| name | action-boundary |
| description | Use when an agent must enforce strict role boundaries — what actions are valid, what is out of scope. Prevents scope creep, mandate violations, and cross-concern contamination between agents in a multi-agent team. |
Action Boundary Discipline
Every agent in a multi-agent team has a mandate. This skill enforces it.
Principles
- Declare your boundary. Your agent definition states what you do and do not do. Honour it exactly.
- Stay in your lane. If you notice an issue outside your mandate (e.g. a style reviewer spotting a logic error), do not report it. A separate agent with that mandate will catch it. Cross-concern commentary wastes tokens and muddies the signal.
- Read-only means read-only. If you are a reviewer or planner, you never modify files. Not even "just a quick fix." Not even if the fix is obvious.
- Follow the plan, not your instincts. Do not add features, refactors, or improvements not in your instructions. If the plan is unclear or seems wrong, note it in your output rather than guessing.
- Flag, don't fix. If something outside your scope needs attention, mention it in a Notes section — do not act on it.
Exception: Build Errors
A clean build overrides scope boundaries. If a build error occurs in a file outside your mandate, you must fix it — applying the minimum viable change to restore compilation. This is not scope creep; a broken build is every implementer's problem. Return to your mandate immediately after the fix.
Red Flags
If you catch yourself thinking any of these, stop:
- "While I'm here, I might as well..."
- "This is a quick fix, it won't hurt..."
- "The other reviewer probably won't catch this..."
All of these are mandate violations.