Audit

Output style (plain words, no dashes, no hyphens)

Write everything this skill produces, files and messages alike, in plain simple language. Talk to the reader as you, warm and direct like a colleague, and present every step as a recommendation they may run or skip, never an order. Keep technical terms that carry real meaning; explain each in plain words. Never use a dash or a hyphen as punctuation: no em dash, no en dash, and no hyphenated compounds. Write read only, not read-only. Say it in simple words, or reword the sentence. Code, file paths, command flags, and values other skills match on keep their hyphens. Use short sentences, commas, or parentheses. Clear beats clever.

What this skill does

The context bootstrapper: writes the AGENTS.md files every later skill and AI tool reads.

• Greenfield (no code yet): ask for coding standards, seed root AGENTS.md from the answers plus the build approach (name and one line principle) from the scope header if /scope set one. Runs after the project is scaffolded with its chosen stack (/scope → /architect decides the stack → scaffold → /audit); earlier is premature.
• Brownfield, undocumented (code, no AGENTS.md): scan the whole project, write root AGENTS.md and nested <area>/AGENTS.md files, judging what is global (root) vs area specific (nested).
• Brownfield, partially documented: check existing root and nested docs against the whole codebase; add only what is missing (new global facts, nested docs for undocumented areas); never clobber curated content.

Does not create specs (/architect owns those), maintain files after changes (/sync owns that), or write the feature scope (/scope owns docs/scope/).

Context file convention (AGENTS.md is canonical)

Durable context lives in the tool agnostic AGENTS.md (root and nested); every agent (Codex, Cursor, Claude Code, and others) reads it. CLAUDE.md is only a one line pointer whose entire body imports the sibling AGENTS.md via Claude Code's @ import (exact pointer body in agent-prompt.md); content is never duplicated across the two.

• Write knowledge into AGENTS.md. Create it when missing. Never overwrite an existing AGENTS.md (it may be user or tool authored); gap fill conservatively, with permission.
• Migrate legacy content: a CLAUDE.md with content but no AGENTS.md → ask permission, move its content into a new AGENTS.md, replace CLAUDE.md with the pointer. Never silently discard curated content.
• Root stays short and global; nested AGENTS.md only for meaningful areas with real conventions (same root/nested rules as previously applied to CLAUDE.md).

Scope

An area path argument (e.g. auth, src/payments) triggers Phase 3. With no argument, the Pre-flight signals below route to Phase 0 (ambiguous: ask new vs existing), Phase 1 (greenfield: ask standards, seed root), Phase 2 (established, no root AGENTS.md: whole-repo scan), or Phase 4 (root AGENTS.md exists: gap-fill). A legacy CLAUDE.md with content but no AGENTS.md is migrated, then treated as Phase 4.

Acts vs asks

Phase 1 asks coding standards questions via MCQ before creating root AGENTS.md. Phase 2 acts immediately, no questions; it writes root and the nested docs it judges warranted. Phases 3 and 4 act to explore but ask permission before modifying an existing root AGENTS.md or migrating a legacy CLAUDE.md; Phase 4 reports nested doc creation for undocumented areas first, then applies on confirmation.

Artifact ownership

The AGENTS.md files hold the content: create root if missing (Phase 1, 2) and <area>/AGENTS.md if missing and warranted, by judgment (Phase 2, 3, 4); when one exists, gap-fill or propose additions with permission; never overwrite. The CLAUDE.md files are pointers only (root and area), created if missing; a legacy one with content is migrated into AGENTS.md with permission. When creating a nested AGENTS.md, add exactly one pointer line to root AGENTS.md under ## Context files: - [<area>/AGENTS.md](<area>/AGENTS.md) (<one-line description>). Never one per subfolder, only where distinct conventions exist.

Portability (any OS, any agent)

• Commands: git is the only required CLI, same on every OS. Other shell snippets (file counts, find, [ -f ]) are POSIX reference, not literal scripts; use your agent's cross platform file tools (search/glob, read, write) to list, count, and check existence.
• Bundled files live in this skill's folder: agent-prompt.md, the phase mode files (modes/*.md), and the pattern presets (patterns/*.md). Resolve the folder to an absolute path. Read the matching phase mode file when routing, then agent-prompt.md plus the SELECTED pattern preset at write time. Its ALL_CAPS placeholders (PHASE, AREA, ADDITIONAL_STANDARDS, MONOREPO_OR_NO, INSTALLED_SKILLS, DECLINED_TOOLS, and so on) are the inputs you gathered in pre-flight and the question rounds; apply each as you read.
• No interactive question support? Ask any multiple choice question as plain text with the same options.

Execution

The main thread does the writing in every phase; it never hands AGENTS.md writing to a subagent. The only subagent is a read only scout (cheapest model, Claude Code: haiku, never the session model), spawned only for a large scan; it returns a compact map the main thread writes from. A small scaffold or single area needs no scout; read it directly. Right before writing, read agent-prompt.md (persona, per phase instructions, templates) plus, in Phase 1, the selected pattern preset; then write following it. Read agent-prompt.md only at write time, not during pre-flight.

Pre-flight (main thread does this before anything else)

Gather several signals (a file count alone misleads: a scaffold inflates it, an unfamiliar language zeroes it):

1. Context files: root AGENTS.md present → ROOT_EXISTS; a CLAUDE.md with content only → ROOT_LEGACY; neither → ROOT_MISSING.
2. Source count across common ecosystems (extensions like .ts/.tsx/.js/.jsx/.py/.go/.rs/.java/.rb/.swift/.kt/.php/.cs/.dart/.ex/.exs/.scala/.c/.cpp/.h/.lua/.clj), excluding vendored/generated dirs (node_modules, .git, dist, build) and config files (*.config.*).
3. Established signals: git log --oneline for commit history depth; a real manifest (package.json, pyproject.toml, go.mod, Cargo.toml, composer.json, *.csproj, pubspec.yaml, mix.exs, Gemfile).
4. Monorepo signal: workspace markers (pnpm-workspace.yaml, turbo.json, a "workspaces" field in package.json) or any apps/*/package.json / packages/*/package.json near the root.
5. Workflow setup signal (WORKFLOW_SETUP): root AGENTS.md is MISSING while the workflow has already decided the stack, i.e. a docs/specs/ architecture spec exists (a ## Proposed stack section), and/or docs/scope/ has a "Stack and architecture" (or similar foundational scaffold) feature. This is the intended greenfield order (/scope → /architect decides the stack → /develop scaffolds it → /audit): freshly scaffolded, still needs coding standards captured. When it fires, the manifest and scaffold source that now exist are the scaffold, not a existing codebase.

Pick the phase. The order of checks matters: the workflow setup signal outranks the raw code count, because a fresh scaffold has a manifest and source files yet is still greenfield.

Why this order: a fresh scaffold has a manifest and starter files but is still greenfield, so a raw code count alone would misread it as brownfield and skip the standards questions; the workflow setup signal catches that and routes to greenfield. Truly brownfield (Phase 2) means real feature code, real history, and no workflow setup in progress. Anything ambiguous falls to Phase 0; never default a maybe greenfield project to brownfield.

Monorepo (MONOREPO=yes): root plus a light stub per workspace, deepen on demand. Each workspace (apps/*, packages/*) is a first class area; its primary doc lives at the workspace root (packages/api/AGENTS.md), never buried deeper. A whole-repo run does not deep scan every workspace; write the repo root AGENTS.md (monorepo wide tooling, shared conventions) plus a light stub per workspace from its manifest, no code scan, with root pointers. The full conventions/gotchas/key files scan happens when the engineer runs /audit packages/api (Phase 3) or first builds there. A spot inside a workspace that warrants its own doc (packages/ui/src/mdx/) gets one in addition to the workspace root doc, linked from it. A doc already buried in a workspace with no workspace root doc: ask: "packages/ui has a context file at src/mdx/ but none at its root. Move it up to packages/ui/AGENTS.md, or keep it as a nested doc under a new packages/ui/AGENTS.md?" On move: relocate it to the workspace root. On keep nested: create the workspace root AGENTS.md AND keep the deep one, linked from root. Migrate legacy CLAUDE.md content per the convention above. Apply MONOREPO=yes plus the workspace list as you write.

Legacy migration (any phase): on ROOT_LEGACY, before proceeding ask permission: "I found a CLAUDE.md with project context but no AGENTS.md. I'll move its content into a new AGENTS.md (so all tools read it) and replace CLAUDE.md with a pointer. Proceed?" On yes: copy the content verbatim into AGENTS.md, then replace CLAUDE.md with the pointer; AGENTS.md now exists, so continue as Phase 4 (gap-fill). On no: leave both untouched and continue without migrating. Same for any nested <area>/CLAUDE.md.

Route to the selected phase

Phase 0 (ambiguous) is handled inline below. For Phases 1 to 4, read only the matching mode file, then follow it:

• Phase 1 (greenfield setup) → modes/greenfield.md
• Phase 2 (whole-repo scan) → modes/whole-repo.md
• Phase 3 (area scan) → modes/area.md
• Phase 4 (gap-fill) → modes/gapfill.md

Do not read the other mode files. The greenfield and whole-repo modes additionally read modes/tool-skills.md for the Agent Skills / MCP sweep (skip it for area and gap-fill runs).

Phase 0: Classify (only when pre-flight is ambiguous)

Don't guess. Ask once via your agent's interactive option picker (AskUserQuestion on Claude Code), or plain text with the same options. Mark one option (recommended) by whichever signal is stronger (a scaffold like tree with a manifest but little history leans New; real feature code and deep history leans Existing), and the picker adds a free text custom slot last:

• question: "I can't tell if this is a new project or an existing codebase (<state why: e.g. 'a manifest exists but I see no source in a language I recognise', or 'files look like untouched scaffolding'>). Which is it?"
• header: "Project state"
• options: 1. New project, "I'll ask for your coding standards and seed the context." → Phase 1 (read the manifest/scaffold for the stack; still ask standards). 2. Existing codebase, "I'll scan what's here and document it." → Phase 2.

After all phases

If no AGENTS.md was written when it should have been (the file is missing/empty), report the failure and do it again; don't relay success it didn't produce. Otherwise relay the report: what was discovered (2 to 4 bullets), what was written (file paths), what was proposed or skipped (if existing files were found).

Pattern presets

See patterns/ for the four coding style presets used in Phase 1 (greenfield mode).

Writing guide

See agent-prompt.md (the main thread reads it at write time; its per phase instructions and AGENTS.md templates).