Context Docs
Use when creating, revising, or auditing a README, tutorial, how-to, API or configuration reference, changelog, migration guide, docs site, landing page, example, code comment, working document, or handoff; not for changing code behavior.
Helix
Use when uncertain or inherited work risks unframed experiments or accumulating plans and needs one bounded evidence loop plus a compact checkpoint; not for routine work with clear scope and order.
Skill Guidance
Use when advising on, auditing, or evaluating an agent skill's activation, runtime decisions, references, or standalone packaging; not for creating or editing the target skill.
Screaming Reefs
Use when an authorized change should enforce a documented constraint through names, types, API shape, or structure—for example replacing a warning comment with a checked owner; not when prose must remain the only owner.
Retrospective
Use when an existing solution claims to work and its problem, beneficiary, owner, priority, evidence, or consequential oddities need interrogation; not for contract gating, fixing bugs, forward design, or team-morale retrospectives.
Carry The Load
Use after an engineering outcome or move is selected, before implementation expands, to shape one value-bearing increment with bounded failure; not for choosing the move, multi-cycle planning state, or interrogating a finished claim.
Read The Terrain
Use when the next move is uncertain—an unexplained failure, flaky behavior, an incident, shifting conditions, or a risky decision—and needs one bounded evidence-producing move; not for routine execution with a proven response.
Verify Complex Artifacts
Use for a final verification, review, QA pass, or readiness gate on a finished multi-file artifact before handoff, merge, publication, deployment, or delivery; not for one routine check.
Compass
Use when establishing, exploring, maintaining, or consulting a semantic architecture chart for non-local work—its roots, levels, viewports, code coordinates, or chart-vs-code disagreements; not for reader-facing docs or implementing code.