SKILL.md
about 3,500 tokens- Matt Pocock's skills
- greenline
---
name: "wayfinder"
description: "Plan a huge chunk of work (more than one agent session can hold) as a shared map of decision tickets in a plan directory's map.md, and resolve them one at a time until the way to the destination is clear."
---
wayfinder is the start for a decision space too large for one session, spanning more than one context: it charts that space as the map of a plan directory, and works it down until the way is clear. The map belongs to one planning change: propose its mode, careful, and wait, as AGENTS.md says for work that will be split, open its record with a `## start` section naming wayfinder and its front matter's `plan:` naming the plan directory, and chart and work the map as its frame step, which spans the sessions the map needs; at every stop the record's "next" line names the frontier item that resumes it. A single design that needs stress-testing is one change's frame; a settled compact change needs no map. The map's decision tickets are checklist items in `map.md`, never the plan's tickets: they become delivery work only through the plan step's `tickets.md` once the way is clear. The methods a ticket needs, frame's interview and its research and prototype references, are loaded through the harness's skill mechanism; when it has none, read the installed SKILL.md and its reference files.
A loose idea has arrived, too big for one agent session, and wrapped in fog: the way from here to the **destination** isn't visible yet. Wayfinding is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a **shared map** in the plan directory's `map.md`, then works its **decision tickets** (questions whose resolution is a decision, not slices of a build to execute) one at a time until the route is clear.
The destination varies per effort, and naming it is the first act of charting: it shapes every ticket. It might be a spec to hand off and iterate on, a decision to lock before planning starts, or a change made in place like a data-structure migration. The map is domain-agnostic: engineering work, course content, whatever fits the shape.
## Plan, don't do
Wayfinder is **planning** by default: each ticket resolves a decision, and the map is done when the way is clear, with nothing left to decide before someone goes and does the thing. The pull to just do the work is usually the signal you've reached the edge of the map and it's time to hand off. An effort can override this in its **Notes**, carrying execution into the map itself, but absent that, produce decisions, not deliverables.
Greenline's paths and commands for this skill stand on its references page, [references/greenline.md](references/greenline.md): read it when the work lands in the workspace. When the way is clear, mark the map complete and hand off to the planning change's plan step, which reads the resolved decisions into the plan directory's `spec.md` and `tickets.md`; a now-compact effort needs no tickets: its plan section carries it, the map, its decisions and its research move into the planning change's folder, the frame section's links follow them, `plan:` leaves the record's front matter, and the plan directory is removed, since a plan directory exists only when the plan step splits the work into tickets.
## Refer by name
Every ticket has a **name**: the bolded label on its checklist item. In everything the human reads (narration, the map's Decisions-so-far), refer to it by that name, never by a bare number or slug. A wall of `#42, #43, #44` is illegible; names read at a glance.
## The Map
The map is one file, the plan directory's map, the canonical artifact. Its tickets are checklist items inside it.
The map is an **index**, not a store. It lists the decisions made and points at the artifacts that hold their detail; a decision lives in exactly one place, its entry in the plan directory's `decisions.md` or a note under its `research/`, so the map never restates it, only gists it and links.
### The map body
The whole map at low resolution, loaded once per session, tickets included: the open ones are the unchecked items under **Tickets**.
```markdown
## Destination
<what reaching the end of this map looks like: the spec, decision, or change this effort is finding its way to. One or two lines; every session orients to it before choosing a ticket.>
## Notes
<domain; skills every session should consult; standing preferences for this effort>
## Decisions so far
<!-- the index: one line per closed ticket, enough to judge relevance, then zoom the link for the detail the ticket holds -->
- [<closed ticket title>](link): <one-line gist of the answer>
## Not yet specified
<!-- see "Fog of war": in-scope fog you can't ticket yet; graduates as the frontier advances -->
## Out of scope
<!-- see "Out of scope": work ruled beyond the destination; closed, never graduates -->
```
### Tickets
Each ticket is a **checklist item** under the map's **Tickets** section; its bolded name is its identity. The item states the question, sized to one 100K token agent session:
```markdown
- [ ] **<name>** (`<type>`): <the decision or investigation this ticket resolves> after: <name>, <name> [claimed: <session>]
```
A session **claims** a ticket by writing its name beside the item, **first**, before any work, so a later session sees it taken. That name _is_ the claim: an open item with no name beside it is unclaimed.
Blocking is item prose: `after: <name>, <name>`, naming the tickets this one waits on. A ticket is **unblocked** when every ticket it names is checked; the **frontier** is the first open, unblocked, unclaimed item, the edge of the known.
The answer isn't part of the item; it's recorded on resolution (see [Work through the map](#work-through-the-map)). Assets created while resolving a ticket are linked from the item, not pasted in.
## Ticket Types
Every ticket is either **HITL** (human in the loop, worked _with_ a human who speaks for themselves) or **AFK**, driven by the agent alone. A HITL ticket only resolves through that live exchange; the agent never stands in for the human's side of it (a grilling agent that answers its own questions has broken this).
- **Research** (AFK): Reading documentation, third-party APIs, or local resources like knowledge bases to surface a fact a decision waits on. Resolved by reading the sources as frame's research reference says, yourself or through one agent the harness's delegation starts, one research ticket after another. Use when knowledge outside the current working directory is required.
- **Prototype** (HITL): Raise the fidelity of the discussion by making a cheap, rough, concrete artifact to react to (an outline, a rough take, a stub, or UI/logic code) by loading frame's prototype reference. Links the prototype as an asset. Use when "how should it look" or "how should it behave" is the key question.
- **Grilling** (HITL): Conversation. The default case. Always load frame, whose interview settles the domain's terms as it goes.
- **Task** (HITL or AFK): Manual work that must happen before a _decision_ can be made: nothing to decide, prototype, or research, but the discussion is blocked until it's done. Signing up for a service so its API can be judged, provisioning access, moving data so its shape can be seen. This is the one type that _does_ rather than decides, and it earns its place by unblocking a decision, not by delivering the destination. The agent drives it alone where it can (AFK); otherwise it hands the human a precise checklist (HITL). Resolved when the work is done; the answer records what was done and any resulting facts (credentials location, new URLs, row counts) later tickets depend on.
## Fog of war
The map is _deliberately_ incomplete: don't chart what you can't yet see. Beyond the live tickets lies the **fog of war**: the dim view of decisions and investigations you can tell are coming but can't yet pin down, because they hang on questions still open. Resolving a ticket clears the fog ahead of it, graduating whatever's now specifiable into fresh tickets, one at a time, until the way to the destination is clear and no tickets remain.
The map's **Not yet specified** section is where that dim view is written down: the suspected question, the area to revisit later. It's the undiscovered frontier _toward_ the destination: everything here is in scope, just not sharp enough to ticket. Write as loosely or as fully as the view allows; it doubles as a signpost for collaborators reading where the effort is headed.
**Fog or ticket?** The test is whether you can state the question precisely now, _not_ whether you can answer it now.
- **Ticket when** the question is already sharp, even if it's blocked and you can't act on it yet.
- **Not yet specified when** you can't yet phrase it that sharply. Don't pre-slice the fog into ticket-sized pieces: it's coarser than a ticket, and one patch may graduate into several tickets, or none, once the frontier reaches it.
**Not yet specified** excludes what's already decided (Decisions so far), what's already a live ticket, and what's out of scope (the next section).
## Out of scope
Fog only ever gathers _toward_ the destination. The destination fixes the scope, so work beyond it is **out of scope**: it isn't fog, and it doesn't belong in **Not yet specified**. It gets its own **Out of scope** section on the map: work you've consciously ruled out of _this_ effort. Scope, not sharpness, lands it here.
Out-of-scope work never graduates (the frontier stops at the destination), so it returns only if the destination is redrawn, and then as a fresh effort, not a resumption.
Ruling something out of scope is a scoping act, not a step on the route. When a ticket that already exists turns out to sit past the destination (mis-scoped in while charting, or exposed by a resolution), **delete its item from Tickets** (an item off the list is unambiguously off the frontier) and leave one line in the **Out of scope** section: the gist plus why it's out of scope. It stays out of **Decisions so far**, which records the route actually walked; a scope boundary isn't a step on it.
## Invocation
Two modes. Either way, **never resolve more than one ticket per session**, with the exception of research tickets.
### Chart the map
User invokes with a loose idea.
1. **Name the destination.** Load frame to pin down what this map is finding its way to: the spec, decision, or change. The destination fixes the scope, so it's settled first.
2. **Map the frontier.** Grill again, **breadth-first** this time: fan out across the whole space rather than deep on any one thread, surfacing the open decisions and the first steps takeable now. **If this surfaces no fog** (the way to the destination is already clear, the whole journey small enough for one session), you don't need a map. Stop and ask the user how they'd like to proceed.
3. **Write the map** to the plan directory's `map.md` (its front matter marking it a draft and nothing else): Destination and Notes filled in, Tickets and Decisions-so-far empty, the fog sketched into **Not yet specified**.
4. **Add the tickets you can specify now** as checklist items under **Tickets**, then write their `after:` edges once every item has a name. The edges sort them into the frontier and the blocked; everything you can't yet specify stays in the fog: the **Not yet specified** section.
5. **Resolve the research tickets in turn.** For each `research` ticket you just created, one after another, resolve it by reading the sources as frame's research reference says, yourself or through one fresh agent the harness's delegation starts, briefed and named as that reference says, whose report you wait for; capture the findings in a note under the plan directory's `research/`, named for the ticket, linking the agent's report where one read, which the planning change's frame section cites as that reference says, with a context pointer from the ticket. Each delegated agent is named in the planning change's frame section and counted in no cost.
6. Stop: charting is one session's work; it hand-resolves nothing.
### Work through the map
User invokes with a map (the plan directory, or a ticket's name). A ticket is **optional**: without one, you pick the next decision, not the user.
1. Load the **map**: `map.md` whole, which is already the low-res view.
2. Choose the ticket. If the user named one, use it. Otherwise take the first frontier item in order. **Claim it**: write your session's name beside the item and save, before any work.
3. Resolve it. **Zoom as needed**: read the landed decision behind any related or checked ticket on demand; load whichever skills the `## Notes` block names. If in doubt, load frame.
4. Record the resolution: write the answer where it lives, an entry in the plan directory's `decisions.md` (a research ticket's answer is its note under `research/`), then **check the item**, replacing its question with a one-line gist of the answer, and **append a context pointer** to the map's Decisions-so-far.
5. Add newly-surfaced tickets (item first, `after:` edges once they all have names); graduate any fog the answer has made specifiable, clearing each graduated patch from **Not yet specified** so it lives only as its new item. If the answer reveals that a ticket (this one or another) sits beyond the destination, **rule it out of scope** rather than resolving it on the route. If the decision invalidates other parts of the map, update or delete those items.
## Handoff
Consumes: a loose idea too big for one session; the planning change's record and its plan directory's existing decisions.md when one exists Produces: the plan directory's map.md, status draft while charting and complete when the way is clear; each resolved ticket's answer in the plan directory's decisions.md or a note under its research/; the frame section of the planning change's record citing the map Next: plan, the planning change's step once the way is clear, which reads the resolved decisions into the plan directory's spec.md and tickets.md
SKILL.md as installed, byte for byte SHA-256 4f6ff0758194241182b7767127e844aac7f7379a0d42af5e5170a7ac63d16340