escapement

Use when facing 2+ independent tasks that can be worked on without shared state or sequential dependencies

Use when adding or modifying a hook, gate, denial/permission message, or waiver/exemption/override path; when deciding whether to keep, revise, or retire a rule or gate; or when auditing a gate or triaging a complaint that a gate causes friction. The implementation manual for building gates that are enabling not coercive — escape paths, persistent signal, value-not-presence validation, with audit-validated reference designs and anti-patterns.

Implement tasks from an OpenSpec change. Use when the user wants to start implementing, continue implementation, or work through tasks.

Archive a completed change in the experimental workflow. Use when the user wants to finalize and archive a change after implementation is complete.

Enter explore mode - a thinking partner for exploring ideas, investigating problems, and clarifying requirements. Use when the user wants to think through something before or during a change.

Propose a new change with all artifacts generated in one step. Use when the user wants to quickly describe what they want to build and get a complete proposal with design, specs, and tasks ready for implementation.

Use when the user mentions beads, bead, bd, or asks to execute/work on/run/start a bead task or issue (e.g. "execute bead cake-4cq.1.1", "work on task X", "run the beads tasks", "start bead work"). Reads tasks from bd ready, dispatches subagents, writes status back to beads.

Use when executing implementation plans with independent tasks in the current session

Use whenever you set out to understand or research an UNFAMILIAR external domain — building something is NOT required (also preparing for a decision or meeting, forming a position, an investigation, or designing) — when getting the field's framing right matters and a load-bearing distinction hinges on terminology you don't command (e.g. entitlement vs ownership, queue vs group, per-system vs per-object). A single living "vocab-scout" recovers the field's real terminology FIRST; then narrow research searches USING those terms, DELEGATING the fan-out to the deep-research skill. Invoke it directly (standalone) OR via the brainstorming/discovery/agent-teams pointers — it is a front door, not only a sub-step. Thin wrapper, not a second research route. Do NOT use for familiar domains, codebase/org-internal questions, urgent one-fact lookups, or topics with no established external literature.

Use when the user mentions beads, bead, bd, or asks to execute/work on/run/start a bead task or issue (e.g. "execute bead cake-4cq.1.1", "work on task X", "run the beads tasks", "start bead work"). Reads tasks from bd ready, dispatches subagents, writes status back to beads.

Enhanced brainstorming — challenges whether work should be done at all, rotates creative lenses to fight semantic clustering, and routes to /discovery or work-breakdown based on complexity.

Pre-design-doc discovery skill. Fills the gap between "we should build X" and "here is the design doc." Produces genuine thinking through adversarial questions, not checkbox compliance. Requires a confirmed problem framing as input (Input Gate) — then drafts solutions via a draft-and-react model. Uses OpenSpec as the structured engine underneath — output goes to openspec/changes/{name}/.

Enhanced brainstorming — challenges whether work should be done at all, rotates creative lenses to fight semantic clustering, and routes to /discovery or work-breakdown based on complexity.

Pre-design-doc discovery skill. Fills the gap between "we should build X" and "here is the design doc." Produces genuine thinking through adversarial questions, not checkbox compliance. Requires a confirmed problem framing as input (Input Gate) — then drafts solutions via a draft-and-react model. Uses OpenSpec as the structured engine underneath — output goes to openspec/changes/{name}/.

Use when creating, removing, or listing git worktrees in a project that uses beads (a `.beads/` directory exists), or when `bd` commands fail inside a worktree ("database not found", empty `.beads/`, or a worktree's bd seems to have its own separate issues). Explains why `bd worktree create` is required instead of `git worktree add`, and how to recover a worktree that was created the wrong way.

Translate a validated design (from openspec/changes/ or docs/plans/) into a beads task graph with outcome-based acceptance criteria, failure modes, scope boundaries, and spec traceability via --spec-id. Invoked after the walking skeleton validates assumptions.

Use when implementing, writing tests, modifying tests, reviewing tests, fixing bugs, or changing business logic, reports, data models, APIs, auth, UI flows, jobs, or integrations where tests must prove user or business behavior rather than implementation details.

Unified entry point for feature work. Classifies work type, checks for existing state, pours the right molecule. The user says "build X" and the system handles the rest.