| name | workshop |
| description | Tour of the Crucible workshop — the headline orchestrators users invoke directly. Use when the user asks "what skills are available?", "where do I start?", "what should I use for X?", "give me a tour of Crucible", "what are the main commands?", or any onboarding-style question. Also use after onboarding a new user or when someone needs to pick the right tool for a specific task. This is the on-demand catalog tour; the silent conversation-start activation protocol itself is getting-started. |
Workshop
A curated tour of the headline Crucible skills — the orchestrators a user typically invokes directly. Crucible ships ~52 skills total, but most of those are sub-skills that orchestrators dispatch internally. This skill is the front door: when you don't know which command to type, start here.
Skill type: Reference. Read this skill when the user is choosing what to do; do not dispatch subagents from it.
Pick by what you're doing
Starting fresh on something new
| Skill | When to reach for it |
|---|
/build | Going from idea to working code. The full pipeline — design → plan → TDD execute → quality gate → PR. One command, complete arc. |
/design | You want to explore design space before any code. Produces a design doc. Build runs this internally; invoke directly when the design itself is the deliverable. |
/planning | You already have a spec or requirements and need a multi-step implementation plan. Build runs this too; invoke directly for plan-only work. |
/spec | You have a GitHub epic with child tickets and want autonomous spec generation (design + plan + contracts per ticket) without human interaction. |
Mid-feature work
| Skill | When to reach for it |
|---|
/temper | Iterative code review on a PR or <base>..<head> range. Loops fresh-eyes reviewers until clean. Forge-agnostic (GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket / self-hosted). Renamed from /code-review on 2026-05-17. |
/debugging | Any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior. Hypothesis loop, fix dispatch, verification. |
/quality-gate | Iterative red-team on any artifact (design doc, plan, code, hypothesis, mockup). Loops until clean or stagnation. Invoked by other orchestrators; invoke directly when the artifact is standalone. |
/migrate | Framework upgrade, API version bump, major dependency change, deprecation removal. Produces a phased migration plan and optionally executes it via build's refactor mode. |
Inspection and discovery
| Skill | When to reach for it |
|---|
/delve | Instance-bug review of a diff or path — parallel finder angles + verify gate, prints ranked, verified defects with reproductions. Report-only (no merge verdict, no fix loop; --fix / --comment are opt-in). Use when "find bugs in this diff", "scan this file for defects", or you want concrete reproducible bugs. |
/audit | Systemic review of an existing subsystem or non-code artifact (design / plan / concept) — recurring patterns, structural drift, absences with no single reproduction. Four lenses per artifact type, find-and-report only (does not fix). Instance bugs route to /delve via --bugs; complexity to /prospector. Use when "this has accumulated cruft nobody's looked at in months." |
/siege | Security audit. Six parallel attacker-perspective Opus agents, iterates until zero Critical/High. Heavy — reserve for security PRs, scheduled reviews, or post-incident. |
/recon | Codebase investigation. Layered Investigation Brief with structure / patterns / scope / prior-art. Use before any task that needs codebase understanding you don't have. |
/prospector | Architectural friction finder. Explores the codebase for refactor candidates and proposes competing redesigns. Use when "what should I refactor next?" |
/delve vs /recon / /prospector — different machines. /delve hunts concrete instance bugs in a specific diff or path (one defect, one reproduction). /recon and /prospector explore unfamiliar code — recon maps structure / patterns / prior-art before a task; prospector finds architectural friction and proposes redesigns. Reach for /delve when you have a change and want its bugs; reach for recon / prospector when you have a codebase and want to understand or improve it. Within the review trio: /delve = instance bugs (one-shot), /audit = systemic patterns, /temper = merge gate + iterative fix loop.
Wrapping up and reflecting
| Skill | When to reach for it |
|---|
/finish | Implementation is complete, tests pass, and you need to decide how to integrate — merge, PR, cleanup. Guides the completion decision. |
/forge | A significant task just completed. Writes a retrospective; proposes skill mutations after 10+ retrospectives accumulate. Compounding knowledge accelerator. |
/handoff | End-of-session. Writes a handoff doc for the next session — continuation of current arc, or proposed next pickup if the current arc is wrapping. |
Quick reference by trigger phrase
| User says… | Reach for |
|---|
| "Let's build X" / "Implement Y" | /build |
| "Review my PR" / "Code review" | /temper |
| "Find bugs in this diff" / "Scan this file for defects" | /delve |
| "I have a bug" / "Test is failing" | /debugging |
| "Audit this design" / "Review this plan" | /audit |
| "Check the save system for bugs" | /audit (systemic) or /audit --bugs (+ /delve instance sweep) |
| "Security review" / "Threat model" | /siege |
| "What does X do?" / "How does this codebase work?" | /recon |
| "What should I refactor?" | /prospector |
| "Run quality gate on this" | /quality-gate |
| "Upgrade React to 19" / "Remove deprecated APIs" | /migrate |
| "I'm done, what's next?" | /finish |
| "Write a retrospective" | /forge |
| "End of session, write a handoff" | /handoff |
Pipelines (composition)
The big skills compose. The most common pipelines:
- Full feature:
/build is the canonical one. Internally runs /design → /planning → execute → /temper per task → /inquisitor → /quality-gate → /finish.
- Standalone design + plan:
/design produces a doc → user reviews → /planning produces a plan → execute manually or feed to /build.
- Post-merge reflection:
/forge after a significant arc; /handoff at session boundary.
- Recon-first:
/recon before /build or /design when the codebase is unfamiliar.
What's not in this list (intentionally)
Crucible has ~52 skills; this list curates ~15. Skills omitted here are either:
- Sub-skills dispatched by orchestrators (e.g.,
red-team, inquisitor, adversarial-tester, checkpoint, verify, assay, innovate, cartographer-skill) — invoked indirectly, not part of the user-facing menu.
- Domain-specific (e.g.,
mock-to-unity, ui-verify, mockup-builder) — load when their domain triggers.
- Utility / meta (e.g.,
skill-creator, stocktake, recall, replay, worktree, parallel, merge-pr, distill, test-coverage, review-feedback, consensus, getting-started, project-init, test-driven-development) — domain knowledge or workflow plumbing rather than direct-invocation commands.
Run /skills (Claude Code built-in) for the full catalog.
See also
README.md — top-level pitch, install, what-you-get bulletsdocs/architecture.md — how the orchestrators composedocs/skills.md — full 52-skill catalog with eval deltas
