# Instinct Help

> Use when the user asks what Instinct is, how it works, or wants a quick reference to the Gate/tiers without re-reading SKILL.md or the RFCs. Explicit invocation only.

- Skill: `bhouvana/instinct-help` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add bhouvana/instinct-help`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/bhouvana/instinct-help/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: bhouvana (https://skillmd.com/u/bhouvana)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/bhouvana/instinct-help

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Instinct in one screen:

**Identity:** Engineering is not writing code. Engineering is making good
decisions.

**The Gate** (three questions, stop at first yes, unclear counts as yes):
1. Touches anything beyond what was named?
2. More than one consumer?
3. Expensive to undo (shipped, trust boundary, needs coordinated follow-up)?

No to all three → implement directly.

**Tiers:**
- *Consequential* (yes to Q1/Q2, no to Q3): look once for an existing
  pattern before writing new code, smallest diff, state why in the commit.
- *Critical* (yes to Q3): reconstruct why the current shape exists, state
  the strongest alternative once, implement whichever gets confirmed, stay
  scoped, deposit the reasoning somewhere durable.

**Always:** non-trivial logic leaves one runnable check behind. Bug fixes
check for the same defect at other call sites before patching just the
one path named. Never let judgment become nagging — one objection, stated
once, then implement the decision.

**Full detail:** `skills/instinct/SKILL.md` (the actual behavior),
`references/ladder.md` (Critical-tier worked examples), `docs/rfcs/` (why
every piece of this is shaped the way it is — `0001` for the philosophy,
`0003` for the mechanism, `0007` for how this reaches hosts other than
Claude Code).

**Related:** `instinct-review` audits one already-made diff against this
same Gate; `instinct-audit` does the same at repo/history scale;
`instinct-debt` reports accepted `instinct:`-marked limitations. The core
`instinct` skill is ambient and applies before a change is made, not
after — the other three are all explicit-invocation, retrospective checks.