Create Card

When to invoke

Invoke when the user says "let's do X", "implement Y", "fix Z", describes a bug, requests a feature, or initiates ANY persistent work item. Title must be user-facing, descriptive, PO-readable (not engineer's jargon). reproduce.py (Step 6) is hand-authored for bug-class cards, not scaffolded.

Preflight

If any ! block below shows goc: command not found, Permission for this action has been denied, or no such file or directory: .game-of-cards/deck/, stop and invoke Skill(kickoff) first. Kickoff detects which setup step is missing (CLI not installed, Bash allowance not granted, project state not scaffolded) and walks the user through it. Re-invoke this skill only after kickoff completes.

File a new card

A card is a self-contained briefing for the next reader — human or agent — written so the work can be picked up cold: its own evidence, its own framing, its own closure contract (the DoD). Scaffold a deck/<title>/ dir with valid frontmatter, an empty log.md, and a placeholder DoD that Skill(finish-card) will refuse to satisfy until you write real criteria. The CLI guarantees frontmatter validity; the body is on you.

Edge cases live in reference.md (sibling file in this skill's directory) — read the named section only when the situation applies:

User argument: $ARGUMENTS

Step 1 — confirm the title

Slug pattern: ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]$. Short, hyphenated, the observable problem, PO-readable — e.g. csv-export-button-truncates-rows-over-10000.

goc new enforces a title-antipattern guard (see Skill(card-schema) "Title antipatterns"): it rejects rN rounds, path-N / phase-N steps, bug-N numbering, _md_ / _py_ infixes, camelCase, and math symbols, suggesting a rephrasing from the observable problem. --allow-jargon only for migration tools. Read the slug aloud — avoid word stutter, colloquial back-half clauses, and family-shape mismatch (reference.md § Title quality).

Verify the title is free: run goc show <your-title> yourself — ERROR: ... not found means safe.

Step 2 — dedup against open / done / disproved queues

Same root cause as an existing card = supporting evidence on that card's body + a log.md appendage on the existing entry, NOT a new filing. Grep for the candidate's identifying string yourself, e.g. goc --status all | grep -i <fragment>.

Titles are not enough. Duplicates hide in the gated backlog: parked cards name your symbol in the body, and nothing re-reads them (reference.md § Dedup against parked cards). A gated hit is a card to strengthen, not to file beside.

grep -rli '<symbol-or-phrase>' .game-of-cards/deck/*/README.md
goc triage                 # gated cards, oldest first

If a disproved rebuttal exists for this hypothesis, re-read it before filing. Re-promote only if git log -p -- <cited-file> shows the cited code has changed since the disproved entry's date.

Step 3 — pick the gate

The CLI default is decision — the fallback for findings whose fix path genuinely needs a human pick. When the work shape makes the right gate clear, set it explicitly:

• --gate none — fully mechanical: sed-style rename, stale-reference patch, single-line constant correction. Autonomous-loop-safe.
• --gate decision — two or more credible fix paths and a human must pick. You MUST then write the ## Decision required body section (per Skill(card-schema) "Decision-gate contract").
• --gate session — research-impacting: framework derivation gap, mechanism choice between literature alternatives, sign convention, new named primitive, default anchored to a paper / axiom.

When in doubt between decision and session: if a ## Decision required section would under-serve the question (options not yet well-scoped, or picking needs new evidence), use session.

If a substantive decision sits at the card's core, consult the consuming repo's rubric before defaulting to decision:

!cat .game-of-cards/hooks/create-card.md 2>/dev/null || true

If the rubric answers cleanly with a principle citation AND primary-source backing, scaffold with --gate none and pre-write a ## Decision (rubric-derived) body section (choice, principle, citation). Reserve human gates for questions the rubric cannot answer (reference.md § Rubric-derived decisions).

Step 4 — scaffold via the CLI

goc new <title> \
  --summary "<what + why>" \
  --contribution <high|medium|low> \
  --gate <none|decision|session> \
  --tag bug \
  --tag <area-tag> \
  --advances <target-title> \
  --advanced-by <parent-title> \
  --commit

Creates deck/<title>/README.md (valid flat frontmatter, placeholder - [ ] (replace with real criteria) DoD) plus an empty log.md. Tags must come from the canonical set — the CLI rejects unknowns; project-local tags register in .game-of-cards/canonical-tags.md (see Skill(card-schema) "Adding new tags").

• Known value-flow at filing time → pass --advances / --advanced-by AND --commit so both edge endpoints land in one atomic commit (without --commit, an explicit-pathspec commit of just the new directory ships a half-edge). The goc new + goc advance two-step is the fallback for edges discovered later.
• Coordinating card? Aggregation epic (closes when its children close) → child.advances: [epic]. Governing cluster (closes when decided) → shared tag, NO edge. Never epic.advances: [children] (BACKWARDS_EPIC_EDGE). Full reasoning: reference.md § Edge direction for coordinating cards.
• The scaffold is born draft: true — hidden from queues until authored (Steps 5–7). Claiming or closing clears the flag; goc publish <title> releases an authored-but-unclaimed card (reference.md § Draft contract).

Step 5 — write the body (the dashboard)

The README body is the card's dashboard: a snapshot of latest knowledge, rewritten in place as understanding evolves. Do NOT append "Latest finding (DATE)" blocks — history belongs in log.md (see Skill(card-schema) "What goes where"). Replace the placeholder with:

• Title (H1) — one-line description.

• Summary — frontmatter summary: (≤ 3 sentences, what + why) so triage views can scan without opening; goc validate requires it once the card leaves draft.

• Location — file:line (bug-class) or doc/section (doc-class).

• What's broken — prose with quoted code AND quoted contradicted doc/comment; the reader must see the conflict.

• Empirical evidence — reproduce.py output verbatim (Step 6).

• Why it matters — connect to a real symptom; cross-link cards as [<title>](../<title>/). For parser / emitter / storage-layer defects, name the reachability path that produces the offending input (reference.md § Reachability).

• Fix — concrete change with file:line. Do NOT apply the fix. For decision gates this collapses into ## Decision required. Consider a sibling artifact file for gated cards (Step 7).

• Refine the DoD — each box a contract, prefixed with its method class (see Skill(card-schema) "DoD method tags"); prefer TDD: whenever a closed-form expected value exists:

  definition_of_done: |
    - [ ] TDD: reproduce.py exits zero (defect no longer fires)
    - [ ] TDD: <specific assertion or metric the fix must satisfy>
    - [ ] EMPIRICAL: <experiment run, verdict recorded in log.md either way>
    - [ ] MECHANICAL: <doc/config edit landed and reads correctly>
    - [ ] PROCESS: <agreement recorded, parent advanced_by updated>
  

Each later round of work rewrites the dashboard and appends a log.md journal entry (what changed, why).

Step 6 — write reproduce.py (bug-class only)

For bug / measurement / regression cards, ship a deck/<title>/reproduce.py that, on a clean checkout, prints output an outside reader would accept as proof. Find the repo root with the parent-walk pattern — never parents[N] with a fixed N:

import sys
from pathlib import Path

def _repo_root() -> Path:
    p = Path(__file__).resolve().parent
    while p != p.parent:
        if (p / "pyproject.toml").exists():
            return p
        p = p.parent
    raise RuntimeError("repo root (pyproject.toml) not found")

sys.path.insert(0, str(_repo_root()))

Run via uv run python deck/<title>/reproduce.py; paste the output verbatim into "Empirical evidence".

For plausible-but-unreproduced hypotheses, add --tag unverified and document the falsifying-test recipe in the body; drop the tag once a working reproduce.py lands.

Step 7 — rich artifact files (optional, any card class)

When markdown can't express the content — colored option grids, state diagrams, interactive decision forms, screenshots — ship the artifact as a sibling file in the card directory and link it from the README ([See the matrix](comparison-matrix.html)). Sibling files are opaque to the engine. Bundle shape, use/skip criteria: reference.md § Rich artifact files.

Cross-references

• reference.md (this skill's directory) — edge cases routed above.
• Skill(card-schema) — field semantics, enums, canonical tags.
• Skill(scan-deck) — dedup queries; Skill(advance-card) — if the body reveals a different gate than scaffolded.
• Commit the filing per the consuming repo's checks and GoC hooks.