Domain

Domain Skill — Ubiquitous Language for Human-AI Software Building

This is a library skill. It doesn't run standalone — it holds the shared vocabulary that you, the agent, and other skills cite when describing work.

Why this exists

AgentOps's existing skills (research, plan, crank, validate, ...) are verbs. This skill holds the nouns and the discipline they operate on. When a session talks about "this is a tracer bullet" or "we need a vertical slice through the eval surface," the meaning is fixed here, not improvised.

Status

Tracer bullet shape, not yet canonical. This skill currently holds:

• 6 structural primitives (Entry, Index, Citation, Primitive, Slice, Anti-Pattern)
• 1 test entry (Tracer Bullet) written using only citations to the 6 primitives

If the test entry can describe its own concept using only the primitives, the shape works and we grow the corpus by adding more entries — never new structural primitives without operator consent.

How to use this skill

1. Read references/INDEX.md first — it lists every entry by kind and status.
2. Load only the entries relevant to the current work. Do not preload the whole corpus — that defeats the JIT purpose.
3. When applying an entry, cite it: include the entry slug in your output, plan, commit message, or bd issue body so future sessions can trace the reasoning.
4. When you find a concept missing or misnamed, add a draft entry under references/ and update INDEX.md. Promotion from draft to canonical requires operator approval.

Entries (tracer-bullet set)

Structural primitives (the architecture):

• references/entry.md — Entry: the atomic concept doc
• references/index-primitive.md — Index: the discovery surface (concept)
• references/citation.md — Citation: how Entries reference each other and how agents claim use

Vocabulary nouns (the working units):

• references/primitive.md — Primitive: atomic capability (skill, hook, CLI command, eval suite)
• references/slice.md — Slice: vertical work unit cutting through multiple Primitives
• references/anti-pattern.md — Anti-Pattern: documented mistake with cost when ignored

Test entry:

• references/tracer-bullet.md — Tracer Bullet: described using only citations to the six primitives above

Catalog:

• references/INDEX.md — full corpus index

What's NOT here

• Procedural how-tos (those live in other skills)
• Repo conventions (those live in skills/standards/)
• Findings, learnings, patterns (those live in .agents/)
• Product framing (lives in PRODUCT.md)

See also

• skills/standards/SKILL.md — repo coding standards (sibling library skill)
• docs/architecture/primitive-chains.md — concrete AgentOps primitive layers (Mission/Discovery/Risk/Execution/Validation/Learning/Ratchet/Continuity) that compose the domain into chains