| name | halmos |
| description | Sequential cross-chapter linkage review. Use when drafting chapter N to audit how it builds on chapters 1..N-1 — concept linkage, handoff seams, and spiral coherence in Paul Halmos's sense. Emits halmos-review.md + halmos-verdict.json and soft-gates the chapter via halmos_critical_count == 0. Do NOT use for logical entailment (book-thesis) or persona review (review-conductor). |
| license | MIT |
| metadata | {"author":"charles-hoskinson","version":"0.1.0","category":"writing","workspace-aware":true} |
halmos
Named for Paul Halmos, whose How to Write Mathematics prescribes the spiral method:
each new part recalls and refines what came before, so the reader is always prepared.
halmos enforces that spiral across chapters.
Public surface (skill_api.py)
run_halmos(workspace, chapter_id, dispatcher) — the entrypoint; chains the four below.build_concept_ledger(workspace) — halmos/concepts.jsonl.build_linkage(workspace, chapter_id) — halmos/linkage/ch-NN.json (references inventory, seam, broken-seam flag).dispatch_halmos_review(workspace, chapter_id, dispatcher) — Halmos-reviewer subagent.aggregate_halmos(...) — chapters/drafts/<id>/{halmos-review.md, halmos-verdict.json}.
The dispatcher is caller-provided: in production it issues a Task-tool call running
references/halmos-doctrine.md; in tests it returns a canned findings dict.
What it checks (the Halmos doctrine)
Deterministic: broken-seam (the N-1 close shares no salient term with the N open).
Agent (via references/halmos-doctrine.md): orphan-reference, continuity-gap, missed-recall,
spiral-stall, terminology-drift, premature-definition, and a spiral_coherence verdict.
The deterministic layer cannot decide reference-before-introduction (a concept appearing in N
has intro_n <= N by construction), so the agent owns it, using the references/introduces
inventory and a per-prior-chapter introduced-concepts digest.
Gate
Add - halmos_critical_count == 0 to a chapter contract's acceptance_tests. book-compose's
chapter_contract_check reads chapters/drafts/<id>/halmos-verdict.json.
Boundaries
Reads chapters/drafts, contracts, claims, thesis. Writes halmos/ and the two per-chapter
files only. No network.
