Project Cognition

Project Cognition

Principle expression

Primary: P05 Supporting: P12, P13, P14

Scope

Own one recurring judgment: what source-linked working model of this concrete project will let named later agents make a named class of decisions without reconstructing the whole project, and how should that model be partitioned, verified, and selectively refreshed?

The answer may be no durable cognition. For one bounded question, a temporary working model is usually smaller and safer. Persist a projection only when a later actor or recurring decision is named and the retained model changes that future action.

This Skill owns the cognition method. It does not own project facts, source authority, context delivery, code-review verdicts, execution, orchestration, storage services, or acceptance. A generated index or facet is a rebuildable projection over named project sources.

Read concepts only when decision field, facet, packet, coverage ledger, or cognition projection are being conflated. The vocabulary clarifies the method; it does not prescribe a target-project schema.

Principle source

Use a host Sequence and matching interpretations when the host declares them. Otherwise use this Skill's read-only fallback in references/sequence.md. Read only P05, P12, P13, and P14.

Dispatch

• With bootstrap, read and follow commands/bootstrap.md.
• With refresh, read and follow commands/refresh.md.
• With verify, read and follow commands/verify.md.
• With no argument, ground the requested decision and existing cognition, then choose the smallest applicable path. A read-only orientation request does not authorize creating or changing a durable projection.

Start

Target project and named source revision:
Decisions this cognition must support:
Named later actors or recurrence evidence:
Authoritative source and accepted design:
Existing cognition projection, if any:
Available execution carrier, if any:
Verifier and retention/commit owner:
Observation that would make persistence unnecessary:

If the intended behavior or source authority is materially unsettled, route that decision first. Cognition cannot establish the architecture it is meant to describe.

Core method

1. Decide whether cognition should persist. Name the later decision and the reconstruction cost or repeated failure. If no later actor, recurrence, or decision delta exists, answer from a temporary source-linked model and stop.
2. Recover the whole at low resolution. Establish purpose, major responsibilities, external surfaces, authoritative records, and the main causal or state paths relevant to the named decision. This orients decomposition; it is not yet a durable ontology.
3. Choose this task's semantic partition. Derive coherent questions from the actual project and decision. Responsibility, causal path, state, authority, evidence, public contract, change impact, and uncertainty are useful relation lenses, not mandatory facet names. Read adaptive decomposition when the whole exceeds one coherent investigation.
4. Prepare bounded investigations. Each packet names one question, source scope, incoming and outgoing relations, local acceptance, and what would force repartition. The caller may execute packets directly or lower them into Work Cells, a Swarm, or another carrier. This Skill never chooses concurrency, provider, retry, or queue policy.
5. Reconstruct against source. Reconnect packet boundaries before accepting the whole. Resolve disagreement through named source evidence, not consensus. Label inference, missing relations, and conflicting sources explicitly.
6. Admit only verified claims. A plausible model, generated artifact, or successful terminal call remains a proposal until a designated verifier checks its decision-relevant relations against the named source revision. The verifier must be an accountable external actor, review run, or governed process. Never name this Skill, a Cell, the projection, or its generator as the verifier; when no external check occurred, mark the claims proposed or unverified.
7. Externalize the minimum inheritance. When persistence passed its gate, retain a small routing index plus meaning-owned facets using the projection contract. Raw run records remain cold evidence by reference. Follow the target project's accepted artifact layout; do not create a second source of truth.
8. Refresh by changed relation. For a later revision, trace changed sources through responsibility, caller/consumer, state, authority, contract, test, and migration relations. Reuse a facet only with an explicit source-backed reason. Refresh affected facets, reconnect boundaries, and verify the changed field. Do not rebuild everything merely because a timestamp changed.
9. Return decision support, not a capability claim. State what the model now supports, what remains uncertain, what was reused or refreshed, evidence inspected, actual work observed, and the next event that should invalidate or bypass it.

Ownership and routing

Boundaries

• Do not define a universal project ontology or fixed facet taxonomy.
• Do not persist cognition merely because the command can create files.
• Do not copy volatile target-project facts into this portable Skill.
• Do not treat tests, ASTs, code graphs, model agreement, or run success as sufficient fact admission; they are evidence inputs with bounded coverage.
• Do not impose byte limits, token limits, nested chunk manifests, or one-file monoliths. Keep one coherent semantic question per facet and split only when one agent can no longer read and revise it coherently.
• Do not require Work Cell, Shilu, a database, embeddings, or a retrieval service. They may be optional carriers after their own form and authority decisions.

Completion standard

A cognition result is ready only when it names the decisions and source revision, justifies temporary versus durable form, explains why the selected partition fits this project, reconnects cross-facet relations, distinguishes verified claims from inference, preserves external acceptance authority, and states its invalidation or rebuild conditions. A durable projection must be deletable without losing authoritative project state.