| name | dx-harness |
| description | Developer-experience friction auditing and fixing — slow onboarding, repeated manual setup steps, missing bootstrap/reset/seed scripts, undiscoverable conventions. Audits the repo, scores findings, scaffolds canonical fixes (bootstrap.sh, reset.sh, seed.sh, AGENTS.md, task-runner entries), then verifies the harness end-to-end in a scratch worktree against a 60-second time-to-first-commit target. Triggers on phrases like "audit dx", "fix dev friction", "time to first commit", "set up the harness", "I keep doing X manually", "every time I reset the db I have to...", and on new-repo bootstrapping. Even if the user doesn't say "DX" — if they describe a repeated manual chore in their dev loop, this skill applies. |
DX Harness
Audits, scaffolds, and maintains the developer-experience harness of a repository. The harness is the meta-tooling that makes a dev loop fast: one-command bootstrap, one-command reset, one-command seed, discoverable conventions, agent-friendly entry points.
This skill exists because dev-experience attrition is real: harnesses rot, manual steps creep back in, conventions drift, and the cost is paid in micro-friction every day. The skill detects attrition systematically and applies canonical fixes.
When to Apply
Trigger this skill when:
- A user describes a repeated manual chore ("every time I reset the db I have to re-register", "I always run these three commands before working")
- A user mentions slow onboarding or asks "how do I get this running"
- A new repo is being bootstrapped and needs a harness from day one
- A user explicitly asks to audit DX or measure time-to-first-commit (TTFC)
- A user asks to fix missing bootstrap/reset/seed scripts or AGENTS.md
- A periodic maintenance pass is needed (e.g., after a release, after onboarding a new engineer)
Workflow Overview
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1. DISCOVER scripts/discover.sh → repo-fingerprint │
│ 2. AUDIT scripts/audit.sh → dx-audit.json │
│ 3. PRIORITIZE scripts/prioritize.sh → ranked findings │
│ 4. SCAFFOLD scripts/scaffold-*.sh → scratch dir │
│ 5. CONFIRM show diff to user; user picks what to apply│
│ 6. VERIFY scripts/verify.sh → assertions + timing │
│ 7. TRACK scripts/track-attrition.sh → audit log │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘