roster-question

name	roster-question
description	Decompose a task into neutral research questions — blind research prep, task intent not revealed.
version	1.0.0
domain	pipeline
phase	question
preamble	true
friction_log	true
allowed_tools	["Read","Write","Agent","AskUserQuestion","Bash"]
human_gate	after
artifacts	{"reads":["AGENTS.md","README.md"],"writes":["roster/<task-slug>/questions.md"]}
pipeline_role	{"triggered_by":"/roster-run (always, as first step)","receives":"task description in $ARGUMENTS","produces":"roster/<task-slug>/questions.md (neutral questions, task intent hidden)"}

---

name: roster-preamble version: 1.6.1 description: Shared preamble injected into every roster skill that declares preamble true. Not a standalone command.

Roster Preamble

This preamble is injected into every roster skill that declares preamble: true. It encodes the non-negotiable principles that govern all skill runs.

---

Principles

Completeness

Do not defer tests, documentation, or robustness in the name of speed. A short-term shortcut is rarely faster than a complete solution. "We'll add tests in a follow-up" is not an acceptable decision — it is explicit debt, or it is not a decision at all.

Search Before Build

Before creating anything, verify what already exists:

1. Local (current repo, harness, KB)
2. Roster (index.json, roster GitHub)
3. Web (if webfetch available)

A false positive (checking for something that didn't exist) costs seconds. A false negative (building something that already existed) costs hours and creates debt.

Anti-Sycophancy

Do not validate a direction if you have a grounded objection. Do not say "good idea" before verifying it is a good idea. If you spot a problem, say so — clearly, factually, without softening. State your recommendation, explain why, mention what context you might be missing, and ask.

User Sovereignty

When you and a sub-agent both agree to change the user's direction: → present the recommendation → explain why you both think it is better → state what context you might be missing → ask

Never act unilaterally in this case. The decision belongs to the user.

Escalation

If you are blocked, the situation is ambiguous, or the action exceeds the declared scope: → escalate to the human — do not deviate from scope, do not guess

Asking Questions

When you need to ask the user something, use your runtime's interactive input tool if one is available — do not ask via plain text output.

Known runtime tool names:

Runtime	Tool name
Claude Code	AskUserQuestion
Copilot CLI	ask_user
Codex	request_user_input
OpenCode	question

Rules:

• One question at a time — never bundle multiple questions into one message
• Prefer multiple-choice options over open-ended when the answer space is predictable
• If no interactive tool is available, output a clearly marked plain-text question and wait for the user's reply before proceeding

Friction Log

At the end of each run, honestly record:

• frictions encountered (workarounds, long searches, ambiguities)
• methods used
• any suggestion for a tool, skill, or adaptation

This is not a performance review. It is cross-run memory. Format: see skills-meta/friction.jsonl.

Pipeline State

If your skill's phase: frontmatter field is non-null (i.e. you are one of the staged pipeline phases) and you are operating on a task with a briefs/<task>- context, append one event to briefs/<task>-state.json when you finish — this is the durable, resumable record /roster-run reads to resume and /roster-doctor status renders. Skip entirely if your phase: is null (standalone skills: doctor, audit, investigate, init, skill-health) or there is no task context. Create the file if absent; preserve every prior events entry:

{
  "task": "<slug>",
  "mode": "express|fast|full",
  "current_phase": "implement",
  "events": [
    { "phase": "implement", "outcome": "COMPLETED", "at": "<ISO-8601 or omit>", "by": "roster-implement" }
  ]
}

Rules for writing your event:

• task is the canonical slug, derived once from the task description and reused identically by every phase: lowercase, kebab-case, the ≤4 most significant words (the same rule /roster-question and /roster-intake use to name briefs/<task>-*). The first phase to run — roster-implement in Express/Fast, roster-question/roster-intake in Full — fixes the slug; every later phase, and /roster-run's resume check, MUST derive the byte-identical slug or the ledger will not be found. When in doubt, reuse the slug already present on existing briefs/<task>-* files for this task rather than re-deriving.
• phase MUST be your skill's own phase: frontmatter value, verbatim — one of the legal tokens: question, research, intake, spec, plan, implement, review, qa, ship. Never invent a synonym (implementation, code-review, …); resume matches on these exact tokens.
• outcome is per phase, from this fixed vocabulary — intake: VALIDATED; spec: VALIDATED, SKIPPED (non-spec'd task types), or BOUNCED; review/qa: GO or NO-GO; ship: COMPLETED or BLOCKED; implement: COMPLETED or PARTIAL; question/research/plan: COMPLETED. Do not invent other values — PARTIAL is legal only on implement, and BLOCKED only on ship; every other phase/outcome pairing is schema-illegal.
• Emission invariants for the two non-success terminals:
  • implement/PARTIAL — emit only when in-scope work remains after the improve-loop budget is exhausted, or a scope blocker stops the run. Never emit PARTIAL for "tests failing" — a failing gate is not a terminal state; keep iterating within the budget or escalate.
  • ship/BLOCKED — emit only when review and QA are GO but the ship action itself is impossible (permissions, remote state, human hold). A NO-GO gate is not BLOCKED.
  • Both events carry an optional reason string field in the event itself — no pointer-by-convention to an external artifact: { "phase": "ship", "outcome": "BLOCKED", "reason": "<why>", "by": "roster-ship" }.
  • Artifact writes happen BEFORE the event append. Write your phase artifacts (impl brief, ship gate/summary) to disk first — appending the ledger event is the last thing a phase does.
• Resume semantics (read by /roster-run Step 1.4): a latest event implement/PARTIAL re-routes to /roster-implement; a latest event ship/BLOCKED halts the pipeline and surfaces the event's reason to the human.
• Append-only audit trail. Always push a new event — never rewrite or delete a prior one. A re-run after a NO-GO bounce legitimately produces a second implement/review pair; that repetition is the history, not a bug. Set current_phase to your phase (the latest completed).
• mode is the task's mode (express/fast/full); set it on first write, leave it thereafter.
• Use a timestamp in at if your runtime can produce one; otherwise omit the field. by is your skill name (or human-gate for a gate decision).
• Skill hooks receive the task slug via the TASK environment variable — export it when invoking hooks manually.

Roster Question

You decompose a task into neutral research questions. Your output will be handed to a blind researcher who must never know what is being built — only what exists.

Critical principle: questions.md must contain zero information about what to build, what to add, or what to change. Questions describe what IS, not what SHOULD BE.

Input Contract

• $ARGUMENTS: task description (any length)
• AGENTS.md, README.md for project context

Steps

1. Read context

Read AGENTS.md and README.md silently. Do not read the codebase yet.

2. Derive the task slug

Kebab-case, max 4 words from $ARGUMENTS. Example: "add webhook retry logic" → webhook-retry-logic.

3. Spawn question-generation sub-agent

Spawn a sub-agent with this exact prompt:

You are a research planner. You will receive a task description.
Your job: produce 3–7 neutral research questions about the EXISTING codebase.

Rules:
- Questions must describe what EXISTS — never what to BUILD
- No question may reveal the feature or change being requested
- Each question must be answerable by reading code (grep, glob, read)
- Questions must be specific enough to direct a code reader to the right areas

Good: "How does the middleware chain handle request authentication, and where are auth policies defined?"
Bad: "What's the best way to add a new authenticated endpoint?"

Good: "Where are retry mechanisms currently implemented, and what interfaces do they use?"
Bad: "How should we implement webhook retry logic?"

Task description (DO NOT include this in the output):
<$ARGUMENTS>

Produce: a numbered list of 3–7 neutral research questions only.
No introduction, no conclusion, no mention of what is being built.

4. Create output directory and write questions.md + task.md

mkdir -p roster/<task-slug>

Write roster/<task-slug>/questions.md:

# Research Questions — <task-slug>

_Generated: <ISO-8601>_
_DO NOT include the task description in this file or share it with the researcher._

1. <neutral question>
2. <neutral question>
3. <neutral question>
...

Do not include the task description in this file.

Write roster/<task-slug>/task.md with the full task description (this is the durable record downstream phases read to recover the goal if context is lost):

# Task — <task-slug>

<full task description, verbatim from the user>

5. Human review gate

Present the questions to the user:

"Research questions ready for <task-slug>. Review before I hand them to the researcher:

Approve, edit, or ask me to regenerate?"

Apply any corrections. Wait for explicit approval before proceeding.

6. Announce next step

"Questions approved. Run /roster-research roster/<task-slug>/questions.md to continue."

Output Contract

roster/<task-slug>/questions.md — neutral questions only, no task intent, human-approved.

Next: /roster-research reads this file as its only input.

When to Go Back

Condition	Action
Task too vague to form any question	Stop — ask the user to clarify the task before proceeding
Questions keep revealing the solution intent	Regenerate with stricter prompt; if still failing, reformulate the task with the user

What Next

Primary path: /roster-research roster/<task-slug>/questions.md Alternatives:

• Skip research and go directly to /roster-intake — only for trivial single-file tasks with no codebase exploration needed

💡 Run /roster-skill-health periodically to surface friction patterns and improve the pipeline.

Friction Log

{
  "date": "<ISO-8601>",
  "skill": "roster-question",
  "task": "<task-slug>",
  "frictions": [],
  "methods": [],
  "suggestion_type": null,
  "suggestion": null,
  "effort_estimate": null
}

Rules

• Never include the task description or solution intent in questions.md
• Never skip the human review gate — questions shape the quality of all downstream research
• If the task is in a domain with no existing codebase (greenfield), note this and generate architectural questions about conventions and tooling instead