Use when the user explicitly sets an Aegis goal with /aegis-goal, Aegis goal:, or asks to define goal, success evidence, stop condition, or task boundaries before work.
Use when about to claim work is complete, fixed, passing, verified, release-ready, or ready to commit, merge, publish, or hand off.
Use when defining new features, product behavior, UI/component design, architecture choices, contract changes, or ambiguous medium/high-complexity work before implementation.
Use when the user explicitly asks for first principles, first-principles review, Occam's razor, or when a complex decision has ambiguous goals, competing constraints, repeated fixes, fallback growth, duplicate owners, or architecture/product direction risk.
Use when the user asks to create, write, update, amend, supersede, or evaluate an ADR, architecture decision record, durable architecture decision, decision log, or baseline sync after architecture-changing work.
Use when explicitly requesting an independent code review, after subagent-driven implementation slices, before merging high-risk work, or when verification finds evidence, baseline, architecture, compatibility, or retirement uncertainty that needs reviewer scrutiny.
Use when starting a turn or checking Aegis skill routing.
Use when a task is multi-step, may span context resets or sessions, uses subagents, or risks losing state before completion.