# Routing Learnings

> The anti-auto-memory router. Use this EVERY time you notice something worth remembering — a repeated mistake, a user correction, a procedure that worked, a preference, a project quirk — and especially whenever you feel the urge to "just note this down" in CLAUDE.md or memory. Also use during /retro to classify each mined learning. Routing prose into the wrong artifact is the primary failure mode of this harness; when in doubt, trigger this skill.

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

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# Routing Learnings

A learning only counts if it lands in an artifact that changes future behavior.
Walk the tree top-down; first match wins.

## The decision tree

1. **Can it be enforced mechanically?** ("never X", "always Y before Z")
   → **hook** — but only after the weight gate below. Code that blocks beats
   prose that suggests, and costs zero context. Hooks are enforcement-layer:
   draft the script + settings entry, open a PR via /harness-pr, human merges.
   Never edit hooks/ directly.
   **Weight gate — net hook count must not grow by reflex.** Before adding a NEW
   hook, in order: (a) can you fix the ROOT CAUSE so the problem can't arise?
   (b) does an EXISTING guard already cover this trigger — strengthen/repurpose it?
   (c) do overlapping guards exist to CONSOLIDATE instead? (d) can you make the
   correct action the easy default? A new hook is justified only when all four
   fail. Reflexively answering every papercut with "always/never → new hook" is
   hook-bloat, not improvement — more enforcement surface makes the harness HARDER
   to follow, which causes more mistakes. That case routes to /meta-retro
   (audit / consolidate / prune), NOT /harness-pr (add). The user named hook
   proliferation as the anti-pattern itself (session b7488db6, 2026-06-19: "we
   already have so many fucking hooks... we gotta stop bandaid fixing this").

2. **Is it a multi-step procedure you (Claude) will repeat across tasks?**
   → **skill**. Loaded only on trigger, so cost is ~its description.
   Follow skills/harness-authoring before writing it.

3. **Is it a workflow the USER initiates by name?** ("do a release", "run retro")
   → **command** in commands/. Keep under 80 lines.

4. **Is it a role that needs an isolated, fresh context?** (grading, auditing)
   → **agent** in agents/. If the role must not see your working context to do
   its job honestly (any evaluation of your own work), it MUST be an agent.

5. **Is it this user's taste, style, or recurring preference?**
   → one bullet in memory/user-model.md, formatted exactly:
   `- <claim> (evidence: N, last: YYYY-MM-DD, source: corrections|stated|inferred)`
   Lint rejects bullets without evidence counts. New entries start at evidence: 1;
   bump the count and date on each confirmation. Never write a horoscope.

6. **Is it a fact true of exactly one project?** (build quirks, domain glossary)
   → that project's CLAUDE.md, one line. If you later see it in a second
   project, promote it upstream (it was a #2 or #5 all along).

7. **None of the above** → discard. Most candidate learnings should die here.
   Hoarding is the failure mode this tree exists to prevent.

## Hard rules

- Every routed artifact gets a `provenance:` line: date, session, triggering
  event. Lint enforces this for post-v1 artifacts. Unsourced rules are rumors.
- One learning, one artifact. If it seems to need two, it is two learnings.
- A decision with alternatives that were rejected → also write a short ADR in
  memory/decisions/NNNN-slug.md so future-you doesn't relitigate it.
- **Precedent check before changing a subsystem's mechanism.** Before drafting a
  hook/skill/ADR that alters how an existing subsystem works, grep
  `memory/decisions/` AND the target's SKILL + provenance comments for that
  mechanism. If a prior audit/ADR rejected it, rebut THAT named decision on its
  own terms — not a generic restatement of it. Re-running a decision already made
  (the rejected line is often already in your own earlier grep output) costs a full
  auditor pass to re-derive. (session 0d0fe086, 2026-06-22: re-proposed an auto-fire
  recall hook that stuck-detection had already rejected by name.)

<!-- provenance: /retro-backlog 2026-06-19, session b7488db6 — after the agent
reflexively proposed "add a hook+skill" for a recurring git-base papercut, the
user pushed back hard ("we already have so many fucking hooks... stop bandaid
fixing this"). The hook step had no restraint; added the weight gate so net
enforcement surface doesn't grow by reflex. Paired with the /meta-retro guard-
friction audit (audit/consolidate/prune existing); a companion /retro-backlog PR
records the same taste in memory/user-model.md. -->