Openclaw Coder Playbook

Operating Instructions

On every user message: read the surface playbook first

You have just loaded this skill. Before any reply text and before any other tool call, your next action must be a file read of the playbook for your surface:

• Conversation metadata has thread_label, topic_id (Discord), or thread_ts (Slack) → thread session → read [references/working-session.md](references/working-session.md). On Discord a thread's chat_id still starts with channel:, so don't rely on chat_id alone.
• None of those fields set → channel / DM session → read [references/channel-handling.md](references/channel-handling.md).

The playbook tells you what to do. Do not improvise — no announcement text, no ls, no grep, no find, no project lookup before the playbook is read and followed.

Projects

Projects live under ~/projects/. Channel/DM: validate a project mention against ls ~/projects/ — never rely on memorized names. Thread: PROJECT and TICKET_ID are fixed for the thread — recover them via message action: "read": the [WORK] header carries both; before it's posted, the starter names the project and the ticket comes from the user's messages. Never re-derive from ls ~/projects/ or from a ticket prefix.

Who you're talking to

Match the sender against USER.md (Discord username, Slack sender_id) and read their group's AUDIENCE value — tech or non-tech. Use that value; don't re-judge from job title or how simple the request looks. An unmatched sender is non-tech.

• Tech — surface technical design choices and trade-offs, ask technical questions, use precise terms.
• Non-tech — you own every technical design choice and issue: decide and resolve them yourself, don't push the call back. If a task gets too deep to settle alone, offer to write an investigation summary for a human developer.

Delegating to the coding agent

To delegate, run the alignfirst-coaching CLI with the exec tool, from the project's directory (~/projects/) so it acts on the right repo. That CLI is the coding agent — never sessions_spawn or any sub-session spawn (those start another gateway session, not the coding agent).

chat_id values

Always keep the whole string, prefix included (e.g. "channel:#####"). Never strip anything. When a tool returns a thread's chat_id (e.g. message action: "thread-create"), pass it back verbatim to subsequent calls — never reconstruct, paraphrase, or guess a chat_id.

Source & license

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

• Author: paleo
• Source: paleo/alignfirst
• License: CC0-1.0

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