issue-context

name	issue-context
version	2026.07.27@6dc7d1d
user-invocable	false
description	Contract for target-path.sh and claude-work-root.sh, the shell scripts that resolve .claude-work/ file paths from the current git branch. Referenced by name from /scratchpad, /question, /commit-msg; not auto-consulted.
allowed-tools	Bash(*/skills/issue-context/target-path.sh *), Bash(*/skills/issue-context/claude-work-root.sh *)

Issue Context

All deterministic logic for "where should this file go?" lives in the scripts. Skills that write numbered working files call target-path.sh; skills that only need the .claude-work/ root directory call claude-work-root.sh.

Script: target-path.sh

Script contract

~/.claude/skills/issue-context/target-path.sh --type <scratchpads|questions|commit-msgs|notes> --description "<text>" [--ext txt]

The script reads the current branch, extracts the issue ID (numeric prefix of the segment after issues/ when applicable, full segment otherwise, empty on non-issue branches), slugifies the description, runs auto-number.sh internally, creates the target directory, and prints the absolute file path on stdout.

• On issues/<ID> branches: absolute path ending in .claude-work/issues/<ID>/<type>/NNNN-<slug>.<ext>
• Everywhere else: absolute path ending in .claude-work/<type>/NNNN-<slug>.<ext>

Script: claude-work-root.sh

~/.claude/skills/issue-context/claude-work-root.sh

Returns the absolute path to the .claude-work/ root directory, taking git worktrees into account. In the primary checkout .claude-work/ lives at --show-toplevel (same as before). In a linked worktree (detected by comparing --git-dir against --git-common-dir), .claude-work/ lives at the main checkout root so all worktrees share a single copy.

The script outputs an absolute path on stdout (e.g., /Users/x/project/.claude-work). The directory is NOT created by this script — callers handle that.

Skills that need the .claude-work/ root but don't use target-path.sh (like /note and /breadcrumb) call this script directly to get the base directory, then append their subdirectory and filename.

Breadcrumbs

/breadcrumb writes to a single file per issue (not a numbered sequence), so it does not use target-path.sh. It calls claude-work-root.sh to get the base directory, then writes to <base>/issues/<ID>/breadcrumb.md or <base>/breadcrumb-<slug>.md.

History

Before the refactor in issues/120, this file contained ~118 lines of Markdown that restated the branch-parsing rules in prose, and those same rules were also inlined into /scratchpad, /question, and /commit-msg. The audit concluded that deterministic logic belongs in a shell script (the pattern set by /auto-number and /ensure-gitignore), not in Markdown auto-consulted for every file-creation task. This file is now a pointer to the script.