metis-walk-open-items

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.