the inverse of an affordance, and deliberately so: affordance body always compiled in, description never sent skill description always compiled in, body read on demand an affordance is a fact about the surface — short, and every conversation needs it. a skill is reference material that is dead weight in a conversation about something else. so what reaches the prompt is the index: name, when to reach for it, and the path. measured on the first one: 608 characters in the prompt against 6,070 bytes left on disk. no protocol. progressive disclosure is normally a harness feature — claude code discovers .claude/skills, opencode has its own conventions, the next one will have a third — and pointing at a file needs none of that, because every harness worth running can already read a file. the cost is that the agent has to CHOOSE to open it, which is what the description is for and why a vague one makes a skill useless rather than merely verbose. the first skill is the email database, moved out of tools/email-db/TOOL.md where NOTHING has been reading it: the loader parses frontmatter and discards the body, so that schema and its eight queries have never reached any claude code session. written for pi, inert since pi left. it carries two things the schema alone gets wrong, both measured against the real 19,097-message database rather than copied from the old doc: `read` is populated on 93 rows, so the documented unread query returns essentially the whole mailbox; and `labels` is a comma-separated string with real values like `updates,inbox`, so `labels = 'inbox'` misses most of the inbox. plugins can ship skills, published and unpublished on install like affordances and notification catalogues. flat namespace unlike those two — a skill's directory name is the path an agent reads, and `officerdev/gitea/SKILL.md` in a prompt is noise. a skill has no authority to usurp, so nothing needs protecting. wired to claude code. opencode still gets NOTHING — its runner sends no system prompt at all, and session create takes only a directory. that needs its own channel and a guess would be worse than the gap.
The documentation, triaged
2026-08-13. A map of what is in here, what it is for, and what should happen to it. Made because there are 42 documents and 13,000 lines, and no way to tell from the filenames which describe the system as it is and which are a record of an afternoon in July.
How much I verified: the classifications below are from filenames, status lines, and greps for things that changed on 2026-08-13. Where I actually read the document or checked the code, it says so. The rest is a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict.
Living — these describe the system and must stay true
| doc | state |
|---|---|
working-on-officer.md |
updated 2026-08-13. Operational guide. |
secret-store.md |
updated 2026-08-13. Built; rotation still open. |
install-variants.md |
new. The branch tree, for discussion. |
http-secure-context-audit.md |
new. What breaks over plain http. |
install-container-testing.md |
new. First container pass and its findings. |
per-user-linux-accounts.md |
partly updated. OFFICER_OS_USERS is gone; check the rest. |
navigation-audit.md |
authoritative on routing. Unverified against tonight's route removals. |
workspace-panels.md + workspace-panel-todo.md |
the panel framework. 1,300 lines combined — likely the biggest cleanup here. |
agent-coordination.md |
the north star for panel work. |
deprovision-os-account.md |
implemented; the 'disabled' stage it may mention was deleted tonight. |
Stale — describe things that changed on 2026-08-13
Each of these references something that no longer exists. Not yet corrected.
sidecar-topology.md— "ecosystem.config.cjs is the source of truth". It is generated now, and holds six processes.sidecar-app-store.md— derives the catalogue fromfull − light. Those files are gone, andcatalogue.test.tswas rewritten.sidecar-bootstrapping.md— "20 PM2 entries, 18 sidecar dirs". Six entries now.mobile-api-keys.md— partly corrected; recheck the origin-checking claims.wallet-key-custody.md—VAULT_STORE_KEYis now the per-purposewalletkey.push-notifications.md— "agreed design, 2026-07-31". Notify is a plugin and unmounted.chat-session-lifetime.md,chat-ui-walkthrough.md— referenceofficer-agent, renamed.
Historical — a record of a moment, and should stay one
Do not rewrite these to match today's code. They document how a decision was reached, and editing them destroys the reasoning. If they mislead, add a dated header pointing forward.
sidecar-audit-2026-07.md(1,377 lines)claude-sidecar-isolation.md— records theofficer-claude→officer-agentrename that preceded tonight'sofficer-agent→officer-claude-codeopen-threads-after-per-user-claude.mdtwo-agent-field-report-2026-08-12.mdapi-method-changes-2026-08-06.md
The opencode cluster — nine documents for one migration
opencode-fork-decision · -parity · -api-2-assessment · -phase0-review · -phase1-report ·
-phase1-review · -serve-migration-plan · -serve-path · -testing-checklist
The migration landed — opencode serve is in the sidecar, verified. So
opencode-serve-migration-plan.md saying "Nothing here is implemented" is false.
This is the clearest consolidation candidate in the whole directory: one document recording what was decided and what shipped, replacing nine that describe stages of getting there. I did not do it because it needs reading all nine, and deleting documents unread is not a thing to do at 4am.
The mobile-dav thread — three documents, one conversation
mobile-dav-provisioning · -feedback · -reply. A correspondence. Almost certainly one document.
Unclassified — I have not looked
design-language-interface · file-sync · jobs-unification · mobile-photo-sync-api ·
nextcloud-replacement · agent-git-identity
The plugin split, which affects most of the above
A core install is six processes. Everything else is a plugin, switched off tonight but present on disk. Most documents here were written when the estate was twenty processes and every one of them was simply "there", so they describe availability that no longer holds.
The useful rewrite is usually one line, not a rewrite: say whether the thing described is core or a plugin, and if a plugin, that it is not mounted on a fresh install.