Flashlight

A wayfinder map charts a large effort as decision tickets on the issue tracker, wrapped in fog. Its frontier — the open, unblocked, unclaimed tickets — advances in its own order.

A flashlight is the human's beam. They point it at one direction, and this session walks in now, out of frontier order, to learn what lies that way.

/flashlight . Ask for the map when the invocation omits it. Shine one beam per session.

Where the map, its child tickets, blocking edges, claims and the frontier query physically live is tracker-specific. Consult the tracker doc's "Wayfinding operations" section for how this repo expresses each one. Default to the local-markdown tracker when no tracker doc is present.

Two beams

Read ``, and ask one question: is the subject the map, or the territory?

• Territory — the work itself. "Can we use SQLite for the queue?" → [Shine into the territory](#shine-into-the-territory).
• Map — the chart you already drew: what to focus on, what to defer, what no longer belongs. "We have too many open tickets — what should we focus on?" → [Redraw the map](#redraw-the-map).

Ask the human to choose when the request reads both ways.

Shine into the territory

The beam becomes one ad-hoc ticket, and leaves the same trail as any ticket the map was charted with.

1. Aim the beam

Load the map — Destination, Notes, Decisions so far — and the open tickets bearing on the direction. Where an open ticket already asks this question, work that one instead: claim it, and continue from step 4.

Infer the type from the request:

| Type | Use it for | Resolve with | | --- | --- | --- | | Grilling (HITL) | a decision to settle by conversation — the default | /grilling and /domain-modeling | | Research (AFK) | a fact from outside this working directory | a /research subagent | | Prototype (HITL) | "how should it look, how should it behave", answered by a cheap concrete artifact | /prototype; /grill-design for an unsettled frontend look | | Task (HITL or AFK) | manual work that unblocks a decision | the agent alone where it can; otherwise a precise checklist for the human |

On a HITL type the human answers their own questions — this session asks and records. An AFK type runs alone.

Done when the type is chosen and the map's Destination is in hand.

2. Zoom out

Brief the human: the type in bold, what this session is about to do, and where the direction sits on the map.

Done when the human has seen the type before any ticket exists.

3. Create and claim the ticket

Create a child issue of the map titled Flashlight: , carrying the verbatim ` as its question and the wayfinder:` label. It takes no blocking edges — it is born and closed inside this session.

Claim it — assign it to the dev driving the map — before the work starts.

Done when the ticket exists, carries its type, and shows an assignee.

4. Work the ticket

Resolve it as a ticket of its type. Invoke the skills the map's ## Notes names, plus the type's own. Zoom into any related or closed ticket on demand.

Done when the question has an answer its type can support.

5. Record and adjust the map

• Post the answer as a resolution comment, then close the ticket.
• Append one line to Decisions so far: the ticket name, its link, and a one-line gist of the answer.
• Create the tickets the answer made specifiable, and clear each graduated patch from Not yet specified.
• Rule out of scope whatever the answer put past the destination: close it, and leave one line in Out of scope.

Done when the ticket is closed and every section the answer touched carries its line.

Redraw the map

The beam falls on the chart itself. This mode creates no ticket — the comments it leaves on the tickets it touches are the record.

1. Read the whole chart

Load the map and every open ticket: question, type, blockers, assignee.

Done when each open ticket is accounted for, the claimed ones included.

2. Propose

Show the human one change list, and wait for their approval. Name every edit, and why it earns its place.

Done when the human has approved the list.

3. Apply

| Verb | What it does | | --- | --- | | Create | a new ticket — then wire its edges in a second pass, because issues need ids before they can reference each other | | Update | a ticket's question | | Re-order | map order decides frontier order, so this is how you prioritise | | Re-wire | a ticket blocked by an open ticket leaves the frontier and returns when that blocker closes, so this is how you defer | | Rule out of scope | close it, and leave one line in Out of scope: the gist, and why it sits past the destination | | Cancel | for a duplicate or a mistake. Close it, and leave one line in Decisions so far marked cancelled, carrying the reason |

Comment on every ticket you touch, saying what happened and why.

A ticket with an assignee is claimed: a live session is working it right now. Leave its state as it is, and comment on it, so that session learns what changed.

Done when every approved edit is applied, and every touched ticket carries its comment.

Source & license

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

• Author: will-ness-ai
• Source: will-ness-ai/skills
• License: MIT

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