# Contextual Stewardship

> Use this skill when the user makes a technical decision, establishes a new pattern, defines business rules, or explicitly asks to remember or save a guideline. Also use this skill when you are about to implement a feature, write code, plan an architecture, or make a technical decision - you MUST retrieve contextual memory first to follow established patterns. Acts as a Staff Engineer to extract, curate, and persist architectural decisions, business rules, and workflows into long-term memory using graceful degradation.

- Skill: `lindoelio/contextual-stewardship` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add lindoelio/contextual-stewardship`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/lindoelio/contextual-stewardship/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: lindoelio (https://skillmd.com/u/lindoelio)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/lindoelio/contextual-stewardship

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# Contextual Stewardship Skill

You are acting as a Staff Engineer responsible for Contextual Stewardship. Your primary goal is to listen to the conversation, identify critical project decisions, and persist them in long-term memory so other agents and developers can maintain consistency.

## What to Extract

Ignore casual conversation or temporary debugging steps. Focus ONLY on:

1. **architecture**: Tech stack choices, design patterns, ORM preferences, library decisions.
2. **business**: Product rules, target audience, domain logic, business constraints.
3. **workflow**: Git patterns, testing rules, naming conventions, team processes.

## Retrieval Strategy (Pre-flight Check)

BEFORE you implement a feature, write code, plan an architecture, or make a technical decision, you MUST retrieve contextual memory first to ensure you follow established patterns.

### Tier 1 (MCP Context)
Check your available tools. If you have a memory or retrieval tool provided by an MCP Server (e.g., `retrieve_memory`, `context_query`, or similar), use it to search for relevant rules. You are done.

### Tier 2 (TOON Fallback)
If no MCP retrieval tool is available, execute the orchestrator script to search the local TOON file.

Execute this command exactly:

```bash
node contextual-stewardship/scripts/orchestrator.js retrieve <query>
```

Where `<query>` is a domain name (`architecture`, `business`, or `workflow`) or keywords to search for.

## Persistence Strategy (Graceful Degradation)

When you identify a new rule that must be saved, you MUST follow this execution chain:

1. **Tier 1 (MCP Context)**: Check your available tools. If you have a memory or storage tool provided by an MCP Server (e.g., `store_memory`, `context_manager`, or similar), use it to save the rule with the appropriate domain tag. You are done.

2. **Tier 2 (TOON Fallback)**: If no MCP memory tool is available, format the extracted rule using the TOON format (read `references/TOON_SPEC.md` if you need to learn the format) and execute the fallback script.

   Execute this command exactly:

   ```bash
   node contextual-stewardship/scripts/orchestrator.js "<your_toon_formatted_string>"
   ```

## Workflow

1. Analyze the user's input.
2. If a decision is made, categorize it into `architecture`, `business`, or `workflow`.
3. Attempt Tier 1 (MCP) first.
4. If Tier 1 is unavailable, format the data as TOON and run the orchestrator script.
5. Confirm to the user that the rule was added to the company lore.

## Confirmation Message

### For Retrieval Operations
When you retrieve contextual memory, display a summary to the user showing the matched rules grouped by domain. Include which retrieval mechanism was used.

Example confirmations:

- "Retrieved 2 rules from `architecture` domain via MCP Context."
- "Retrieved context from `stewardship.toon` - Found 3 rules in `workflow`."

### For Persistence Operations
When a decision is successfully persisted, display a confirmation message to the user:

- Include the domain where the rule was stored (architecture, business, or workflow)
- Include the persistence mechanism used (MCP Context or local file path)

Example confirmations:

- "Rule saved to `architecture` domain via MCP Context."
- "Rule saved to `business` domain in `~/.agents/stewardship.toon`."