Explore

explore

Technical exploration skill dispatcher. Exploration only — this skill never writes application code. Research notes, proposals, and repo comparisons are the only artifacts produced; the sole exception is a rare, clearly-labelled demo snippet inside a proposal, used to illustrate an approach and never shipped.

Inline Usage

Pass your intent directly on the invocation line — new proceeds immediately with no opening question when a description is provided.

/explore new how the auth middleware works
/explore new "caching strategy" --aspects
/explore diff https://github.com/org/other-repo

Critical Rules

• Exploration only — no code. This skill researches, compares, and proposes. It does not write application code, produce implementation plans or task breakdowns, or create Linear issues. The only permitted code is a rare demo snippet inside a proposal, clearly labelled as illustrative and not for production.
• Never execute workflow logic here — this file only parses args and dispatches
• Step 0 always runs first — no exceptions
• Unknown verb → run help.md — never error silently
• Pass all remaining args through — workflow receives $REMAINING_ARGS unchanged
• Markdown output: soft-wrap prose, never hard-wrap — when any explore workflow or agent writes a .md artifact (proposals, research notes, summaries, comparisons), write each paragraph as one continuous line; do not insert manual newlines to wrap prose at a fixed column width. Newlines still separate paragraphs, list items, headings, and code fences.
• Model tiers, never model IDs — the explore agents declare metadata: model-tier: light|standard|heavy in frontmatter and workflows use model-tier: tokens; the platform maps tiers to concrete models (see references/model-tiers.md). Never hardcode a provider model ID (such as claude-*) in this skill.

Step 0: Parse Arguments

The raw invocation args (filled by Claude Code / OpenCode slash commands): $ARGUMENTS. If this line is not filled in, read the verb and remaining args from the user's current message.

VERB="[first non-flag argument, or empty]"
REMAINING_ARGS="[everything after VERB, preserving order and flags]"

case "$VERB" in
  "")         VERB="help"    ;;
  "explore")  VERB="new"     ;;  # alias: /explore explore → /explore new (pre-rename muscle memory)
esac

Step 1: Dispatch to Workflow

Read and execute references/workflows/{VERB}.md, passing $REMAINING_ARGS as the argument string.

If references/workflows/{VERB}.md does not exist, fall back to references/workflows/help.md and note the unknown verb.

Workflow Index

• new (references/workflows/new.md) — research a technical problem, compare approaches, generate parallel proposals
• diff (references/workflows/diff.md) — compare two repos for structural differences
• allow (references/workflows/allow.md) — pre-approve permissions for background agents
• help (references/workflows/help.md) — print command reference

Agent Index

• proposal-writer (agents/proposal-writer.md) — writes technical proposals; used by new
• researcher (agents/researcher.md) — researches technical approaches; used by new