donald-ada Setup Working Genius
The workflow runs on defaults (.genius/ for work files, verify commands discovered per run, no issue mirror), so this skill is about the pointer as much as the settings: a fresh session knows none of it until an instruction file tells it. Run it once per repo, as a conversation: look first (existing CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md, any .genius/ in flight, the task runner, a CONTEXT.md or DESIGN.md already alive), propose what you found, let the user correct each choice.
A — Work-file directory. Default .genius/ at the repo root. Recommend committing — done files are decision history every session can read. Create the directory now (a .gitkeep where it would be empty).
B — Verify commands. Propose the discovered typecheck / test / lint commands; the user corrects them. Pin each in its quiet form — pytest -q --tb=short, never -v — because a coordinator re-runs every criterion of every slice and carries each run's output in its context to the end of the work.
C — Issue tracking. Default off — the work file already carries the state. Pin Issue tracking: github when people watch progress through the tracker: Galvanizing then publishes each approved breakdown as one parent issue with a slice issue per slice, all wearing one shared working-genius label; Enablement closes slice issues as slices close, Tenacity closes the parent last. Issues are the work file's published mirror, never a second place to plan.
D — Seed the project docs. Work files are per-work memory; three homes are project memory, and setup is the one conversation guaranteed to happen before any of it. .genius/DECIDED.md needs no seeding — its lines are earned by the first decision a future stranger would re-fight (decision-record skill). The other two:
CONTEXT.md— the vocabulary. Propose the handful of terms a stranger would need decoded — domain words, never general programming ones — and let the user confirm or sharpen each; write the confirmed set in thedomain-glossaryskill's format. Where the project's records will be written in a language other than English, add the flow's own names — the glossary skill lists which — each with one rendering the user confirms. Confirmed terms only: an empty skeleton is premature documentation, and an existingCONTEXT.mdgets its## Languagesection appended, everything else left alone. A user with no patience for this declines in a word; the pointer still tells every session to grow the file as terms resolve.DESIGN.md— the visual language. Never scaffolded here: it is the output of the/designerconversation, and a template written without it is the model-default aesthetic it exists to prevent. Ask one question — does this project have an interface someone will see? — and the answer decides whether the pointer carries the DESIGN.md line.ARCHITECTURE.md— the committed architecture. The same rule: the output of/architect, never scaffolded. Where one exists, the pointer says to read it before designing across its boundaries; where the project is greenfield, the pointer routes to/architectfirst.
Three settings, and it stays three: configuration is for what a session must know and cannot infer from the repo. Preferences are said in plain words when they matter, not switches.
Where the pointer goes
Agents don't share one instruction file: Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md, most others read AGENTS.md. So write both: the section goes in AGENTS.md, and CLAUDE.md carries @AGENTS.md as its first line to import it. Update existing files in place and preserve everything in them. Move any ## Working Genius section already in CLAUDE.md whole into AGENTS.md, lessons included, leaving only the import: two copies of these settings is worse than none, because a model reading both picks between them arbitrarily.
## Working Genius
Work files: `.genius/` (committed)
Before starting substantial work, find that work's snapshot — `<slug>.md` inside its own folder in the
directory above. It is the work's current truth: the confirmed problem, the decision and its
kill-reasons, which contract version binds, the slices and where they stand, and `next:` naming the
exact command that moves it forward. Beside it: `<slug>.log.md`, the history, opened only if a question
needs it; `CONTRACT.md`, what binds the slices not yet built, opened when you are about to build,
attack or verify against it; and that work's own artifacts. That one folder is everything a session
needs — other slugs, in flight or done, stay closed. Anything written into a work's folder links
relative to that folder, never from the repo root. The user types `/genius` for status across all
of them and the next command; the flow is /wonder → /invent → /discern → /galvanize → /enable →
/tenacity, and every stage is a command they type.
Project docs — read before writing, improve while working:
- `CONTEXT.md`: the project's vocabulary. Name things in its terms; the moment a conversation
resolves or collides a term, record it there inline (domain-glossary skill), never batched.
- `DESIGN.md`: the committed visual language. Read it before building anything someone will see;
a screen that wants to break it is a conversation, not a drift. No file yet? `/designer` creates it.
- `ARCHITECTURE.md`: the committed architecture — boundaries, contracts, ranked qualities, what it
makes cheap and dear. Read it before designing anything that crosses a boundary. Greenfield, or a
subsystem about to be shaped? `/architect` creates it, before the first slice.
- `.genius/DECIDED.md`: the index of settled decisions, one line each, pointing at the fight that
settled it. Read it before designing against settled ground; a decision a future stranger would
re-fight earns its line at close-out (decision-record skill), and overturning one moves its line.
- `.genius/BACKLOG.md`: work discovered but not started. The moment one surfaces, give it one line
here (genius-file skill); `/genius` lights these up. Order is what to do next, top to bottom.
What leaves goes to `.genius/BACKLOG.log.md` — nothing is deleted to make this file shorter.
`/triage` asks whether a line still belongs; `/reconcile` asks whether the code has satisfied it.
- `.genius/HISTORY.md`: one line per finished work — what it was and which genius was weakest.
Written and read at close-out (tenacity skill), so a repeat weakness is caught without reopening
a done work file.
Issue tracking: github
Verify commands:
- typecheck: `<command>`
- test: `<command>`
- lint: `<command>`
Tailor the docs list to what setup found: a project with no interface drops the DESIGN.md line, one whose shape is settled and unremarkable drops the ARCHITECTURE.md line — each doc kept carries its read-trigger and its write-trigger, because a doc nothing tells sessions to update was current once. Write it as instructions, not description — "check .genius/ before starting" is followed; "work files live in .genius/" is merely true. Editing the section directly is the normal way to change these later; re-running this skill is only for starting over.