H4tcher Capability Discover

> Last updated: 2026-06-06

Capability Discover (Maintainer, Read-Only)

Investigative preset. Run first when scoping any add / refactor / remove. Produces a structured report; writes no files in the repo. Workspace files under .audit-workspace/ are allowed for T2/T3 sub-agent slices.

Step 0: Triage

Classify the request before any scan:

• T1 — single artifact type in scope (e.g., "is there already an agent for X?"). Inline scan; skip Step 4.
• T2 — 2-3 artifact types or one cross-reference dimension. 3 parallel sub-agents per Step 4.
• T3 — multi-pillar surface (e.g., touches agents + adapters + governance). 3 parallel sub-agents per Step 4 plus pillar-gap analysis.

Record the tier in the Step 7 report header.

Step 1: Preflight

1. Confirm clean working tree: git status --short returns empty.
2. Cache governance lean limits from governance/CONSTITUTION.md §2 P5.
3. Resolve target artifact type(s) from the prompt: agent, skill, rule, command, hook, adapter, pipeline module, governance file.
4. Note current branch: git branch --show-current.

Step 2: Discover / Duplication Scan

1. Read governance/inventory.json — extract counts and ids for each artifact directory.
2. Grep across the canonical content surface for the target intent's keywords:

``bash grep -RIn --include='*.md' '\|' \ agents/ skills/ rules/ commands/ hooks/ \ checks/ prompts/ github-agents/ \ src/adapters/ src/content/ ``

1. Cross-check candidates against the D16.3 overlap criteria in governance/audit/domains/D16-compound-system.md (definition + add-vs-remove bias check). Record each candidate's overlap dimension (purpose / scope / pillar / referenced files) and a rough percentage estimate.
2. Count inbound cross-references for each candidate via grep -RIn "" across the same surface plus governance/, docs/, docs-site/, tests/, CLAUDE.md, README.md, CHANGELOG.md.

Step 3: Web Research

Per agents/shared/rigor-contract.md §"Web Research Mandate": ≥2 independent sources, trust tier (official-docs > peer-reviewed > vendor-note > independent-analysis > blog-post), recency window (≤90 days for CVE, ≤12 months for vendor docs, ≤36 months for peer-reviewed). Sources recorded in Step 7. Skip when no empirical claim is being investigated (most pure-overlap scans).

Step 4: Sub-Agent Dispatch (T2 / T3 only)

Spawn 3 parallel Task sub-agents. Slice the surface so file scopes are disjoint:

| Slot | Scope | Output | |------|-------|--------| | A | agents/, skills/ | .audit-workspace/capability-discover-a.md | | B | commands/, hooks/, rules/ | .audit-workspace/capability-discover-b.md | | C | src/adapters/, src/content/ | .audit-workspace/capability-discover-c.md |

Each sub-agent prompt MUST include: discovery slice from Step 2, the h4tcher-development context block (pillar test, lean thresholds, anti-slop wordlist ref, commit format) modeled on .claude/skills/h4tcher-pr-resolve/SKILL.md, the confidence-with-basis requirement from the rigor contract, and an explicit "no branches, no commits, no PRs, read-only" guardrail. T1 skips this step entirely.

Fan-out is task-derived (P8 B2): 0 sub-agents on T1, 3 on T2/T3. Token cost never serializes independent work (.claude/rules/fan-out-discipline.md Cost-dominance clause). Emit sub_agents_spawned: { count, rationale } in your output (the Sub-agents field of the Step 7 report).

Step 5: Cross-Skill Delegation

None. This preset is purely investigative — no delegation to h4tcher-content-author, h4tcher-adapter-author, or h4tcher-domain-author. The Step 7 report's "recommended next preset" field tells the maintainer which lifecycle preset to invoke next.

Step 6: Governance Gates (light)

1. Re-read the report draft; remove any banned anti-slop phrase before emission (wordlist mirrored in CLAUDE.md and .claude/rules/anti-slop-enforcement.md).
2. wc -l the rendered report — hard ceiling 150 lines (target 80).
3. Verify every duplication candidate cites a concrete file path (with line number when relevant).
4. Skip npm run validate / npm test — this preset writes nothing to the repo.

Step 7: Output (Capability Discovery Report)

Emit in chat using this exact template:

Capability Discovery Report
---------------------------
Tier: T1 | T2 | T3
Target intent: 
Candidate types: 
Pillar(s) served: P[, P, ...]

Duplication candidates (K):
   —  — 
  ...

Cross-reference impact: 
Pillar coverage delta: 
Sub-agents: count=, rationale=

Recommended next preset: 

Sources (if Step 3 ran): 
Confidence: high | medium | low — 

No files written to the repo; workspace slices remain under .audit-workspace/.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: hatch3r
• Source: hatch3r/hatch3r
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://docs.hatch3r.com

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.