| name | ISA |
| description | Owns the Ideal State Artifact — the universal primitive that holds the articulated ideal state of any thing (project, task, application, library, infrastructure, work session) as a hard-to-vary explanation. The ISA is a single document that articulates the ideal state, drives the build, verifies the build, and records the evolution of understanding. Five workflows: Scaffold (generate a fresh ISA from a prompt at a specified effort tier), Interview (adaptive question-and-answer to fill in or deepen sections), CheckCompleteness (score an existing ISA against the tier completeness gate and report gaps), Reconcile (deterministic merge of an ephemeral feature-file excerpt back into the master ISA, keyed on stable ISC IDs), Seed (bootstrap a draft project ISA from an existing repository's README, code structure, and recent commits). Examples directory contains canonical-isa.md (the showpiece reference, fully populated across all twelve sections), e1-minimal.md (90-second task — Goal + Criteria only), e3-project.md (mid-size project with eight sections), e5-comprehensive.md (full application with all twelve sections plus a populated changelog history). Twelve-section body order is locked: Problem, Vision, Out of Scope, Principles, Constraints, Goal, Criteria, Test Strategy, Features, Decisions, Changelog, Verification. The skill is invoked automatically by the Algorithm at OBSERVE for any non-trivial task and may also be invoked directly by the user to scaffold or audit an ISA outside an Algorithm run. USE WHEN: any prompt mentions ideal state, ISA, ISC, ideal state criteria, ideal state artifact, project specification, hill-climb on a task, articulating done, scaffolding an ISA, interviewing for an ISA, checking ISA completeness, reconciling an ephemeral feature file back to a master ISA, or seeding an ISA from an existing project. NOT FOR creating new skills (use CreateSkill), running the Algorithm itself (the Algorithm invokes this skill), generating non-ISA artifacts (this skill owns the ISA primitive only), or after-the-fact write-ups like postmortems, decision logs, or engineering journals (those are retrospective; the ISA is a commitment-time scaffold for ideal state). |
| effort | medium |
🚨 MANDATORY: Voice Notification (REQUIRED BEFORE ANY ACTION)
You MUST send this notification BEFORE doing anything else when this skill is invoked.
-
Send voice notification:
curl -s -X POST http://localhost:31337/notify \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"message": "Running the WORKFLOWNAME workflow in the ISA skill"}' \
> /dev/null 2>&1 &
-
Output text notification:
Running the **WorkflowName** workflow in the **ISA** skill to ACTION...
This is not optional. Execute this curl command immediately upon skill invocation.
ISA — Ideal State Artifact
The ISA is the single document that articulates "done" for any thing whose ideal state we are pursuing — a project, an application, a library, infrastructure, a work session, an art piece, a strategic decision. It serves five identities simultaneously: ideal state articulation, test harness, build verification, done condition, system of record.
This skill owns the canonical template, the workflows that generate and refine ISAs, and the example library.
The Twelve-Section Body (locked v6.2.0)
Every ISA may have up to twelve body sections. The tier completeness gate decides which are required at which effort tier; sections never appear empty. Order is fixed.
| # | Section | Purpose | Written At |
|---|
| 1 | ## Problem | What is broken or missing right now that makes the ideal state worth pursuing | OBSERVE |
| 2 | ## Vision | What euphoric surprise looks like — experiential intent, 1–5 sentences | OBSERVE |
| 3 | ## Out of Scope | Anti-vision — what is not included in this ideal state, declared upfront in prose | OBSERVE |
| 4 | ## Principles | Substrate-independent truths (Deutsch reach) the work must respect | OBSERVE |
| 5 | ## Constraints | Immovable architectural mandates that bound the solution space | OBSERVE |
| 6 | ## Goal | The hard-to-vary spine — 1–3 sentences naming verifiable done | OBSERVE |
| 7 | ## Criteria | Atomic ISCs (Ideal State Criteria) — one binary tool probe each, including derived Anti: ISCs | OBSERVE → EXECUTE |
| 8 | ## Test Strategy | Per-ISC verification approach — `isc | type |
| 9 | ## Features | Work breakdown — `name | description |
| 10 | ## Decisions | Timestamped decision log including dead ends; refined: prefix for Goal/ISC restructures | any phase |
| 11 | ## Changelog | Conjecture / refuted-by / learned / criterion-now entries — Deutsch error-correction trail | LEARN |
| 12 | ## Verification | Evidence that each ISC passed — quoted command output, file content, screenshot path | VERIFY |
Three-Guardrail Taxonomy (Principles vs Constraints vs Anti-criteria)
Adjacent concepts. Distinguished by who they bind.
| Guardrail | Binds | Tone | Example | Lives In |
|---|
| Principles | The thinking | Aspirational, generalizable | "User-facing systems prioritize responsiveness." | ## Principles |
| Constraints | The solution space | Immovable, non-negotiable | "We do not roll our own cryptography — OAuth via industry-standard libraries only." | ## Constraints |
| Out of Scope | The vision | Declared, explicit, prose | "Mobile native apps are not part of v1." | ## Out of Scope |
| Anti-criteria | The test surface | Granular, testable, yes/no | "Anti: /admin returns 200 in v1 build." | ## Criteria (with Anti: prefix) |
The first three are author-stated (declarative). Anti-criteria are derived — they are how Out of Scope, Constraints, and Principles become probe-able.
Tier Completeness Gate (HARD at all tiers)
Mirrors the v6.1.0 thinking-floor non-relaxability. Required sections per tier:
| Tier | Required Sections |
|---|
| E1 | Goal, Criteria |
| E2 | Problem, Goal, Criteria, Test Strategy |
| E3 | Problem, Vision, Out of Scope, Constraints, Goal, Criteria, Features, Test Strategy |
| E4 | All twelve sections |
| E5 | All twelve + active Interview workflow run before BUILD |
Project ISA override: any <project>/ISA.md requires E3+ structure regardless of the active task's tier. The project file is the long-lived source of truth; one transient E1 task must not downgrade it.
CheckCompleteness workflow enforces this gate. A miss blocks phase: complete until the missing sections are filled in.
Workflow Routing
Match the verb in the request to a workflow. When ambiguous, default to Scaffold for new ISAs and CheckCompleteness for audits.
| Verb / Intent | Workflow | File |
|---|
| "scaffold", "create", "generate", "new ISA from this prompt", "extract feature as ephemeral" | Scaffold | Workflows/Scaffold.md |
| "interview me", "fill in the ISA", "deepen", "ask me questions" | Interview | Workflows/Interview.md |
| "check", "audit", "score this ISA", "is it complete?" | CheckCompleteness | Workflows/CheckCompleteness.md |
| "reconcile", "merge feature file back", "ephemeral → master" | Reconcile | Workflows/Reconcile.md |
| "seed", "bootstrap from this repo", "draft an ISA from existing code" | Seed | Workflows/Seed.md |
| "append decision", "append changelog", "append verification", "record C/R/L entry" | Append | Workflows/Append.md |
When executing a workflow, output this notification directly:
Running the **WorkflowName** workflow in the **ISA** skill to ACTION...
Gotchas
The highest-information-density part of this skill. Each entry captures a non-obvious failure mode that has bitten real ISA work.
- ID-stability is the cornerstone of Reconcile — never re-number on edit. When the Splitting Test produces a finer-grained version of
ISC-7, preserve ISC-7 as the parent and add ISC-7.1, ISC-7.2, etc. Even when an ISC is dropped, leave a tombstone (- [ ] ISC-N: [DROPPED — see Decisions YYYY-MM-DD]). Reconcile keys on stable IDs; renumbering breaks ephemeral feature-file merges silently and the failure mode looks like "the worker's checkmarks didn't land in master."
- Ephemeral files are derived views, never sources of truth. Scaffold's
--ephemeral mode produces a slice of the master ISA at MEMORY/WORK/{slug}/_ephemeral/<feature>.md. Workers operate against that slice; Reconcile merges back. Hand-editing master content from an ephemeral file is policy-forbidden — the master is what persists; the ephemeral is what gets archived.
- The Changelog format is non-negotiable. Every entry needs all four pieces (
conjectured, refuted by, learned, criterion now) in that order. Append refuses to write a partial C/R/L; if any of the four is missing, the entry is a Decision, not a Changelog. The format is what makes the Deutsch error-correction trail auditable across sessions.
- Project ISAs upgrade tier to
max(declared, E3) regardless of the active task's tier. A <project>/ISA.md is the long-lived system of record for a thing with persistent identity. One transient E1 task on the project must NOT downgrade the structural minimum. CheckCompleteness applies this override automatically.
- Empty sections never appear. The twelve-section body is a capacity, not a requirement at every tier. Sections required-but-empty for the tier are populated; sections not required and not yet written are simply absent from the file. CheckCompleteness distinguishes
present / thin / missing / empty and only empty is acceptable for Verification before VERIFY phase.
- Anti-criteria are derived from Out of Scope plus regression-prevention concerns. They are how the prose-guardrails (Out of Scope, Constraints, Principles) become probe-able. At least one is required at every tier; the absence of an anti-criterion at OBSERVE is a hard CheckCompleteness failure.
- Antecedents are required when the goal is experiential. For art, design, content, and anything that has to "land," at least one ISC must use the
Antecedent: prefix to name a precondition that reliably produces the target experience. Verifiable goals (build, deploy, schema) don't need antecedents; experiential goals always do.
- Reconcile is deterministic — there are no conflicts to resolve. Either an ISC ID exists in master (mechanical merge) or it doesn't (abort with ID-stability violation). If the ephemeral made structural changes (split ISC-7 into ISC-7.1/ISC-7.2), those structural changes belong in master via a separate Edit by the user before Reconcile runs.
- The format spec wins on contradiction.
IsaFormat.md is the file-shape contract. If this skill's prose ever drifts from the format spec, the spec is canonical and the skill updates to match — not the reverse.
Examples
The Examples/ directory holds twelve reference ISAs spanning the tier (E1–E5) × domain (code / art / design / ops / marketplace / enterprise) matrix. Always start by reading the canonical showpiece before scaffolding a new ISA — copy its section headers, then populate. Pick the example closest to your domain + scale as a template.
Showpiece
| File | Purpose |
|---|
Examples/canonical-isa.md | BeanLine — peer-to-peer specialty-coffee marketplace. The showpiece reference, fully populated across all twelve sections with real-feeling Decisions and a four-piece C/R/L Changelog. Read this first. |
Code
| File | Tier | Purpose |
|---|
Examples/e1-minimal.md | E1 | Add a --no-color flag to a CLI tool. <90s task, Goal + 4 ISCs only. Demonstrates the fast-path floor. |
Examples/e2-backup-verify.md | E2 | Add SHA-256 verification to a backup CLI's --verify mode. Single-domain, 18 ISCs. |
Examples/e3-project.md | E3 | Build an arxiv metadata extractor CLI. Mid-size project, 12 ISCs, eight sections. |
Examples/e4-api-migration.md | E4 | Migrate a public API from REST to GraphQL with 6-month backwards-compat. Cross-cutting, 73 ISCs, all twelve sections. |
Examples/e5-desktop-app.md | E5 | WattWatch — open-source desktop app for personal home-energy monitoring. Single-user app pattern, 50 ISCs, populated Changelog. |
Art (experiential — antecedents required)
| File | Tier | Purpose |
|---|
Examples/e3-essay.md | E3 | Write a 1500-word essay on a specific thesis. Experiential goal, antecedent ISCs, post-publish reception probes. |
Examples/e5-album.md | E5 | Mariner Frequencies — produce a 12-track instrumental album over 6 months. Long-form experiential, multi-act Changelog. |
Design (experiential)
| File | Tier | Purpose |
|---|
Examples/e3-help-redesign.md | E3 | Redesign a CLI tool's --help output for first-encounter clarity. Antecedents + usability tests. |
Examples/e4-brand-identity.md | E4 | Cardinal — brand identity for a small fintech startup (logo + type + color + voice + first 5 marketing surfaces). 56 ISCs, 6 antecedents. |
Ops
| File | Tier | Purpose |
|---|
Examples/e2-rotate-credential.md | E2 | Rotate a production deploy credential in CI. Demonstrates the ISA primitive applied to ops/runbook work. 16 ISCs. |
Enterprise
| File | Tier | Purpose |
|---|
Examples/e5-enterprise.md | E5 | Beacon Health Alliance — multi-region HIPAA-compliant patient portal for a 50-hospital network. Compliance anti-criteria, multi-team parallelizable features, 68 ISCs across all twelve sections. |
ID Stability Rule
ISC IDs never re-number on edit. When the Splitting Test produces a finer-grained version of ISC-7, the original number is preserved as the parent and children become ISC-7.1, ISC-7.2, etc. Do not collapse the numbering even if the ISC is dropped — leave a tombstone marker so historical references in Decisions, Changelog, and Verification remain valid.
This rule exists because Reconcile is keyed on ISC IDs. If IDs renumber across edits, ephemeral feature-file reconciliation breaks silently. The renumbering ban is what makes feature-file workflows safe.
Ephemeral Feature Files (Ralph Loop / Maestro pattern)
When a feature is to be worked in an isolated context (Ralph Loop, Maestro, parallel coding-agent instances), the Algorithm invokes:
Skill("ISA", "extract feature <name> as ephemeral file")
Scaffold (with --ephemeral mode) produces a derived view at MEMORY/WORK/{slug}/_ephemeral/<feature>.md containing only the slice relevant to that feature: the Vision and Goal as read-only context, the relevant Constraints, the ISCs in the feature's satisfies: list with stable IDs, the matching Test Strategy entries, and an empty Verification section.
A fresh-context agent operates against the ephemeral file alone. At completion, Reconcile deterministically merges ISC checkmarks, Verification evidence, Decisions entries, and any new Changelog entries back to master, then archives the ephemeral file under _ephemeral/.archive/.
Ephemeral files are derived views. They are never sources of truth. They are never hand-edited as policy. The master ISA is what persists.
Relationship to the Algorithm
The Algorithm at OBSERVE invokes this skill to scaffold or read an ISA. The skill does not run the Algorithm — it owns the artifact the Algorithm operates on.
- OBSERVE:
Skill("ISA", "scaffold from prompt at tier T") → returns populated ISA at canonical location.
- OBSERVE:
Skill("ISA", "check completeness of <path> at tier T") → pass/fail + gap report.
- PLAN:
Skill("ISA", "extract feature <name> as ephemeral file") → ephemeral excerpt.
- LEARN:
Skill("ISA", "reconcile <ephemeral-path> → <master-path>") → deterministic merge.
The Algorithm doctrine spec at ~/.claude/PAI/ALGORITHM/v6.2.0.md (or LATEST) governs invocation cadence. This skill is invocation-agnostic — it works the same whether called by the Algorithm or directly by the user.
Format spec cross-reference
The full ISA format spec lives at ~/.claude/PAI/DOCUMENTATION/IsaFormat.md. This skill implements that spec; if there is ever a contradiction, the format spec wins and this skill is updated to match.
The system-architecture doc — five identities, three-guardrail taxonomy, twelve-section body, six workflows, two homes, subsystem relationships — lives at ~/.claude/PAI/DOCUMENTATION/Isa/IsaSystem.md. Read that for the conceptual frame; read this file (and IsaFormat.md) for the operational contract.
