Monthly Retro

Tandem: monthly-retro (Founder + PM hats)

Operate as Founder + PM hats jointly for a solo retro. The user is closing out a month and wants the retro filed in one slash command — no paste-prompt copy.

This skill is the slash-command wrapper for the kit's canonical monthly-retro prompt. The prompt is the source of truth; this file is the entry point.

Source of truth

@_00-Project-Management/92-Prompts/10-monthly-retro.md

Follow that prompt verbatim. The sections below add only the slash-command-specific glue (which month to retro, input resolution, output path, empty-month handling, post-write handoff) — do not re-declare the prompt's content here.

Which month — the prior-month window rule

Always retro the MOST RECENTLY COMPLETED FULL month — never the in-progress month. Auto-detect this month from the system clock unless an argument overrides it.

The rule, stated precisely with its boundary cases:

• Run on 2026-06-01 → retro 2026-05. June has just begun; May is the most recently completed full month.

• Run on 2026-05-31 → also retro 2026-05 (NOT June). You retro the month that just finished, not the in-progress one — and on the last day of May you are wrapping up May itself, so May is the target. The point of the boundary is to never retro a month that is still partly ahead of you: a run dated anywhere in late May still targets 2026-05, and a run on the very first day of June still targets 2026-05.

  In short: the target is the last full month whose work is done — the prior month relative to a fresh-of-the-month run, and the just-closed current month when you run on its final day. Either way you land on the most recently completed full month and you do not retro a month still in progress beyond "today".

• Argument override: if the user passes an explicit month (e.g. 2026-03 or "March"), retro that month instead of the auto-detected one. The argument always wins over the clock.

Derive YYYY-MM for the target month and use it for both the output filename and the period_start / period_end frontmatter (period_end = last calendar day of the target month).

Inputs needed

• If the user passed a month argument, use it. Otherwise auto-detect per the prior-month window rule above from the system clock.
• If the user is ambiguous ("do the retro"), state which month you resolved to before drafting, so they can correct you in one line.

Load into context

The canonical layout is under _00-Project-Management/. Use Read / Glob to detect existence rather than assuming; treat missing files as "not present" rather than throwing. Load the inputs the source prompt lists, scoped to the target month's window:

• MONITOR — _00-Project-Management/42-Monitor/MONITOR.md (last ~4 weeks of revision history).
• Previous month's retro — _00-Project-Management/14-Retros/RETRO-*.md, the one immediately before the target month, to check the carry-forward "One change".
• Current quarter's OKRs — _00-Project-Management/00-Strategy/OKR-*.md (most recent) for the strategic check.
• Closed stories in-window — stories under _00-Project-Management/32-Stories/ whose completed_at falls inside the target month.
• ADRs in-window — _00-Project-Management/40-Decisions/ADR-*.md created in the target month.
• Bugs in-window — _00-Project-Management/34-Bugs/ filed / fixed in the target month.
• Retro template — _00-Project-Management/91-Templates/RETRO.template.md.
• SOP — _00-Project-Management/90-Standards/SOP.md for retro rules + frontmatter contract.

For a multi-folder scan of the in-window activity, delegate to an Explore agent (SOP §18) and ingest the summary, not the raw paths.

Task

Run the source prompt verbatim. The mechanical points that matter for the slash command:

1. Write the retro to 14-Retros/RETRO-YYYY-MM.md (target month's YYYY-MM), using 91-Templates/RETRO.template.md verbatim — do not redraft section headings from memory. The template opens ## Summary → ## Period → ## What shipped → ## Metrics (ADR-0146).
2. Compute the objective metrics (stories shipped, bugs filed/fixed delta, ADRs created, rework rate, first-pass close rate, bugs per shipped story) from the in-window data. Auto-draft the objective sections; leave "What worked / What hurt / Surprises" for the user to edit to their voice. Do NOT compute "average story cycle time" from completed_at - started_at, and do not report time in blocked. Both were retired 2026-08-01 (ADR-0107): under orchestrated execution both timestamps are stamped minutes apart by the same run, and status: keeps no history — so the first measured an agent's execution window rather than lead time, and the second was never measurable at all. Report the difficulty signals above instead.
3. Propose 2-3 candidate "One change" actions — propose only, the user picks one.
4. Run the strategic check: did the month's work ladder into the current OKRs? Flag drift for the next quarterly review.
5. Show the draft in chat before saving. Wait for the user's edits.

## What shipped — derived, never written by hand

Do not compose this section. Run the derivation and paste what it returns:

node _00-Project-Management/93-Scripts/retro-shipped.js <YYYY-MM>

It prints the ## What shipped heading, the list grouped by epic, and a trailing HTML comment carrying the same window's counts. Add --json for the structured form when you need the numbers for ## Metrics as well.

Three rules ride on this, and all three are enforced by 93-Scripts/tests/monthly-retro-shipped.test.js:

• It is derived on every run, not carried forward. Never copy the list out of the previous month's retro, and never edit last month's list into this month's shape. The script reads 32-Stories/ — it does not read 14-Retros/ at all, so a story that exists only in a previous retro document cannot appear.
• It agrees with Metrics by construction. storiesShipped is derived from the same list, not counted by a second walk. If the number under ## Metrics and the number of bullets under ## What shipped ever disagree, one of them was hand-edited — fix the edit, do not reconcile the two by hand.
• What counts as shipped: a story with status: done whose completed_at falls in the month. wontfix, duplicate and archived are terminal but did not ship. An in-window timestamp on a story that is still in-progress does not ship either.

## Recalled from the retro ledger — what the runs noticed at the time

## What shipped above is derived from the board: it says what the month produced. The retro ledger is the other half — what each close-out, chat and phase observed while it was happening: the friction, the kit signals, the estimate-vs-actual calls. Recall it for the same window rather than reconstructing it from the artefacts a second time:

node _00-Project-Management/93-Scripts/retro-report.js --month <YYYY-MM>

Paste what it returns as its own section. It comes from 93-Scripts/retro-report.js — the one aggregator this skill, close-phase and reflect all share, so none of the three re-implements the join and the three cannot drift apart about what happened.

This AUGMENTS the derived sections; it replaces none of them. ## What shipped, ## Metrics and ## Summary are unchanged and are still derived exactly as described above. The recalled section sits alongside them under its own heading, so a reader can tell which sentence came from the board and which came from the run.

A window with no records is normal. The output says No retro records for this window. — paste that as returned. Every month before 2026-08 has no ledger lines at all, so this is the ordinary case for a while: it is a statement of fact, not a warning, and it must not read like one. Do not leave the section blank, and do not fall back to a month that does have records — the same stance ## What shipped takes, for the same reason.

## Summary — auto-drafted, in the objective register

Auto-draft it; do not prompt the operator for it. This follows the split this skill already makes: objective sections are Claude's to write, subjective sections ("What worked / What hurt / Surprises") are the user's voice. The Summary describes what the period was, from the same in-window data as Metrics, so it belongs on the objective side — the operator edits it afterwards like any other drafted section.

Contract (ADR-0146): 2–4 sentences, plain past-tense prose, objective register. The first sentence must stand alone as the whole gist — the Cadence → Retros card renders this section clamped at ~220 characters, so a summary whose meaning only arrives in sentence three shows up truncated and useless.

The write-outcomes voice does not apply here. That skill is capability-framed and future-facing ("You can now…", under ~20 words) with hard bans on internal IDs and command names; a retrospective is past-tense and its job is to name the epics, stories and ADRs of a closed period.

An empty month still gets an honest Summary — say the month was quiet and, if known, why. Do not invent narrative to fill the section, and do not carry last month's summary forward.

Empty month is valid output

A month with 0 closed stories is valid — still produce the retro file. Populate the metrics with zeros, note explicitly in "What worked / What hurt" that the month was quiet (and why, if known — e.g. holiday, founder offline, single long-running story not yet closed), and still propose a "One change" for the next month. Do NOT skip the file or error out on an empty window; early-kit months legitimately have no closed work.

## What shipped on an empty month reads "Nothing shipped in this period." — the derivation emits that sentence itself, so paste it as returned. Leaving the section blank is wrong: a blank section reads as an omission rather than as a fact, and it is indistinguishable from a run that failed halfway. Equally, do not fall back to the last month that did have something in it.

## Recalled from the retro ledger on an empty month reads "No retro records for this window." — the aggregator emits that sentence itself. The two sections are independent: a month can ship nothing and still carry ledger records, or ship plenty and carry none. Read each one's answer and paste it; never infer one from the other.

Output rules

• One retro file per month: 14-Retros/RETRO-YYYY-MM.md.
• Objective sections (Metrics, Action-from-last-retro carry-forward, Strategic check) are Claude's to write; subjective sections (What worked / What hurt / Surprises) are the user's voice — draft them as a starting point only.
• The "One change" — propose 2-3, the user commits to one.
• Honour the frontmatter contract: quoted ISO 8601 timestamps with offset from the system clock, canonical status enum, template used verbatim. The source prompt sets status=done + completed_at on save (this is the retro artefact's own lifecycle, not a kit story).

Non-negotiable rules from CLAUDE.md

• Frontmatter timestamps (quoted ISO 8601 with offset, from the system clock).
• Status enum (closed set of 9).
• Templates rule — use 91-Templates/RETRO.template.md verbatim; do not redraft section headings from memory.
• Update 42-Monitor/MONITOR.md with the one-line retro entry per the source prompt's end-of-retro step.

End-of-session summary (always emit)

• Target month resolved: YYYY-MM (and whether from clock or argument).
• File written: _00-Project-Management/14-Retros/RETRO-YYYY-MM.md.
• Stories shipped in-window: N (0 is valid — empty month noted in the file).
• Bugs filed / fixed: X / Y. ADRs created: Z.
• "One change" candidates proposed: list (user to pick one).
• Strategic drift: Yes / No.

Next-step guidance

Review the draft with the founder hat; capture any decisions that surface as ADRs. The retro often exposes a structural choice ("we keep skipping DoR — should we?") worth recording.

Next command

/tandem:weekly-monitor — the retro's "One change" is tracked from here into next month; the weekly cadence keeps it alive. If the strategic check flagged drift, run /tandem:draft-okrs next quarter to re-anchor.