Use instead of chaining 3+ Bash calls, grep/cat/find pipelines, or any multi-step data processing. This skill should be used when the user asks to "start a scratchpad", "use the REPL", "scratchpad mode", "persistent Python session", or when a task involves exploration, analysis, or file processing that would benefit from composing operations in code rather than making individual tool calls. It creates a persistent Python REPL via tmux where variables survive across turns and only print() output enters context — a context-efficient alternative to Bash for data-heavy work.
2026-03-22