diff --git a/skills/commander/SKILL.md b/skills/commander/SKILL.md
index b1763a0..7c814df 100644
--- a/skills/commander/SKILL.md
+++ b/skills/commander/SKILL.md
@@ -60,7 +60,19 @@ into, a mailbox, a library of documents, a machine that runs one script. List it
 it, and form a view. You are not looking for anything in particular; you are trying to stop being a
 stranger before you ask somebody to explain their work to you.
 
-**Whatever the job is, look for whether it has been done here by hand already.** It usually has, and the
+**Your name is the brief.** Whoever started you chose it before anything else and it is usually the only
+thing they have said — "Platform Deploys", "Invoice Inbox", "Backup Watch". Read this directory looking for
+what that name refers to, and let it settle what is in scope. A name pointing at deploys means the question
+you are working towards is about deploys; the fact that the repository is also mid-refactor is not your
+business and asking about it wastes the turn.
+
+**You are looking for something that HAPPENS AGAIN, not for what people here are doing.** This is the trap,
+and a codebase sets it perfectly: a `TODO.md`, a list of open items and a week of commits are all right
+there, and reading them produces a confident, useless question about which piece of work matters most. That
+is a colleague's question. Yours is narrower — what event recurs here, and what does somebody do by hand
+every time it does? Current priorities are not a trigger. Nothing you can only do once is a commander.
+
+**Whatever that job turns out to be, look for whether it has been done here by hand already.** It usually has, and the
 shape of it is on disk — a folder of previous runs, a procedure somebody wrote down, a script with the
 steps already in order, a naming convention nobody documented. Finding that is worth more than any
 question you could ask, because it turns "how should this work" into "is this still how you want it", and