Use when a worker (dispatched agent or human) is closing out a branch's captured verification work and wants it committed somewhere durable — phrasing like "hand back this story", "wrap up the evidence for this branch", "commit the evidence manifest", "write up what ran on this branch before I stop". This routes to Studious's /handback command, which reads the harness-captured evidence log and commits a manifest plus summary. Do NOT use for running a gate (/gate-audit, /gate-acceptance, etc. — /handback records no verdict and isn't one), for advancing the /work-on flow (that stays with /work-on itself), or for a branch you merely want summarized from the diff alone — this skill specifically packages the captured evidence log, and reports plainly rather than fabricating one when the branch has no captured records.
Use when the user asks Studious to drive an entire milestone or epic autonomously — "knock out this milestone", "run the whole epic", "work through milestone 4", "drive these issues to done as a batch". This routes to Studious's /work-through orchestrator. Do NOT use for a single feature or its next step (that's /work-on via continue-feature-work), for picking what to work on (that's /backlog-priorities), for evaluating one idea (that's the should-we-build gate), or for running a single gate.
Use when the user asks whether their Studious install is healthy, why a gate seemed to run with fewer checks than expected, whether required tooling (git/gh/jq) is present, or whether context docs (PRODUCT.md/DESIGN.md/CLAUDE.md) are missing or still template stubs — phrasing like "is my studious install healthy", "why did gate-audit skip something", "check my studious setup", "something feels off with studious". Do NOT use for running a specific gate (that's /gate-should-we-build, /gate-design-review, /gate-audit, /gate-acceptance), for periodic project health reviews (/deep-review), for issue triage (/backlog-priorities, /backlog-hygiene), or for initial setup (/studious-init handles first-time scaffolding, not ongoing health checks).
Use when the user wants the next step of feature work already in flight — "do the next piece", "what's the next step on this feature", "continue where we left off", "keep the flow going", or naming an in-progress feature and asking to move it forward. This routes to Studious's /work-on navigator, which runs exactly one step of the gate flow. Do NOT use for picking what to work on across the backlog (that's /backlog-priorities), for evaluating a brand-new idea (that's the should-we-build gate), or for questions about how to implement something — building stays with the user's own workflow.
Use when an implementation is complete and the user is checking whether it actually delivers the intended experience before merge — "did we ship the right thing", "does this deliver", "acceptance check", "is this ready to merge". This routes to Studious's acceptance gate. Do NOT use for code review, security or quality audits (that's /gate-audit), or for work still in progress.
Use when the user is explicitly deciding whether to build a specific feature — asking "should we build X", "is this worth building", "is this a good idea", or weighing a feature idea against what else matters. This routes the decision to Studious's should-we-build gate. Do NOT use for general feature brainstorming, for shaping a design once the decision to build is already made, or for prioritizing existing issues (that's /backlog-priorities).
Use when a design doc or spec for a feature is ready and the user is about to start implementing — they want the design checked before build effort goes in. Triggers on "review this design", "is this design sound", "any problems with this design before I build it". This routes to Studious's design-review gate. Do NOT use for code review, after implementation has already started, or for evaluating whether to build at all (that's the should-we-build gate).