Init

Load mahou:basics first, then mahou:docs. Then read .mahou/init.md if present.

Set up the docs

This is the only skill that reads seeds/, so no other skill needs a template body. Everything you write here becomes the project's as soon as it is written: the user is free to rewrite any of it, and every other skill will read what they wrote rather than what you seeded.

Tell the user this during the interview, because the output does not show it.

Never overwrite

Touch nothing that exists. A target that exists is reported as kept; one that is missing is created and reported as added. That holds for the charter, folder READMEs, the template, notes, and individual CLAUDE.md bullets.

Compare against the current files, not against what you wrote last time. An edited template is then indistinguishable from a hand-written one, and both are left alone.

The charter's folder table is the exception, because it is a list inside a file that already exists. It gains a row for any folder missing one. Add the row, touch nothing else in the file, and report it as added. Without this a folder added on a re-run gets its directory and its README but no row, and a folder with no row is invisible to anyone reading the charter.

This is also why a re-run is the way to add something later. A re-run detects any folder lacking a README or a table row and offers to fill each gap, and it accepts an explicit request just as well: "add a folder for operational procedures".

1. Detect what is there

Resolve the docs folder as docs says. Look for the charter (README.md at its root), the folder READMEs, a _templates/ folder, a docs section in CLAUDE.md, and whether the repository has significant code: a brownfield repo answers several interview questions by itself.

Report what you found before asking anything. If everything is present and consistent, say so and stop; there is nothing to do.

2. Interview

Ask in plain prose, one round at a time, and propose rather than asking an open question: infer from the repository and ask the user to confirm or correct. Skip anything the repo already answers.

1. Where the docs go. Propose docs/, or an existing documentation directory if there is one. If it already holds markdown, say plainly: this becomes the docs root, and nothing will be moved.

2. What the project is, in two sentences, for the CLAUDE.md opener. Skip it silently if CLAUDE.md already opens with one.

3. The note folders. Everything else depends on this one. For each: the folder name, one line on what it holds, and the human name its index displays.

   Seed the proposal from what is there: existing subdirectories usually already encode the split someone wanted. Failing that, propose one folder for a small repo, or two when the repo has both a codebase and a surface someone uses: one for how it works, one for what it is for. Do not propose more than two unasked; a third folder reintroduces the "which one does this go in" question that a two-way split answers.

   Say that the folders are the project's to add to, rename or remove afterwards.

4. Whether the docs folder is also an Obsidian vault. Offer it, with no as the default. When yes, the Obsidian config directory goes in .gitignore with its one-line reason (its contents are per-person), and the user is told to point the Templates core plugin at _templates/ by hand once. Everything seeded renders the same on GitHub and in Obsidian either way.

5. The commands. Detect from the lockfile or manifest (never infer a package manager from a language) and confirm separately how to run the thing and what must be green before a change is done. Skip when CLAUDE.md already carries them.

3. Write the docs

Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/init/seeds/MANIFEST.md. It carries the landing table, the tokens, the per-folder instantiation rule and the zero-<< post-condition, and it is the authority on each of them.

4. Write the CLAUDE.md section

Append the block below, filled from the interview, or create CLAUDE.md if there is none. If the section already exists, add only the bullets that are missing. Never rewrite one the user has edited. Omit any field the interview did not answer; the skill that needs it will resolve it and offer to record it.

## Docs

- **Docs**: `<path>/`. Read its `README.md` before adding, editing, renaming or moving anything under it.
- **Folders**: <one line per folder: what each holds>
- **Run**: <how to launch it>
- **Checks**: <the commands that must be green before a change is done>

### When adding something

<a list: a kind of change → where it is documented>

5. Report

Report in these columns and nothing else:

• added: what you created.
• kept: what already existed and was left alone.
• needs a decision: anything you found inconsistent: a folder with no README, a table row with no directory, a template nothing uses.

Then say that everything under the docs folder is the project's now: edit the template, add a folder, rewrite the charter, and the skills will follow it.