mold

name	mold
description	Converge a fuzzy idea or half-formed feature into an approved spec through an iterative, grounded design dialogue. Use when the user has a fuzzy idea or design direction — phrases like "let's design X", "I'm thinking about Y", "what should the API for Z look like", "shape this into a spec", "what would it take to build/set up X", "I want to add a feature that…", "/mold". Use even when the user is "just thinking out loud" if they want the dialogue to leave behind a written artifact. Do NOT use for free-form discussion with no artifact intent (`/culture`), direct implementation (`/cook`), or research-only questions (`/briesearch`).
license	MIT
metadata	{"dispatches-agents":true}

/mold

Two modes, by analogy to /culture:

1. User-invoked full ceremony (default). The user typed /mold (or /cheese routed an explicit fuzzy-design ask straight here). Runs the full Explore/Ground/Shape/Sketch/Grill/Diagnose dialogue and the two-key handshake before any spec is written. The flow below describes this mode.
2. Agent-invoked mini-spec mode. /cheese calls into /mold at tier 1 of its escalation (see skills/cheese/SKILL.md § Escalation) when the cook fast-path checks all pass and a spec needs to materialise before /cook --auto runs. No dialogue, no handshake — the agent writes a mini-spec directly from the user's input (plus any tier-2 /culture / /briesearch synthesis) and returns the spec path. See ## Agent-invoked mini-spec mode below.

Do not use the user-invoked ceremony for free-form discussion with no artifact intent (/culture), direct implementation (/cook), or research-only questions (/briesearch).

Flow

1. Bounds pass — before routing, run one Explore-style bounds round for every input shape: map the problem's edges to candidate goals and non-goals, and put the consequential ones to the user as questions rather than assuming them. Open the per-round decision ledger here (Decided / Asking / [AGENT-DECIDED]; see ## Rules). Tier it — a genuinely clear input gets a single fast confirm of the bounds, not a full A/B/C/D menu — but it is never skipped, so asking precedes any output. See references/modes.md.
2. Route — pick the secondary mode from the input shape (see references/modes.md) and announce it in one line. If the user's framing rests on a false premise or a loaded assumption, name it before routing.
3. Dialogue — build shared understanding by asking the user the decisions that shape the design: every consequential fork is theirs to pick, surfaced as a choice, not settled for them. Contribute full depth (options, named edge cases, concrete evidence — not gestural sketches) to inform each question, never to replace asking it. Ground every critical claim with cheez-search, cheez-read, a Validate Cycle (references/validate-cycle.md), or — for an ungrillable design unknown only a running sketch can settle — a Prototype Cycle (references/prototype-cycle.md). Both cycles are sub-agent-spawnable mid-dialogue, in parallel, and are context-bounded (no hard cap; soft backstop of 10). Track contradictions across turns; if turn N contradicts an earlier conclusion, flag and resolve it before continuing. After 3 consecutive fork questions, or whenever the user asks "what forks are left?", render the decision map (see ## Rules § Decision map) before continuing.
4. Sketch — for any feature touching >1 module or a new public interface, run the shape check (references/shape-check.md) on the touched symbols, then lock seams in pseudocode signatures before talking spec content. While the code is open, bind every identity/ownership-role noun to a code referent per references/handshake.md § Entity-referent binding — a search hit of a different referent is an alias, not a pass.
5. Two-key handshake — both the user (explicit verb) and the agent (coherence self-check) must agree before extraction. See references/handshake.md.
6. Curdle — resolve the durable spec path with SPEC=$(python3 shared/scripts/artifact_path.py specs <slug>). Phase one writes all local artifacts and write-ahead prepared state: write the approved spec to "$SPEC", any local issue drafts, and the session's non-obvious decisions as durable ADRs before any external call. If you're on a host that only exposes the packaged helper, python3 skills/mold/scripts/mold.pyz artifact-path specs <slug> is the fallback. The resolver anchors specs at the per-project durable corpus (see ../cheese/references/formatting.md § Corpus location); never hardcode a repo-local spec path. After phase one is durable, phase two publishes approved follow-ups, retains prepared recovery state when an external capability is unavailable or publication fails, and reconciles their state and references into the durable spec. Format, slug, publication, reconciliation, and corpus-resolution rules live in references/curdle.md and references/adr.md.
7. Count and hand off — only after phase-two publication attempts and reconciliation finish, run python3 skills/mold/scripts/mold.pyz curd-count "$SPEC" --blast-radius <low|medium|high> to compute the recommended downstream skill (full procedure in references/curd-count.md). Then prompt the next step via the shared handoff gate in ../cheese/references/handoff-gate.md. Never dispatch before the user selects; after a non-stop selection, run the selected downstream skill immediately.

Portability reference: ../cheese/references/harness-portability.md. It covers helper resolution, sub-agent dispatch, GitHub operations, and handoff transitions; prefer the bundled or repo-local helper first, and treat ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR} as optional host-provided fallback. The handoff blocks below are the portable contract; slash commands are host renderings, not the control model.

Follow-up candidates

Every non-goal and explicit dialogue deferral enters the current session's follow-up candidate set. Record it within Decided as [FOLLOW-UP?] with its summary, source, and rationale. A candidate is dialogue state only: collecting one does not create an artifact or accept a future commitment.

When candidates exist, complete the pre-Curdle disposition batch in references/handshake.md before the two-key handshake can pass. When none exist, omit the batch and preserve the current Curdle flow. After both keys pass, Curdle writes local artifacts first, publishes approved follow-ups, reconciles their state and references into the durable spec, and only then renders the implementation handoff.

Modes

Mode	Use when	Goal
Explore	The idea is vague	Identify the real problem and pain point
Ground	A file, bug, or existing doc is named	Verify facts against evidence
Shape	The goal is known but approach is open	Compare viable options (Do Nothing always included)
Sketch	Interfaces or module boundaries matter	Lock responsibilities and seams
Grill	A favoured approach needs stress-testing	Steelman each item, then put every design-changing call to the user as a fork
Diagnose	A symptom, failure, or trace is supplied	Build a Loop → reproduce → hypothesize → confirm root cause

Full mode definitions, exit criteria, and user knobs in references/modes.md. Trigger and trace evals for the skill — including the Grill user-fork checks — in references/evals.md.

Agent-invoked mini-spec mode

/cheese's tier-1 escalation calls into /mold to produce a spec without a user-facing dialogue. The cook fast-path checks have already passed at the call site, so the input is unambiguous by construction — there is nothing left to ground, no trade-offs to grill. The mode skips the Flow above entirely:

1. Derive slug from the user's ask (kebab-case noun-phrase, ≤ 4 words).
2. Write the resolver-owned <spec-path> with the mini-spec schema below. Resolve it via python3 shared/scripts/artifact_path.py specs <slug>; if you're on a host that only exposes the packaged helper, python3 skills/mold/scripts/mold.pyz artifact-path specs <slug> is the fallback. Never hardcode a repo-local spec path: the resolver anchors it at the durable corpus, matching the Curdle step.
3. Return the resolved spec path to /cheese so it can dispatch /cook --auto <spec-path> (the full path printed by the resolver, not a bare <slug>).

The two-key handshake does not fire in this mode. The agent-introduced-scope check still runs implicitly: every distinguishing noun in the mini-spec must come from the user's input or from the tier-2 /culture / /briesearch synthesis recorded in ## Provenance. Anything else is a silent agent addition and is forbidden — the mini-spec records only what the user asked for, not what the agent thinks they might have meant.

Mini-spec schema

---
slug: <kebab-slug>
source: agent-mini-spec
intent: <one-sentence restatement of the user's ask>
blast_radius: low | medium | high
inputs: <one-line>
outputs: <one-line>
verification: <one-line: the obvious check>
---

## Contract
<one paragraph: behaviour change, scope boundary>

## Acceptance
- <verifiable check 1>
- <verifiable check 2>

## Non-goals
- <what we are NOT changing>

## Provenance (tier 2 only)
- culture: <one-line synthesis of what /culture concluded>
- briesearch: <one-line synthesis>; artifact: research/<slug>/<slug>.md

source: agent-mini-spec is the marker that downstream skills (/cook, /age, etc.) can read if they ever want different taste-test stringency for agent-written vs handshake-approved specs. They are not required to act on it today. User-invoked-ceremony specs omit source: or use source: mold-handshake.

## Provenance appears only when /cheese reached tier 2 before falling into tier 1 — i.e., when /culture or /briesearch contributed context the original input lacked. Omit the section when tier 1 fires on the raw input. When /briesearch ran, the artifact: field links the durable cited research at research/<slug>/<slug>.md so the citations are preserved and /cook (or any later skill) can re-read them without re-researching. Omit artifact: only when /briesearch answered from local code patterns alone and wrote no durable file.

Preferred tools and fallbacks

Code search, reading, and editing (including spec writing) all go through the cheez-* skills (/cheez-search, /cheez-read, /cheez-write) — see those skills for tool selection rules. Shape checks specifically use cheez-search callers (kind: "callers") plus tilth_deps; the procedure lives in references/shape-check.md.

Beyond cheez-* there are mold-specific tools:

Need	Prefer	Fallback
External validation	/briesearch with Context7/Tavily	user-provided docs, repo docs, or note as unverified
Wiki grounding (Ground entry + decision points; scope per references/grounding.md § When to probe)	mcp__hallouminate__list_corpora + mcp__hallouminate__ground on repo:<repo>:wiki — see references/grounding.md	skip; proceed with code evidence only; cap at speculating when design rationale is central

Optional tools accelerate the work; missing tools do not block the dialogue. When evidence is unavailable, mark the affected claim [?] until settled.

Sub-agent context gate

/mold keeps the dialogue, contradictions, approval state, and the two-key handshake in the parent context — those never delegate. Offloading heavy work to a read-only sub-agent is the default (references/context-budget.md) — the explorer phase-agent for code reads and shape checks, the researcher phase-agent for deep /briesearch. Spawn one whenever the work would flood the conversation with raw evidence or graph output (sub-agent selection and the Explore/inline fallback: see references/context-budget.md):

Triggers and digest constraints in references/context-budget.md.

Gate graph

Mold's gate state machine is a single machine-readable model rendered two ways: python3 skills/mold/scripts/mold.pyz gate-graph --render dot|svg|png|mermaid. dot/mermaid need no binary; svg/png use Graphviz dot when present and degrade to mermaid otherwise. The model's gate nodes are kept in lockstep with the handshake.md coherence checklist by a test, so a gate cannot be dropped from prose. Details in references/gate-graph.md.

Approval gate

Curdle requires the two-key handshake: an explicit user verb (e.g. curdle, ship it) and the agent's coherence self-check. The full checklist, mandatory gates, and override semantics live in references/handshake.md — do not duplicate them here.

Before the handshake fires, also run the agent-introduced-scope check — flag any noun in Approach / Decisions / Interface sketches the user did not type, and require explicit per-term approval before extraction. Full procedure and the single-chokepoint guarantee in references/handshake.md § Agent-introduced scope.

If any gate is unmet, propose the smallest next question or evidence check. Write artifacts only after both keys pass.

--hard

/mold --hard propagates --hard through to /cook at handoff (any of the cook-flavoured options below carries the flag forward). Mold itself runs no gate — the metacognitive vibecheck fires later, at /cure's share-for-review boundary. See skills/hard-cheese/SKILL.md and ../hard-cheese/references/composition.md.

Handoff

Pipeline: culture → [mold] → cook → press → age → cure → plate

After Curdle completes phase-two publication attempts and mechanical reconciliation of Deferred follow-ups into the durable spec, run the curd-count script (procedure and --blast-radius rules in references/curd-count.md), then render the branch menu below and prompt via the shared handoff gate. Never pre-select an autonomous option.

Read the JSON digest. Its decomposable field (true when candidate_curds ≥ 2, the PARALLEL_THRESHOLD) picks the option set rendered below; its recommended_skill field picks which option holds the (recommended) slot. Then ask the user via the shared handoff gate in ../cheese/references/handoff-gate.md. Lead each option with the verb; the skill command (with the spec path and any in-scope --hard propagation) is the backing detail.

Decomposable specs (decomposable: true, candidate_curds ≥ 2):

The spec splits into independent slices, so /ultracook's decomposer can fan them out in parallel with reviewable PRs. Before rendering the menu, confirm with the user that the candidate curds are file-disjoint (criterion 4) — the script counts signals, it does not verify independence. The dispatched skill is /ultracook either way: its decomposer routes 2+ file-disjoint curds to parallel mode and folds shared-file curds back into the linear chain, so the user's answer informs the decomposer rather than changing the command.

• Run the full pipeline (parallel fan-out when disjoint, else linear) (recommended) — /ultracook <spec-path>. The decomposer picks parallel curd fan-out or the linear chain; /plate performs the final artifact-writing gate, resolves topology from the explicit choice and review shape, and publishes the ordinary or stacked layout.
• Implement manually, one phase at a time — /cook <spec-path>.
• Stop — dispatch none; leave the spec for later.

Non-decomposable, high-blast-radius specs (decomposable: false, verdict high only):

The spec is large enough that per-phase context contamination becomes a real concern: review reasoning softens when the same window contains the cook reasoning, and the parent context bloats across phases. Offer the fresh-context orchestrator and the manual compaction path:

• Run the full pipeline in fresh-context isolation (recommended) — /ultracook <spec-path>, autonomous chain (cook → press → age → cure → age → cure → age, all --auto) with each phase running inside its own sub-agent, blind to prior phases.
• Implement manually, one phase at a time — /cook <spec-path>.
• Compact and resume by hand — dispatch none; clear context, then dispatch /cook <spec-path> or /ultracook <spec-path> directly. (/cheese --continue scans phase handoff slugs only — fresh specs don't surface there until cook lands a slug — so dispatching the explicit command is the resumption path here.)
• Stop — dispatch none; leave the spec for later.

Non-decomposable, low- or medium-blast-radius specs (decomposable: false, verdict low or medium):

• Implement the spec (recommended) — /cook <spec-path>.
• Implement and auto-review — /cook --auto <spec-path>, chains through /press → /age → /cure. Opening or updating a PR remains a /plate step; a new PR follows its explicit-choice and review-shape policy.
• Research more first — /briesearch, gather more external evidence before implementing.
• Stop — dispatch none; leave the spec for later.

/cook --auto is omitted from the decomposable and high-blast-radius offer sets: with many parallel curds or a wide footprint, /ultracook (parallel fan-out or fresh-context linear chain) is the actual motivation for going autonomous, and the in-session chain is the wrong transport. The no-pre-select-autonomous rule stated above applies here too; the user must opt in. medium blast radius keeps the standard handoff because the in-session /cook --auto chain is still the right tool for that footprint — the fresh-context premium is only worth paying when the spec actually crosses module boundaries broadly enough to flip the verdict to high, or when the spec decomposes into 2+ independent curds.

Rules

• Dialogue first; artifacts are the by-product.
• Tiered lettered options. Consequential forks (scope, approach, non-goals, interface/seam, trade-offs) are posed to the user as A/B/C/D choices — they cannot be resolved silently. Minor mechanical calls are made but logged [AGENT-DECIDED] inline with a one-line alternative the user can veto (ADR-003).
• Per-round decision ledger. Each dialogue round prints Decided / Asking / [AGENT-DECIDED]. At curdle the ledger persists to the ADR(s) (references/adr.md) plus a one-line minor decision-log on the spec; no separate ledger file (ADR-004).
• Decision map. After 3 consecutive fork questions, or whenever the user asks "what forks are left?", render a compact decision map from the existing ledger: Done forks (from Decided), Remaining-before-curdle forks split into required (the mandatory gates in references/handshake.md § Mandatory gates) vs optional, and a one-line curdle-readiness verdict (ready, or blocked naming the unmet gate). This is a rendering of the ledger and handshake checklist already tracked, not a new artifact, file, or script.
• Do not implement code.
• Do not write production files before the approval gate.
• Do not silently settle uncertain claims.
• Apply the shared voice kernel (lives at ../age/references/voice.md): correct false premises, flag confidence as certain | speculating | don't know on each critical claim, steelman before dismissing, and ask the user the decisions that shape the design — contributing full depth to inform each question, never to replace asking it.

Agent resolution

Resolve exploration and research delegates through ../cheese/references/agent-resolution.md.

Work	Preferred types	Permissions/isolation	Minimum power	Effort	Fallback
Explore the codebase	explorer	read-only, fresh-context	default	medium	compatible explorer, then general
Research external constraints	researcher	read-only, fresh-context	default	medium	compatible researcher, then general

The canonical mold spec or mini-spec carries the shared agent_resolution block.