Dossier

/dossier — Bank the Frontier Session

Deep review + spec truth + full forward plan + ideation, all exiting into ONE committed file. The premise: strong-model access is intermittent; the artifact is permanent. Run N+1 always starts by diffing against run N — the compounding is the point.

Mode: adversarial, evidence-only, confidence tags [HIGH]/[MED]/[LOW] on every judgment. Prime directive: nothing exists only as prose or only in chat. Every finding exits as a spec patch, an executable fix instruction, a mechanical gate (test/CI/hook), or a logged accepted risk with a named human.

The file

docs/FRONTIER_DOSSIER.md — create docs/ if absent; if the repo forbids new docs, append a "Frontier Dossier" section to the closest existing audit doc and say so. Append-only across runs: each session adds a dated section, never rewrites prior ones. Commit it. If a prior section exists, Phase 0 includes diffing current reality against its grades and plans — grade movement IS the report.

If /judgment /refute /drift /gate /door /premortem /sweep /verdict exist as skills, use them; otherwise use the inline grammar below — same procedure.

Verdict grammar (exactly these words, nothing softer)

• Claims: CONFIRMED (refutation attempted, failed — evidence pasted) | REFUTED (broken — how) | UNVERIFIED (couldn't test — never rounds up)
• Drift: MATCH | DRIFT (quote spec line + code file:line, name the liar) | UNVERIFIABLE (spec too vague — that's a spec defect)
• Doors: two-way (pick fast, one-line why) | one-way (lock-in, who pays, escape-hatch cost, can the door shrink, kill-gate)
• Gates: GATE: metric | threshold | measured-how+when | on-fail action
• Severity: Critical (wrong results / data loss / security) | High | Medium | Low

Phase 0 — Orient (30 min, read-only)

Read: README, CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md, docs//specs/ tree, last ~50 commits, open issues/TODOs, and the prior dossier section if one exists. Write the section header: what this repo claims to be, what state it appears in, the 3 questions this session must answer, and the scope boundary (what's explicitly OUT).

Phase 1 — Truth pass (spec vs reality)

Every testable spec/README/doc claim verified against code and — where runnable — live behavior. Drift table: claim | verdict | evidence | liar (stale spec / wrong code / ambiguous) | fix.

No specs? REVERSE the pass: extract the de-facto spec FROM the code — the invariants, contracts, and grains it actually enforces — write it into the dossier as "Spec as-built", and flag every internal inconsistency. This as-built spec becomes the baseline Phase 4 plans against.

End with the honesty number: N claims, M drifted, and a plain sentence on whether the docs can be trusted as a foundation.

Phase 2 — Deep review sweep (scale to repo size)

Small repo: one pass yourself. Larger: fan out blind parallel auditors (/sweep if present), one per dimension, then adversarially verify their Critical/High findings YOURSELF — reproduce or kill; only CONFIRMED findings may say "broken". Dimensions (prune to what exists): correctness · security/authz (every trust boundary) · data model/schema (grain, constraints-enforced-vs-hoped, one-way-door blast radius) · performance at 10× current scale · test reality (do the tests test anything) · architecture placement (logic at the wrong layer; duplicated owners of one fact) · honesty (claimed-done vs actually-works).

Dossier gets: graded scorecard (1–5 per dimension, evidence per grade), systemic findings first (3 findings sharing a root cause = 1 finding at the right layer), and the mandatory "safe to build on" list — what's NOT broken.

Phase 3 — Rulings & fix instructions

Each Critical/High: a ruling a weaker model or tired human can execute WITHOUT judgment calls — exact files, exact order, the test that proves it, and a GATE: line so regressions self-detect. Each open design question: a DOOR: analysis + recommendation with confidence tag. Genuine 50/50s go in a "Needs owner decision" list with your provisional answer — never silently pick.

Phase 4 — Full build-to-spec plan (ALL of it, not a sample)

The complete gap between spec (written or as-built from Phase 1) and reality, enumerated as a sequenced backlog — every unbuilt/partial spec item, not a top-N. For each item: what exists now · what the spec requires · concrete build steps · acceptance evidence (command/demo that proves it) · effort class (S/M/L) · dependencies. Sequence foundation-before-leaves and mark the critical path. Where the full list is genuinely huge, tier it (now / next / later) — but the LIST itself is exhaustive; only the sequencing is prioritized.

Alongside it, the tech plan: infrastructure and architecture evolution the spec work implies — migrations, refactors at the right /altitude, scale prep, tooling/CI gaps — each with its own steps + acceptance evidence, and one-way doors flagged with DOOR: blocks.

Phase 5 — Ideation: product ideas, feature ideas, gap analysis

The forward-looking half — clearly labeled IDEAS, not commitments:

• Gap analysis: score the product against best-in-class in its domain and against what its own users plausibly expect. Every gap: evidence, severity, and whether closing it is spec work (→ Phase 4) or new scope (→ below).
• Feature ideas: each in a fixed format — Problem · Who feels it · Sketch (3–6 build steps) · Effort (S/M/L) · Door-risk (any one-way doors it opens) · Kill-gate (what measured signal would prove it wasn't worth it).
• Product ideas: adjacent products, spin-offs, integrations, monetization angles this codebase makes cheap. Same format, plus "what this repo already has that makes it unfair".
• Tech opportunities: leverage nobody asked for but the review surfaced — extractable libraries, automation of manual steps, data now cheap to collect.

Rank the whole phase by value-per-effort; name the single best idea and why. Use /think moves (invert, base-rate, second-order) rather than free association — base-rate every "this will be huge" claim.

Phase 6 — Premortem the plan

Past tense, as fact: "it's 3 months later and this plan failed because…" — 5+ concrete causes across data / integration / human / scale / assumption. Top risks get redesigned into the Phase 4 sequence, gated, or accepted in writing. The plan section is not final until the premortem has marked it.

Phase 7 — Close honestly

Dossier ends with: what this session did NOT get to (adjacent-but-unchased list, each with a provisional answer + confidence tag — cheap and valuable, never skip) · every UNVERIFIED item restated · one-paragraph overall grade. Every section closes with ONE machine-readable line (this is what index mode parses — format is exact):

DOSSIER: <YYYY-MM-DD> | grade: <letter or n/a> | top: <one-line systemic finding>

Commit the dossier. If a task tracker exists, file Critical/High fixes as tickets pointing at their dossier sections; if /verdict exists, log the session line (grade, top systemic finding, date).

/dossier index — portfolio view

One-glance health across every repo that has a dossier:

1. Find dossiers: read ~/.claude/dossier-repos.txt if it exists (one repo path per line — the fast path; append every repo on its first run). Otherwise scan the user's code roots 2 levels deep for docs/FRONTIER_DOSSIER.md (use git -C <dir> ls-files era tools, never a raw deep find) and offer to write the list file from what's found.
2. From each dossier, take the LAST DOSSIER: line (latest section).
3. Render: repo | latest grade | date | age | top finding — sorted oldest-run first, and flag anything past the cadence window (below) as OVERDUE.
4. No editing, no judging in index mode — it's a read-only HUD.

Cadence — the frontier judgment lifecycle

Three rhythms, together complete; resist adding more until /calibrate data proves something is missing:

index mode enforces the first row: >100 days since a repo's last DOSSIER: line = OVERDUE in the table.

Session gates (self-enforced, verdicts declared at close)

GATE: mechanism-ratio | findings without an exit artifact = 0 | count at close | on-fail: convert or log accepted-risk before ending
GATE: plan-completeness | spec items missing from Phase 4 = 0 | diff spec inventory vs plan | on-fail: finish the enumeration
GATE: evidence | "broken"/"works" without pasted proof = 0 | self-scan dossier | on-fail: demote to UNVERIFIED
GATE: effort | > 2× a half-day per phase | honest checkpoint | on-fail: ship partial, list remainder in Phase 7
GATE: scope | no schema/prod writes; code fixes only if trivial+tested, else instructions | on-fail: STOP

Honesty rules

Failed/ugly findings reported as plainly as wins. "No effect", "can't tell yet", and "this doc is a lie" are valid, valuable sentences. If the repo is in better shape than expected, say so — a dossier that only lists problems can't be used to decide what to build on. Ideas are tagged as ideas; a dossier that launders wishes into plans poisons the next session's trust in it.

Composes with

• /sweep (Phase 2 engine) · /drift (Phase 1) · /refute (verification everywhere) · /gate /door (rulings + plan) · /premortem (Phase 6) · /think (Phase 5 rigor) · /verdict (session ledger line) · /escalate (50/50s when an owner isn't present) · /precedent (check prior rulings before re-deciding).

Standalone essentials

This skill is executable from this file alone — no other file is required reading. The operative shared rules, inlined:

• Ruling grammar — every claim examined gets exactly one ruling: CONFIRMED (a refutation was attempted and failed; evidence attached), REFUTED (the claim is false; the break is shown), or UNVERIFIED (no real test could be run; reported as such, never silently upgraded).
• Evidence is mandatory and typed — command (the exact command run plus its pasted output) or citation (path/to/file:line). Impressionistic language ("looks good", "should work") is not a ruling.
• Severity tiers — S0 critical / S1 major are blocking; S2 minor / S3 note are advisory.
• Verdict line — end with ONE grep-able line in this skill's own grammar (shown in its output format above), loggable via /verdict into the project's append-only, committed .claude/verdicts.log.

Deep reference (optional, canonical): skills/_shared/audit-report-contract.md and the root MANUAL.md Part 2.