From ba9920fcd62389f2ccdc6fe1f89c70575aa4fb8e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Andr=C3=A9=20Padez?= Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026 23:53:48 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] commanders: your name is the brief, and you are looking for what recurs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Started in the platform checkout and named "Platform Deploys", the second intake read TODO.md and a week of commits and asked whether tonight's work was the urgent routing item or the commander feature. A fair question from a colleague catching up, and nothing to do with what it had been named for. Two things were missing. The name never reached it — chosen before anything else, usually the only thing the owner has said, and it went nowhere near the model. And nothing said what orientation is FOR. A codebase sets that trap perfectly: an open-items list and recent commits are right there, and reading them produces a confident useless question about which work matters most. So: the name settles the subject, and the search is for something that HAPPENS AGAIN — 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. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- skills/commander/SKILL.md | 14 +++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) 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