metrics CSVs reviewed
- Obstacle addressed — Which obstacle was the focus
- Experiment status — Outcome of prior experiment, next one planned
Participants record their own domain metrics per Participant Protocol step 2.