Session Orchestrator

Use this skill when creating today's daily note in the Meta-Vault (03-daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md) with valid vaultFrontmatterSchema-compliant YAML frontmatter. Idempotent: re-running on the same day opens the existing note instead of overwriting. Use when starting a work day, capturing scratch notes, or bootstrapping the inbox flow.

Use this skill when performing structured project planning and PRD generation with three modes: new (project kickoff with repo scaffolding), feature (compact feature PRD), retro (data-driven retrospective). All modes share a researched Q&A engine that dispatches parallel Explore agents before each question wave, presents options via AskUserQuestion with recommendations, and produces documents with prioritized issue creation.

Use when the user wants a plan, design, or PRD stress-tested before any build — relentlessly interrogates one decision at a time, grounds every question in the codebase, hunts contradictions against the domain language and the code, and challenges the load-bearing assumptions. Triggered by "grill me", "stress-test this plan", "poke holes in my design". Composable — run standalone or as an adversarial pass before /plan feature.

Use this skill when extracting session patterns into reusable learnings. Three modes: analyze (extract from session history), review (edit/manage existing learnings), list (display active learnings). Manages .orchestrator/metrics/learnings.jsonl.

Use this skill when running an autonomous session-orchestration loop. Chains session-start → session-plan → wave-executor → session-end for N iterations with all 10 kill-switches (SPIRAL, FAILED wave, carryover > 50%, max-hours, max-sessions, resource-overload, token-budget, stall-timeout, sub-threshold confidence, user-abort). Reads Mode-Selector output (Phase B) to decide auto-execute vs. fallback. Writes one autopilot.jsonl record per loop run. Phase C scaffold (issue #277); implementation lives in scripts/lib/autopilot.mjs (Phase C-1 follow-up).

Use this skill when scaffolding the minimum repository structure required by session-orchestrator. Invoked automatically by the Bootstrap Gate when CLAUDE.md, Session Config, or bootstrap.lock is missing. Also available as /bootstrap for manual invocation. Three intensity tiers: fast (demos/spikes), standard (MVPs), deep (production/team).

Use this skill when the user wants to reconcile learnings into rules, run /reconcile, propose rules from learnings, turn learnings into .claude/rules/ entries, or review what rules would be generated from current session learnings. On-demand version of session-end Phase 3.6.8.

Use this skill when running systematic quality discovery and issue detection. Runs modular probes adapted to the project's tech stack, presents findings interactively for user triage, and creates VCS issues for confirmed problems. Invoked standalone via /discovery or embedded in session-end.

Use when you have a feature idea but the scope or UX is still ambiguous — runs a lightweight Socratic design dialogue (3-5 AUQ rounds) and writes a spec markdown file. Use BEFORE /plan feature when product intent needs validation; skip to /plan feature when scope is already clear. HARD-GATE prevents any code work until the design is user-approved.

Use when the user wants to define domain terms, build a glossary, harden terminology, create a ubiquitous language, or mentions "domain model" or "DDD". Extracts a DDD-style glossary from the current conversation into UBIQUITOUS_LANGUAGE.md, flags ambiguities and synonyms, and proposes opinionated canonical terms.

Use when creating a new MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, extending an existing one, or debugging tool discoverability/performance. Guides through research → implementation → test → eval phases with TypeScript-first guidance matching our stack. Trigger on phrases like "build an MCP server", "expose X as an MCP tool", "write MCP tools for Y", "integrate Z via MCP".

Use this skill when performing a full session close-out: verifies all planned work against the agreed plan, creates issues for gaps, runs quality gates, commits cleanly, mirrors to GitHub, and produces a session summary. Triggered by /close command.

Use this skill when orchestrating agentic end-to-end tests. Resolves target + profile, dispatches the right driver(s) (playwright for web today, peekaboo for macOS (issue #381)), invokes the ux-evaluator agent (opus, read-only) against driver artifacts, reconciles findings with the open issue tracker via scripts/lib/test-runner/issue-reconcile.mjs, and writes report.md + JSONL roll-up. Wraps upstream tools (no forks). Hard-gates Playwright MCP for browser drive (4× token cost vs CLI per Microsoft's own benchmark).

Use when the user asks to improve architecture, find refactoring opportunities, surface deepening opportunities, consolidate tightly-coupled modules, or make a codebase more testable and AI-navigable. Surfaces shallow modules and hypothetical seams using a precise vocabulary (Module / Interface / Implementation / Depth / Seam / Adapter / Leverage / Locality from LANGUAGE.md).

Use when the user wants to stress-test a plan against the existing domain model and documented decisions. Grilling session that interviews the user one question at a time, sharpens fuzzy terminology inline, updates CONTEXT.md lazily, and offers ADRs sparingly under a 3-criteria gate. Reads docs/adr/ and CONTEXT.md if present.

Creates a structured wave execution plan with role-based assignment after user alignment. Decomposes agreed tasks into configurable waves (default 5) with optimal agent assignment, dependency ordering, and inter-wave checkpoints. Activated by session-start after Q&A phase completes.

Use this skill when performing deterministic mode selection for session-start. Reads Phase A STATE.md recommendations + (future) learnings, sessions, backlog, bootstrap signals and returns {mode, rationale, confidence, alternatives}. Pure-function contract — no side effects, no STATE.md writes. Phase B scaffold (issue #276); full heuristic is follow-up sub-issues.

Use this skill when you need multi-persona parallel content review — domain experts, buyer personas, compliance reviewers, or custom catalog entries reviewing a target file or output. Dispatches N persona agents in parallel, consolidates verdicts via a configurable mode (voting-quorum, hard-gate-threshold, or coordinator-summary), and writes a timestamped sidecar to .orchestrator/persona-panel/. Invoked via /persona-panel <target-path>.

Use this skill when referencing canonical quality check commands for typecheck, test, and lint. Defines 4 variants (Baseline, Incremental, Full Gate, Per-File) used by session-start, wave-executor, session-end, and session-reviewer. Reference skill — not invoked directly.

Use this skill when initializing a session for any project repo. Autonomously analyzes git state, VCS issues, SSOT files, branches, environment, and cross-repo status. Then presents structured findings with recommendations for user alignment before creating a wave plan. Triggered by /session [housekeeping|feature|deep] command.

Use when creating a new skill from scratch, modifying an existing skill, or optimizing a skill's triggering description. Guides intent capture, structure, writing patterns, and progressive-disclosure organization so skills reliably trigger and stay maintainable. Trigger on phrases like "turn this into a skill", "write a skill for X", "improve this skill", "my skill isn't triggering".

Use this skill when executing the agreed session plan in waves with role-based execution and parallel subagents. Handles inter-wave quality checks, plan adaptation, and progress tracking. Core orchestration engine for feature and deep sessions. Triggered by /go command.

Use this skill when performing manual memory consolidation (Dream-equivalent). Reviews, consolidates, and prunes memory files under ~/.claude/projects/*/memory/. Run after major refactors, every 5+ sessions, or when memory quality degrades (broken links, stale references, contradictions, MEMORY.md > 200 lines). Invoke with /memory-cleanup.

Use this skill when driving native-UI AX-tree snapshots and screenshots via steipete/peekaboo (MIT, macOS-only). Dispatched by `skills/test-runner/` to capture native-UI AX-tree snapshots + screenshots on macOS 15+ targets, and exits with deterministic JSON output the orchestrator can parse.

Monitor health across configured service endpoints, CI pipelines, and critical issues. Automatically invoked during session-start when ecosystem-health is enabled in Session Config.

Use when creating, modifying, or debugging Claude Code hooks — PreToolUse, PostToolUse, Stop, SubagentStop, SessionStart, SessionEnd, UserPromptSubmit, PreCompact, Notification. Covers the plugin `hooks/hooks.json` wrapper format vs. the user `settings.json` direct format, matchers, security patterns, `$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT` portability, lifecycle limitations, and debugging. Trigger on "add a hook", "validate tool use", "block dangerous commands", "enforce completion", "hook-based automation".

Use this skill when orchestrating documentation generation and updates within a session. Maps session scope to audience-specific docs tasks (User / Dev / Vault), dispatches the docs-writer agent with source-grounded prompts, and reports coverage gaps to session-end. Gated on `docs-orchestrator.enabled: true` in Session Config. Zero overhead when disabled.

Use this skill when executing web tests via the canonical `playwright` npm package (Microsoft, Apache-2.0). Dispatched by `skills/test-runner/` to execute web tests against a target, captures token-frugal AX-tree snapshots + screenshots + console output under `.orchestrator/metrics/test-runs/<run-id>/`, and exits with deterministic JSON output the orchestrator can parse.

Use this skill when dispatching implicit slash-command intent from the user's first message. Inspects the user's first message for implicit slash-command intent and dispatches to the highest-confidence matching entry-point skill via the Skill tool. Only active when `auto-skill-dispatch: true` in Session Config. Silent no-op otherwise.

Use when you have a PRD or design spec and need a bite-sized, executable implementation plan that any agent can follow without re-deriving structure. Produces `docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<feature>.md` with per-task Files block, complete code per step (no placeholders), and exact verification commands. Rejects "TBD", "TODO", "add error handling", "similar to Task N".

Monitor iterative improvement loops for convergence. Three signals — shrinking diff, pass-rate plateau, velocity — drive a Stop/Continue/Investigate decision at each inter-wave checkpoint. Distinct from /evolve (retrospective) and session-reviewer (wave output review): convergence-monitoring answers "are we making progress?" not "was the last wave correct?". Primary consumer: /autoresearch loops and wave-executor inter-wave checkpoints.