context-status

name	context-status
description	Read side of the consigliere workspace: answer a manager's natural-language question ('how's payments?', 'what's blocked on checkout-revamp?', 'who owns X?') from the materialized state — grounded, read-only, with source citations and the consigliere lens. Says 'not recorded' rather than inventing; never writes. Manual; consigliere bundle.
triggers	{"keywords":["context status","how's","what's blocked","status of","consult my workspace","what do we know about"]}

Context Status

Overview

digest-source fills the workspace; context-status reads it. Two weeks after a meeting the manager asks "how's payments? what's blocked?" and wants a grounded answer assembled from the materialized state — not a re-read of every transcript. This skill answers natural-language questions over the workspace, read-only and strictly grounded. It is the consult half; capture is digest-source, and the heuristics loop is playbook-review.

When to Engage

Manual, operator-run. Engage when the manager asks about the current state of a context or project — status, blockers, owners, decisions, the system map, or the political risk. Not auto-invoked.

Invocation

/octopus:context-status "<natural-language question>"
# or a path: /octopus:context-status payments

Step 1 — Resolve workspace (read-only)

Read the consigliere.workspace config key. If it is unset, refuse and point the manager to /octopus:consigliere-bootstrap. All reads stay within the resolved workspace — this skill reuses the consigliere-bootstrap write-guard as a read boundary and never writes anything.

Step 2 — Interpret the question + route

Map the question to a target — a context path or a project — from the question text and the existing contexts/ tree and projects/*/meta.yml. When the target is ambiguous, show what you resolved and let the manager correct it. Ambiguity → ask, never guess (the same routing discipline as digest-source).

Step 3 — Read the materialized state

Read the target node's state.md — the six fixed sections (Status by workstream, Blockers, Decisions, System & area map, Actions, Political risk). A context's state.md carries fan-out pointer lines to the projects it touches; follow a pointer into a project's state.md only when the question needs the detail. Read journal.md only when the question is about history ("when did X get blocked?"). Read no more than the question requires.

Step 4 — Answer, grounded, with the consigliere lens

Answer concisely, leading with exactly what was asked (status, blocker, owner, risk). Every claim carries its provenance — the state.md section or the (src: …) anchor behind it. Apply the consigliere role's lens: surface a relevant political risk or an approved heuristic ("owner tends to delay → consider a FUP") as a grounded note, never as invented fact.

Strict grounding (reuses audit-grounding): answer only from the recorded state, journal, and sources. If the answer is not recorded, say so plainly and suggest running /octopus:digest-source on the relevant input — do not guess, and do not fill the gap from outside the workspace.

Anti-patterns

• Answering beyond the recorded state — say "not recorded" instead of inventing.
• Writing anything — this skill is strictly read-only.
• Guessing the target on an ambiguous question instead of asking.
• Reading every file when the question only needs one state.md.

Related

• Depends on consigliere-bootstrap (the workspace + write-guard) and the state digest-source writes.
• Reuses audit-grounding and applies the consigliere role.
• Sibling: playbook-review owns the heuristics loop this skill applies from.