Marketplace

Use when choosing among actions under quantified uncertainty by enumerating outcomes, assigning probabilities, valuing each outcome in one shared unit, computing probability-weighted value, testing sensitivity, and checking downside constraints before recommending. Covers expected value, expected utility, expected monetary value, payoff tables, break-even probability, value of information, and risk-of-ruin constraints. Do NOT use for updating probabilities from evidence (use bayesian-reasoning), broad mixed-criteria backlog ranking (use prioritization), or tracing consequences before outcomes are modeled (use second-order-thinking). Do NOT use for Update these probabilities after new customer evidence. Do NOT use for Prioritize this backlog with RICE using reach, impact, confidence, and effort. Do NOT use for Trace the second- and third-order consequences before we model outcomes.

Use when deciding whether to spend GitHub Copilot's metered budget on a task (its premium-request / post-June-2026 AI-credit model, where 1 credit = $0.01 and cost = tokens × per-model rate), what Copilot is good at vs expensive at, which plan allowance (Pro 300 / Pro+ 1500, no rollover) applies, and when a cheaper or free lane should take the work instead. Covers the June 1 2026 shift from premium-request multipliers to usage-based token billing, the always-free completions/next-edit surface, and the IDE-native frontier-model lane. Do NOT use for choosing or operating the OpenCode runtime (use `opencode`), for picking a specific free model (use `opencode-free-models`), or for authoring an agent loop (use `autonomous-loop-patterns`). Do NOT use for how do I invoke the opencode CLI non-interactively? Do NOT use for which free model fits this bulk job? Do NOT use for how do I write the agent's retry loop?

Use when reasoning about React Hooks as a discipline: why the Rules of Hooks exist as a call-order invariant, how dependency arrays encode a contract between closure and rerender, when useEffect is the wrong primitive, the distinction between derived state and stored state, when to extract a custom hook, when memoization (useMemo, useCallback, memo) is useful or obsolete, and how React 18/19 semantics (automatic batching, concurrent rendering, Strict Mode effect checks, Effect Events, React Compiler) change the calculus. Do NOT use for general React rendering models (use rendering-models), the client/server boundary (use client-server-boundary), component API architecture (use component-architecture), Suspense boundary design (use suspense-patterns), or application-wide state location (use state-management). Do NOT use for choose between Server Components and Client Components for a new page. Do NOT use for decide where app state lives across server, client UI, URL, and persistent storage.

Use when designing or reviewing HTTP-based systems where method semantics, status codes, idempotency, safe methods, conditional requests, content negotiation, caching headers, range requests, integrity digests, or representation metadata are load-bearing. Covers the RFC 9110/9111/9112 contract layer below any specific framework. Do NOT use for API surface shape and route taxonomy (use api-design), for WebSocket or SSE bidirectional streams (use streaming-architecture skill when available), for vendor-specific webhook signing (use webhook-integration), or for transport-level concerns like TLS or QUIC (use platform-level documentation). Do NOT use for decide between WebSocket and SSE for live updates (use streaming-architecture).

Use when reviewing code for security vulnerabilities, threat-modelling a new feature, implementing authentication or authorization, handling user input, hardening dependencies or CI/CD against software-supply-chain compromise, or auditing a codebase against the current OWASP Top 10 (2025, with the 2021 mapping retained). Covers broken access control (incl. SSRF), security misconfiguration, software supply chain failures, cryptographic failures, injection (SQL, NoSQL, command, LDAP, XSS), insecure design, authentication failures, software/data integrity failures, security logging and alerting failures, and mishandling of exceptional conditions (fail-open error paths, error leakage). Do NOT use for general code review (use `code-review` for the holistic per-PR pass), for chasing a known production bug (use `debugging`), for defending an LLM against prompt/RAG injection or agent-tool-authority abuse (use `prompt-injection-defense`), or for writing a security policy doc (use `documentation`).

Use when turning a vague business strategy, product strategy, market-entry decision, or initiative plan into an integrated Playing to Win strategy cascade: winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, must-have capabilities, and management systems. Covers Lafley/Martin choice-making, fit across the five choices, trade-off pressure, reverse tests, capability-system alignment, and the difference between strategy and planning. Do NOT use for competitive-industry structure analysis (use a five-forces skill when available), generic backlog scoring (use prioritization), or broad process-gate design (use methodology). Do NOT use for analyze whether this industry has attractive supplier power and threat of substitutes. Do NOT use for score these ten backlog items by impact and effort. Do NOT use for design a quality gate process for this multi-step implementation. Do NOT use for write OKRs for this strategy after it has already been chosen.

This skill provides prioritization frameworks for AI engineering: RICE-A (adding AI Ambiguity to RICE) for product features, ICE for research experiments, and MoSCoW for MVP/Release scoping. Use when ranking the backlog, deciding which model research path to follow, or defining the scope of a new feature. Do NOT use for one-off task sequencing (use task skill) or personal time management.

Use when creating a new SKILL.md from scratch, restructuring a draft before it becomes a stable skill, or teaching another author the canonical Skill Metadata Protocol frontmatter, body, and audit-state.json sidecar structure. Covers flat schema-conformant frontmatter, the sidecar split, v8 classification, body layout by skill intent, semantic-layer discipline (description vs activation vs Coverage), teaching-layer mechanics (TEMPLATE NOTE blockquotes), native skill-creator handoff, public/private safety, and routing-eval honesty. Do NOT use when modifying an already-written skill (edit it directly), writing general technical documentation, routing an existing request across skills, or fixing malformed library health at scale (use `skill-infrastructure`). Do NOT use for refactor my existing skill to be more concise. Do NOT use for my skill's routing isn't activating — why? Do NOT use for audit my skill library for stale frontmatter. Do NOT use for write a developer guide for the contributor docs.

Use when balancing an innovation, growth, transformation, or venture portfolio across McKinsey's Three Horizons: Horizon 1 current core businesses, Horizon 2 emerging growth businesses, and Horizon 3 future options. Covers concurrent portfolio balance, resource allocation (the 70-20-10 benchmark and its caveats), evidence maturity, governance and metrics by horizon, metered funding, ring-fenced budgets, transitions from option to emerging business to core, the collapsed-time critique that disruption can now arrive on core timelines, and the risk that short-term core demands or incentives starve future growth. Do NOT use for BCG growth-share portfolio allocation (use bcg-matrix), Ansoff product-market growth path selection (use ansoff-matrix), Blue Ocean value-curve redesign (use blue-ocean-strategy), scenario construction and stress-testing across alternative futures (use scenario-planning), OKR goal-setting (use okrs), or quantified probability-weighted valuation (use expected-value).

Use when reasoning about the protocol-level cycle by which a language model uses external tools: declaration, request, execution, continuation, model-visible transcript or provider-resumed state, ID pairing, tool-result formatting, vendor encodings (Anthropic Messages, OpenAI Responses and Chat Completions, MCP, Gemini generateContent and Interactions), client tools vs hosted/server tools, strict schemas and grammar-constrained custom tools, streaming arguments, tool search/deferred loading, programmatic tool calling, computer-use/browser-control screenshot-action loops, parallel vs sequential calls, error handling, and the separation between model intent and runtime execution. Do NOT use for deciding when or how many tools to call (use tool-call-strategy), multi-agent architecture (use agent-engineering), prompt wording (use prompt-craft), or eval design for tool-use behavior (use eval-driven-development).

Use when moving slow or failure-prone work out of a request path, designing job queues, retries, checkpoints, progress reporting, cancellation, or worker concurrency. Covers inline-vs-background decisions, queue contracts, state machines, idempotency, retry/backoff, progress signals, worker leases, and user-visible completion reporting. Do NOT use for time-based schedule design (use `cron-scheduling`), live browser transport choice (use `real-time-updates`), or async message schema ownership (use `event-contract-design`). Do NOT use for choose the cron expression for a daily run. Do NOT use for design an SSE or WebSocket browser update channel. Do NOT use for define an event envelope and topic naming standard. Do NOT use for debug why this already-running worker crashed. Do NOT use for model the database schema for the business entity being processed.

Use when building or operating multi-source intelligence pipelines across video, GitHub, Reddit, curated lists, search, and RSS feeds. Covers source adapters, discovery/transcription/summarization/evaluation phases, deduplication, schedules, model-stage choice, and actionable brief generation. Do NOT use for SEO keyword research (use `keywords`) or competitive product analysis (use `user-research`).

Use when designing time-based scheduled work in web applications: Vercel Cron routes, Inngest cron-triggered functions, recurring-job idempotency, overlap prevention, retry/failure handling, UTC/timezone decisions, and monitoring for missed or failed schedules. Covers cron expressions, scheduler selection, authorization of cron endpoints, dispatch-to-worker patterns, execution-window idempotency, concurrency locks, and heartbeat/alert design. Do NOT use for general background job queue architecture (use background-jobs), event-driven orchestration without a time trigger, browser freshness transports, or one-off task debugging unrelated to recurring schedules. Do NOT use for move a slow export out of an API handler but it is user-triggered, not scheduled. Do NOT use for design a generic queue contract with retries and progress. Do NOT use for choose Server-Sent Events versus WebSockets for live progress. Do NOT use for define an event payload schema for an async integration.

Use when orchestrating a full human-centered design process across discovery, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing — when uncertain which stage of the arc a team is in, when deciding whether to loop back, or when routing to the right stage-specific sibling skill. Do NOT use for single-stage execution (go directly to problem-framing, user-research, research-synthesis, journey-mapping, ideation, prototyping, or usability-testing) or for engineering domain discovery (use event-storming). Do NOT use for Run a single crazy-8s round on this specific how-might-we. Do NOT use for Write the React component for the dashboard widget. Do NOT use for Model the bounded contexts for the order-fulfillment domain. Do NOT use for single-stage divergent/convergent concept generation (use ideation).

Use when designing end-to-end tests that exercise a user-visible path through the whole system, including the UI layer: the user-journey unit-of-test that distinguishes e2e from integration testing, the five-primitive structure (user journey, environment, test data, observable assertion, recovery), why e2e tests are expensive and how to keep them few-and-load-bearing, the wait/synchronization discipline that makes them not-flaky, the page-object and trace-test patterns, the role of e2e tests in the test pyramid/trophy (the top tier — fewest in count but highest in coverage of user-observable behavior), and the modern e2e tool landscape (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium). Do NOT use for testing internal seams of the system (use integration-test-design), single-unit isolated tests (use testing-strategy + test-doubles-design), consumer-driven contract verification (use contract-testing), or visual regression of specific components (use snapshot-testing).

Use when mapping a user's experience across multiple touchpoints and time, surfacing emotional peaks and troughs, identifying opportunity moments in a cross-channel flow, or aligning a team on the end-to-end experience including back-stage support processes. Do NOT use for decomposing a single screen into UI steps (use task-analysis) or for drawing back-end service architecture diagrams — journey maps describe human experience, not system topology. Do NOT use for Break down the steps a user takes inside the upload modal. Do NOT use for Draw the microservice call graph for the checkout API. Do NOT use for Diagram the database schema for the order entity.

Use when a team is converging on solutions before agreeing on the problem, when a brief reads as a feature request, when symptoms and root needs are tangled, or when assumptions need surfacing before design work proceeds. Do NOT use for code-level bug triage, runtime failure diagnosis, or root-cause analysis of system errors — those are engineering investigation tasks, not design problem framing. Do NOT use for Find the bug causing the 500 error in the checkout endpoint. Do NOT use for Why is the test suite flaky on CI? Do NOT use for Classify whether this agent request is high-risk before executing.

Use when you need to explain how parts of a system, feature, concept, page, workflow, or problem connect; identify the single most important part of something; untangle dense dependencies into a core plus typed relations; or answer 'what is the load-bearing part?' without drifting into implementation or task prioritization. Provides a five-step workflow — classify the unit of analysis, find the single primary part using removal/governance/purpose/weight/decision tests, map secondary parts via typed relations (dependency, input/output, parent/child, owner/owned, cause/effect, constraint/enabler, and others), produce a structured output, and reduce the whole to one final sentence — that forces explanation through one-primary reduction rather than flat lists or chronology. Do NOT use for implementation work (use the relevant domain skill), choosing what to do next (use a prioritization skill), or formal architectural-ownership design (use a domain-modeling skill).

Use when designing a controlled classification system: category trees, facets, browse taxonomies, SKOS broader/narrower relationships, tagging rules, and duplicate-category cleanup. Do NOT use for formal ontology axioms with reasoning constraints (use `ontology-modeling`), broad knowledge-representation choice (use `knowledge-modeling`), or one-off edge typing (use `semantic-relations`). Do NOT use for define OWL class restrictions and property domains for this knowledge base. Do NOT use for decide whether this knowledge should be represented as a graph, frame, rules, or hybrid. Do NOT use for type this single relation as meronymy, causality, synonymy, or thematic role. Do NOT use for write user-facing labels for this navigation item.

Use when designing or maintaining the shape of a repository's git history — choosing a branching model, deciding rebase vs merge, sizing commits, linking commits to tracker tickets, tagging releases, running parallel work across worktrees, and resolving the merge conflicts that arise from any of the above. Covers trunk-based development, short-lived feature branches, atomic commit discipline, linear-history conventions (rebase + squash), release tagging with annotated tags and SemVer, hotfix flows from tags, and worktree lifecycle for parallel agents or contributors. Do NOT use for the words inside the commit message (Conventional Commits format, identifier naming — use `naming-conventions`), for chasing a release-pipeline failure (use `debugging`), or for reviewing a PR's content (use `code-review`). Do NOT use for draft a Conventional Commits message for this change. Do NOT use for the release pipeline failed at the tag-creation step — find out why. Do NOT use for review this PR before we merge it.

Contract testing: interface verification between consumers and providers via shared contract artifacts and independent two-phase verification. Do NOT use for Test internal seams of a system (use integration-test-design). Do NOT use for Validate an HTTP response against an OpenAPI schema (use API-spec tooling). Do NOT use for Test a complete user journey through the UI (use e2e-test-design).

Use when reasoning about mutation testing as a behavioral signal of test-suite quality: the mutant-operator vocabulary (replace operator, negate condition, flip Boolean, remove statement, alter constant), the mutation-score metric (killed mutants / total non-equivalent mutants), why mutation testing is a stronger signal than code coverage (coverage measures execution; mutation measures whether the tests would catch a defect), the equivalent-mutant problem (mutants that produce no observable behavior change despite syntactic difference), selective and incremental mutation strategies that make the technique practical for large codebases (PIT, Stryker), and the relationship between mutation testing and TDD. Do NOT use for the structural signal of how much code tests reach (use test-coverage-strategy), the construction of test doubles (use test-doubles-design), the strategic question of what to test at which level (use testing-strategy), or generic fault injection at runtime (use chaos-engineering).

Use when reasoning about how a web UI is produced and delivered: client-side rendering, server-side rendering, static-site generation, incremental static regeneration, React Server Components, streaming SSR, edge rendering, and partial prerendering. Covers the time × place grid (build/request/stream/interaction × server/edge/client), the trade-offs between first-paint latency and time-to-interactive, the relationship between rendering and hydration, and how a route's content profile (dynamic / static / personalized) maps to a model. Do NOT use for organizing the frontend codebase (use frontend-architecture), the serialization frontier between server and client code (use client-server-boundary), the wire protocol itself (use http-semantics), or specific deploy-platform composition patterns (use vercel-composition-patterns).

Use when reasoning about how a database schema changes over time without breaking deployed application code — the multi-release path from current to target schema: the expand/contract pattern (parallel change), zero-downtime change rules, the backwards/forwards compatibility envelope (deploy ordering + rollback), the catalog of schema changes (add/drop/rename column, type change, add constraint/index) and the safe procedure for each, dual-write/dual-read transitions with a named source-of-truth, the lock-acquisition hazard (bounded lock_timeout + retry), cross-engine online-change mechanisms (Postgres CONCURRENTLY/NOT VALID, MySQL Online DDL, gh-ost/pt-osc, Vitess/PlanetScale), view-based multi-version tooling (pgroll, Reshape), and migration-lint enforcement (Strong Migrations, Squawk, Atlas). Do NOT use for executing one migration (use database-migration), schema design from scratch (use data-modeling), query tuning (use query-optimization), or partitioning (use sharding-strategy).

Use when reasoning about snapshot testing as a tactical technique: capture-and-compare against a reviewed baseline, data snapshots, DOM snapshots, text/file snapshots, visual snapshots, approval-cycle discipline, snapshot churn, unstable inputs, large unreadable diffs, golden files, characterization tests, and visual regression review with tools such as Jest, Vitest, Playwright screenshots, Storybook/Chromatic, and Percy. Do NOT use for the overall test-level mix (use `testing-strategy`), universal property claims (use `property-based-testing`), test double construction (use `test-doubles-design`), strict test-first workflow design (use `test-driven-development`), or end-to-end user journey design (use `e2e-test-design`). Do NOT use for choose the overall unit integration e2e and performance test mix for this feature. Do NOT use for use property-based testing with fast-check generated arrays to assert sort output is ordered and preserves items.

Use when deciding where state lives, how it propagates, and how it composes: local component state vs lifted/shared state vs application state, server state vs client state, URL as state, persistent state, derived state, and the cross-cutting decision of who owns which piece. Covers state colocation, lifting up, derivation vs duplication, single source of truth, optimistic updates, server-state cache invalidation (React Query/SWR model), URL state for deep-linking, and anti-patterns like prop-drilling, state sprawl, and global-state-by-default. Do NOT use for specific state library choice (Redux vs Zustand — tactical), data fetching mechanics (use api-design or rendering-models), client/server boundary (use client-server-boundary), distributed system state (use replication-patterns), or finite state machines (use state-machine-modeling). Do NOT use for implement a specific Redux reducer (tactical, library-specific). Do NOT use for design the JSON shape of an API response (use api-design).

Use when planning tests for a bug fix, feature, or refactor — deciding what deserves a test, at which level, with what evidence. Covers test-scope decisions, test-level selection (unit / integration / contract / e2e), effort-to-risk matching, regression targeting, evidence quality, and failure-case coverage. Do NOT use for chasing a known failure (that is `debugging`), for pure doc writing (that is `documentation`), or for conceptual architecture discussion with no verification target (no dedicated skill — treat as strategy, not testing). Do NOT use for my existing test is failing — why? Do NOT use for write a testing-patterns guide for the contributor docs. Do NOT use for clean up this duplicated test setup across three files.

Use when establishing visual hierarchy — type scale ratios, spacing rhythm, contrast as ordering signal, weight and size as importance, and the layered relationship between primary, secondary, and tertiary information. Do NOT use for content writing, information architecture, or specific color palette construction. Do NOT use for Write the H1 copy that should appear at the top of the landing page. Do NOT use for Choose between sans-serif and serif typefaces for the brand. Do NOT use for Pick the brand's primary color.

Use when designing or evaluating a production AI agent system, choosing a multi-agent coordination pattern (orchestrator/worker, fan-out, consensus, sequential chain, evaluator/optimizer), diagnosing coordination failures (claim races, silent stalls, context contamination, runaway loops), or auditing whether an agent loop is truly production-ready. Covers the four pillars (architecture and lifecycle, task decomposition, coordination patterns, production reliability), the six reliability requirements (observability, cost budgets, idempotency, failure recovery, safety caps, claim locks), the delegation decision framework with overhead crossover, and the most common anti-patterns. Do NOT use for prompt wording (use `prompt-craft`), per-call tool efficiency (use `tool-call-strategy`), context-stack design within a single agent (use `context-engineering`), or runtime debugging of a deployed system (use `debugging`). Do NOT use for improve this prompt's wording to get better outputs.

Use when designing or auditing the maintained index set for a database workload: choosing index structures, matching access patterns, setting composite order, balancing read speed against write/storage cost, and deciding when to add, keep, or drop indexes. Do NOT use for tuning one slow query (use query-optimization), applying production DDL (use database-migration), isolation choices, schema design, or sharding. Do NOT use for choose a database schema (use entity-relationship-modeling). Do NOT use for decide how to partition data across nodes (use sharding-strategy).

Use when formalizing domain meaning with classes, properties, constraints, RDF/OWL-style semantics, SHACL-like validation shapes, or reasoning-ready axioms. Do NOT use for simple category trees (use `taxonomy-design`), pre-implementation business entity sketches (use `conceptual-modeling`), database schemas (use `entity-relationship-modeling`), or broad representation choice (use `knowledge-modeling`). Do NOT use for make a simple browse category tree for skills. Do NOT use for identify the business entities and relationships before implementation. Do NOT use for design the SQL tables, keys, and indexes. Do NOT use for choose whether this knowledge belongs in rules, frames, a graph, or a hybrid.

Use when designing browser-facing freshness for live dashboards, notifications, progress views, feeds, and data that can change after initial render. Covers freshness contracts, transport choice among adaptive polling, Server-Sent Events, and bidirectional sockets, webhook-to-UI propagation, client cache invalidation, stale-data indicators, reconnect and catch-up behavior, centralized subscription ownership, and non-disruptive update UX. Do NOT use for low-level stream/backpressure protocol design (use `streaming-architecture`), async event envelope/topic contracts (use `event-contract-design`), recurring schedule design (use `cron-scheduling`), durable worker execution semantics (use `background-jobs`), generic UI action feedback (use `interaction-feedback`), or serialization/trust boundaries (use `client-server-boundary`). Do NOT use for design the backpressure protocol for an HTTP stream. Do NOT use for choose the cron expression for a daily refresh.

Scenario planning: a strategic-foresight method for making decisions under deep uncertainty by constructing and stress-testing several plausible future worlds. Do NOT use for Scan political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal forces for market entry. Do NOT use for We have three options with probabilities and payoffs. Compute expected value and recommend one. Do NOT use for Update our confidence in this forecast after new evidence arrived. Do NOT use for Balance our innovation portfolio across core, adjacent, and transformational bets. Do NOT use for Turn strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats into SO, WO, ST, and WT options. Do NOT use for Answer the five Playing to Win choices for this business. Do NOT use for constructing and using alternative futures from critical uncertainties (use pestel). Do NOT use for deep-uncertainty exploration (use expected-value). Do NOT use for multiple plausible future worlds and strategic robustness (use bayesian-reasoning).

Use when reasoning about horizontal partitioning of data across nodes for storage capacity and write throughput beyond a single node: the three foundational partitioning schemes (range, hash, directory/lookup), the shard-key choice that determines whether the system scales or hotspots, the resharding problem and how consistent hashing addresses it, cross-shard queries and the joins-and-transactions trade-off, the relationship to replication (sharding partitions data; replication copies each shard), and the failure modes (hot shard, skewed distribution, cross-shard transactions, range-end overload). Do NOT use for replicating the same data across nodes (use replication-patterns), the CAP/PACELC frame (use cap-theorem-tradeoffs), single-node performance tuning (use query-optimization), or indexing within a shard (use indexing-strategy).

Use when designing or reviewing React Suspense usage: where to place Suspense boundaries to control loading granularity, the difference between Suspense for data fetching and Suspense for code splitting, how Suspense interacts with Server Components for streaming HTML, how error boundaries pair with Suspense (and why they must be distinct components), the relationship between Suspense and React's transition APIs (useTransition, startTransition), and the design rules that prevent waterfall fetches, layout shift, and SEO regressions. Covers React 18+ and 19's `use` hook for unwrapping Promises in Client Components. Do NOT use for general React rendering strategy choice (use rendering-models), for the underlying hook primitives (use hooks-patterns), for streaming protocols beyond Suspense (use streaming-architecture), or for Server Component design (use server-components-design).

Use when designing a typography system — typeface selection and pairing, modular type scale, vertical rhythm, line-height and measure rules, and web font delivery (subsetting, font-display, variable fonts). Do NOT use for body copy writing, single-headline font pairing, or non-text design tokens. Do NOT use for Write the headline copy for the landing page. Do NOT use for Pick the brand's primary color. Do NOT use for Decide where the headline component lives in the folder structure.

Use when observing representative real users attempting realistic tasks on a prototype or live product to surface usability issues: moderated or unmoderated, remote or in-person, concurrent or retrospective think-aloud, task scenarios, participant screening, tree/first-click testing for IA findability questions, pilot runs, severity rating, sample sizing by claim type, and ethical recording/consent. Do NOT use for automated test suites, code coverage, CI pipelines, unit/integration testing, load testing, or replacing participants with AI/synthetic users; those are engineering verification or synthetic-analysis concerns, not human-behavior observation. Do NOT use for Add unit tests for the order-total calculation function. Do NOT use for Set up the CI pipeline for the new repo. Do NOT use for Run a load test against the checkout API. Do NOT use for Run a card sort to design the navigation hierarchy and labels for this site. Do NOT use for Cluster the findings from ten completed user sessions into themes.

Use when writing or editing human-readable prose such as docs, PRs, issues, release notes, errors, UI copy, commits, tooltips, or support replies, especially when text sounds robotic, padded, monotonous, or overly formal. Covers AI-tell removal, active voice, hedging reduction, readability diagnosis, sentence rhythm, vocabulary variety, tone mapping, paragraph rhythm, bullets-vs-prose choice, and the 5-step humanization workflow. Do NOT use for documentation routing/type selection, code-identifier naming, or in-product UI-text pattern catalogs. Do NOT use for decide kebab-case vs camelCase for this new database column. Do NOT use for draft the marketing headline for the pricing page with strong persuasion. Do NOT use for restructure this doc into a tutorial format with progressive disclosure. Do NOT use for rewrite this UI button label so it names the actual action instead of saying Submit. Do NOT use for rename this React component across all call-sites in the repo. Do NOT use for audit this WCAG 2.

Use when building, reviewing, or applying a Balanced Scorecard for strategy execution and performance management: destination statement, strategy map, perspectives, strategic objectives, strategic readiness, measures/KPIs, targets, initiatives, owners, review cadence, cascading, and learning from performance gaps. Covers financial/stewardship, customer/stakeholder, internal process, and learning/growth or organizational-capacity perspectives, with sustainability/ESG embedded or added as a fifth perspective when strategic, and adaptation for business, nonprofit, public-sector, product, and transformation contexts. Do NOT use for upstream strategy formulation alone (use playing-to-win), quarterly goal-setting alone (use okrs), technical service thresholds (use performance-budgets), portfolio allocation (use bcg-matrix), generic internal/external factor inventory (use swot-tows), probability-weighted option valuation (use expected-value), or activity-level value/cost decomposition (use value-chain-analysis).

Use when updating beliefs, forecasts, diagnoses, or decision assumptions under uncertainty using Bayesian reasoning: priors/base rates, likelihood, evidence strength, posterior direction, and residual uncertainty. Covers base-rate discipline, likelihood-vs-posterior separation, independent evidence updates, natural-frequency examples, confidence calibration, and when to stop at qualitative probability instead of fake precision. Do NOT use for expected monetary value calculations, strategy-cascade choices (use playing-to-win), industry-structure analysis (use porters-five-forces), or generic task prioritization (use prioritization). Do NOT use for calculate the expected value of these three options. Do NOT use for turn this growth plan into a strategy cascade. Do NOT use for analyze supplier power and substitutes in this industry. Do NOT use for rank these roadmap items by impact and effort. Do NOT use for build a statistical model from a dataset.

Use when reasoning about how an application manages its database connections: why every connection has a server-side cost, the difference between application-level pools (HikariCP, pgx pool, node-postgres Pool) and proxy-level pools (PgBouncer, Pgpool, ProxySQL), the three PgBouncer modes (session, transaction, statement) and their feature compatibility, the canonical pool-sizing math (Little's Law applied to database concurrency; Wooldridge's analyses), the failure modes (connection exhaustion, hot-loop reconnects, prepared-statement breakage under transaction pooling, idle-in-transaction leaks), and the diagnostic procedure when a workload is contending on connections instead of query work. Do NOT use for query-level performance (use query-optimization), for index design (use indexing-strategy), for read/write replica routing (use replication-patterns), or for cross-shard query coordination (use sharding-strategy). Do NOT use for choose the transaction isolation level for concurrent account transfers.

Use when deciding what to load into an active agent session, recovering from context drift, preparing compaction or restart, distilling raw inputs into a working summary, or writing a handoff another agent can resume quickly. Covers intake triage, the active-context contract, the six-step context-management loop, working-set shaping, evidence capsules and observation masking, just-in-time handle-before-payload loading, prompt-caching alignment, context-rot defenses, drift signals and reset, the runtime-primitives boundary, compaction-ready handoffs, and selective rebuild after context loss. Do NOT use for token math (use `context-window`), prompt wording (use `prompt-craft`), persistent memory curation, or multi-graph context architecture (use `context-graph`). Do NOT use for calculate the per-zone token budget for the 200K context window. Do NOT use for improve this prompt template for the grader. Do NOT use for curate the persistent memory index file.

Use when planning or applying a raw-SQL database migration to a live PostgreSQL database — adding columns, renaming columns or tables, changing types, creating indexes, adding foreign keys, or running data backfills. Covers zero-downtime patterns (expand / contract, batched backfill, NOT VALID foreign keys, CONCURRENTLY indexes), the direct/unpooled connection requirement for migration tooling, branched-database workflows, and rollback strategy. Do NOT use for ORM-managed migrations driven by Prisma/Drizzle/TypeORM CLI scaffolding, for chasing a migration that has already failed in production (use debugging), for multi-release schema lifecycle planning outside one migration (use schema-evolution), or for designing the row-level-security model itself (use owasp-security). Do NOT use for design the row-level-security model for our new tenant table. Do NOT use for the migration crashed in production — find the root cause. Do NOT use for plan the full multi-release schema evolution for this domain.

Use BEFORE any tool call that could modify state, touch sensitive targets, rewrite history, install dependencies, publish packages, or expose credentials/environment data. Classifies intent into Passive/Read, Reconnaissance, Modification, or Destructive/Irreversible using operation type plus target sensitivity, then runs Identify / Confirm / Verify before action. Do NOT use for deciding what code to write, executing already-classified work, reactive post-execution guardrails, or defining upstream governance policy. Do NOT use for design the deterministic safety hook that blocks destructive commands. Do NOT use for decide whether to use a switch or a chain of ifs. Do NOT use for actually execute the migration after we've classified the risk. Do NOT use for scan this repo for OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities. Do NOT use for review this AI-generated PR for correctness. Do NOT use for the loop is stalling — what's the steering signal.

Knowledge modeling: choosing and maintaining the representation paradigm (graphs, frames, rules, hybrids) for domain knowledge based on primary query patterns. Do NOT use for Design the database tables and foreign keys for this schema. Do NOT use for I just need a clean IS-A category hierarchy with no rules or graph behavior. Do NOT use for I need formal OWL axioms with class restrictions and reasoning semantics. Do NOT use for I want the exact edge labels between concepts. Do NOT use for Abstract the domain into entities and relationships in human-readable terms before any database talk. Do NOT use for paradigm choice and informal/hybrid representation (use ontology-modeling). Do NOT use for graph structure and representation choice (use semantic-relations). Do NOT use for multi-paradigm and graph modeling (use taxonomy-design).

Use when deciding responsive page or screen structure: section order, scan pattern, grid/flex composition, breakpoints, viewport hierarchy, responsive media, and density. Do NOT use for user-goal decomposition (use `task-analysis`), navigation taxonomy (use `information-architecture`), visual polish (use `visual-design-foundations`), or component/token contracts (use `design-system-architecture`). Do NOT use for what is the user's top task for this route? Do NOT use for design the global navigation and sitemap. Do NOT use for pick the color palette, type scale, and visual mood. Do NOT use for define component variants and semantic tokens. Do NOT use for navigation and page grouping (use information-architecture). Do NOT use for visual craft choices (use visual-design-foundations).

Use when naming a new file, function, variable, type, route, database column, environment variable, or any other code or system artifact. Covers identifier morphology (verb-noun choice, plural vs singular, prefix/suffix conventions), kebab-case vs camelCase vs snake_case vs PascalCase per artifact kind, abbreviation rules, name-vs-path semantics, the rename-coordination workflow, and detection of names that lie. Do NOT use for content writing (use `documentation`), for restructuring already-named code (use `refactor`), or for human-language copy in product UI (separate skill, not in this library). Do NOT use for refactor this 200-line function into smaller pieces. Do NOT use for write a doc explaining our naming conventions. Do NOT use for review this PR's naming choices. Do NOT use for the variable named `userIsActive` is logging the wrong value. Do NOT use for scaffold a new skill that teaches naming conventions.

Enforce five non-negotiable quality pillars as a pre-output gate: complete reporting (show ALL items, never filter unilaterally), verification (no claim of works/done/exists without a tool-call receipt in the same turn), thoroughness (every acceptance criterion verified with evidence; docs ship with the change), enrichment ('improve' adds capability, never trims), and anti-shortcut (exhaust deterministic lookup before guessing; findings demand action, not filing). Use when reviewing enumerated output for completeness, when an agent claims something works without evidence, when marking a task done, or when asked to 'improve' anything.

Diagnosing and tuning a specific slow relational-database query from plan evidence: workload impact, exact query context, EXPLAIN / actual execution plans, row-estimate accuracy, access path choice, join order, sort/hash spills, JIT/planning overhead, parameter-sensitive plans, plan regressions, statistics, and rewrite-vs-index-vs-operational response selection. Start from the actual plan and runtime evidence, not from the reflex to add an index; modern engine features such as Query Store, PSP/OPPO, SQL Plan Management, pg_stat_statements, auto_explain, MySQL histograms, Oracle DBMS_XPLAN, and PostgreSQL planner improvements are evidence sources and response tools, not replacements for diagnosis. Do NOT use for designing the durable index portfolio (use indexing-strategy), schema design (use entity-relationship-modeling), distributed partitioning (use sharding-strategy), isolation-level correctness (use transaction-isolation), or whole-system load testing (use performance-testing).

Use when turning raw qualitative research output (interview transcripts, field notes, diary entries, observation logs) into themes, patterns, insight statements, and design-ready artifacts via affinity mapping, empathy maps, and jobs-to-be-done framing. Do NOT use for collecting new research, quantitative analysis, statistical inference, or summarizing a single document — synthesis specifically operates on a corpus of qualitative evidence. Do NOT use for Run more interviews with five additional participants. Do NOT use for Calculate the response rate of the survey. Do NOT use for Summarize this single PDF document. Do NOT use for transforming a corpus of collected qualitative evidence into themes and insights (use user-research).

Use when typing edges in a knowledge graph or concept map, resolving synonym/antonym/polysemy/homonym confusion, testing whether a connection is IS-A, PART-OF, causal, thematic, or vague, explaining adjacent concepts, or auditing whether hierarchy and skill-boundary decisions use the wrong relation type. Covers taxonomic, associative, and thematic relations plus symmetry, asymmetry, transitivity, reflexivity, and irreflexivity. Do NOT use for formal ontology axioms with reasoning constraints, database foreign-key or junction-table design, or operational data correspondence across systems. Do NOT use for I need formal OWL axioms, class restrictions, and reasoning semantics on a knowledge base. Do NOT use for I need the physical database foreign keys and junction-table design for these relationships. Do NOT use for I need to connect external IDs from one platform to canonical IDs in our system operationally.

Use when an agent is making too many tool calls, when context is filling from verbose tool outputs, when the same operation could be a script instead of N individual calls, or when designing a tool-use protocol for a new agent or harness. Covers the three costs of every call (token, latency, context pollution), the script-vs-call decision gate, tool-selection decision trees (file-search vs content-search vs targeted-read vs full-read), call batching and parallelization, redundancy avoidance, the poka-yoke principle, subagent delegation for context protection, and cost-benchmark heuristics by task type. Do NOT use for prompt wording (use `prompt-craft`), broader context stack design across the five layers (use `context-engineering`), runtime tool failures or production debugging (use `debugging`), or behaviour-preserving refactor mechanics (use `refactor`). Do NOT use for improve this prompt's wording to get better outputs. Do NOT use for design what skills get loaded for which prompts.

Use when creating, auditing, or pressure-testing a Blue Ocean Strategy: value innovation, strategy canvas, Four Actions Framework, ERRC grid, six paths, buyer utility, noncustomers, and commercial viability. Covers reconstructing market boundaries, breaking the value-cost trade-off, shifting from competitor benchmarking to alternative/noncustomer insight, and turning the result into a new value curve. Do NOT use for industry-structure diagnosis alone (use porters-five-forces), durable moat classification (use seven-powers), or integrated five-choice strategy cascades (use playing-to-win). Do NOT use for analyze supplier power, buyer power, entrants, substitutes, and rivalry in this industry. Do NOT use for classify which durable moat this company has using Seven Powers. Do NOT use for turn this company strategy into aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, and systems. Do NOT use for rank these roadmap initiatives by impact and effort.

Use when designing a color system — palette construction, semantic color tokens, WCAG contrast pairings, perceptual scale generation in OKLCH/LCH/HCT, wide-gamut fallbacks, and light/dark/high-contrast parity. Do NOT use for single brand-color picks, runtime theme-switching mechanics, token delivery architecture, or non-color design tokens. Do NOT use for Pick the brand's primary color from scratch with no system constraints. Do NOT use for Implement prefers-color-scheme detection, localStorage persistence, and anti-flash script. Do NOT use for Design the full DTCG token build pipeline for all token categories. Do NOT use for Choose spacing values for the layout grid. Do NOT use for the palette, the scale construction, the semantic color roles, and the contrast pairings against every surface (use dark-mode-implementation).

Use when translating messy business requirements, stakeholder language, or early product ideas into an implementation-neutral domain model before database schemas, API endpoints, or DDD aggregates are named. Covers entities, attributes, named relationships, cardinality, identity criteria, specialization/generalization, aggregation/composition, reification, abstraction-level control, stakeholder validation, and modeling anti-patterns. Do NOT use for database ER diagrams with keys and normalization, formal ontology axioms with OWL/RDFS, or DDD tactical design; use those dedicated skills instead. Do NOT use for give me the physical table design with PKs, FKs, and normalization forms. Do NOT use for turn this model into SQL migrations and index definitions. Do NOT use for I need OWL class axioms and reasoning constraints for these concepts. Do NOT use for build the DDD aggregate boundaries and anti-corruption layer. Do NOT use for what hypernymy or meronymy labels apply between these two terms.

Use when designing what information reaches an LLM agent before it reasons — system prompt, persistent memory, always-loaded rules, injected skills, and the user prompt — or when diagnosing why an agent produced a wrong answer despite a clear instruction. Covers the four context failure modes (missing, stale, wrong, overwhelming), the five-layer context stack, four context quality metrics (injection precision and recall, utilization, freshness), the Frequent Intentional Compaction (FIC) protocol, subagent delegation for context-heavy work, and the failure-mode decision tree. Do NOT use for prompt wording (use `prompt-craft`), authoring a new SKILL.md (use `skill-scaffold`), or deciding which skill the router activates for a given query (use `skill-router`). Do NOT use for improve this prompt's wording to get better outputs. Do NOT use for scaffold a new SKILL.md for our team's deploy procedure. Do NOT use for the router picked the wrong skill for this query — debug it.

Use when authoring any artifact that makes claims — skill content, documentation, audit findings, architecture proposals, code review comments, research summaries, or agent output. Covers the discipline of grounding every claim to a verifiable source, distinguishing verified-by-evidence from inferred-from-context, Chain-of-Verification-style claim checking, RFC 2119/RFC 8174 modality, Toulmin argument structure, citation faithfulness, native citation-tool limits, and honest handling of inference, absence, conflict, and currentness. Do NOT use for execution-level evidence protocols or output-completeness enforcement (use methodology), naming precision (use semantics), or grader/rubric design (use evaluation or eval-driven-development). Do NOT use for decide which lint rule to add for a specific kind of drift (use skill-infrastructure). Do NOT use for evaluate a finished SKILL.md against the comprehension grader (use evaluation).

Use when designing or reviewing Next.js middleware: the single middleware.ts request preprocessor, Edge Runtime constraints, matcher config, NextRequest/NextResponse APIs, redirects, rewrites, pass-through responses, direct responses, auth gates, locale routing, A/B rewrites, security-header delivery, geo routing, bot blocking, and request ID injection. Use for fast cross-cutting request concerns that apply across many routes. Do NOT use for per-route API handlers, Server Actions, HTTP semantics, full security policy design, streaming logic, or webhook signature handling. Do NOT use for implement a /api/posts POST endpoint (use route-handler-design). Do NOT use for implement a delete-comment mutation triggered from a form button (use server-actions-design). Do NOT use for explain what an HTTP 308 means vs 307 (use http-semantics). Do NOT use for design the full CSP policy and the rest of the security-header strategy (use security-fundamentals).

Use when auditing for recurring issues, clustering errors, detecting drift from conventions, or when an agent keeps fixing symptoms instead of root causes. Covers the Observe -> Cluster -> Name -> Codify -> Detect -> Prevent loop, grep-based audits, normalize-then-hash error clustering, board-health patterns, design-token and heading drift, domain-encoding patterns, eval-as-pattern-tests, 5 Whys, pattern lifecycle states, and drift traps. Do NOT use for one-off bug localization without recurrence, or for designing the classification system itself; this skill detects violations of conventions that already exist. Do NOT use for review this code for semantic correctness. Do NOT use for find where the user-auth helper is defined. Do NOT use for design a MECE classification taxonomy for our error catalogue. Do NOT use for investigate why this single failing test is breaking. Do NOT use for trigger an alert when CPU exceeds 80% for 5 minutes. Do NOT use for rewrite this function to be cleaner.

Use when declaring, measuring, or enforcing performance thresholds as a quality contract rather than as an aspirational target. Covers the three budget axes (time, size, count), the four governing properties of a real budget (metric, threshold, percentile, consequence), the Core Web Vitals set (LCP, INP, CLS), the RAIL model, Lighthouse budgets.json, lab vs field measurement, and the discipline of treating budget breach as a build or deploy failure rather than a tracked metric. Do NOT use for the activity of profiling and optimizing a specific slow path (use performance-engineering), the choice of rendering model that bounds achievable budgets (use rendering-models), or the design of observability and telemetry signals (use observability-modeling).