Decide Card

When to invoke

Invoke when the user says "I decided X", "let's go with Y", "the answer is Z", "go ahead with", "approved", or otherwise resolves a parked card. The Andon-cord lowering action — pull-card raises the gate; this skill is the human's one-action handoff so pull-card can resume.

Decide a card

The Andon-cord loop: the pull-card skill raises human_gate (none → decision / session) when it hits a question only a human can answer; this skill lowers the gate back to none in one cheap action. Status stays open, so the next pull-card claims and implements per the recorded decision. Humans resolve the cause; agents wield the wrench — and an agent that can cite the project rubric MAY decide on its own behalf (lazy Andon, below).

Edge cases live in reference.md — a sibling file in this skill's directory. Read the named section only when the situation actually applies:

What this skill does to the card

1. Body. Replaces the ## Decision required section (or appends a fresh ## Decision section) with:

   ## Decision
   
   *Resolved YYYY-MM-DD:* <one-line decision>
   
   *Reasoning:* <one-line why>
   

2. log.md. Appends up to two entries, timeline-ordered: first an archive of the prior ## Decision required content (the options and trade-offs the README rewrite would otherwise lose), then the resolution (<decision> — <reason>. Gate <prior> → none.).

3. Frontmatter. Flips human_gate: decision (or session) → none. Status is unchanged (open stays open).

4. Refuses if the gate is already none or the title doesn't exist.

Workflow

1. Read the card body (goc show <title>). Confirm the decision actually answers the parked question: if ## Decision required enumerates options A/B/C, the user's free-text decision should map onto one (or explicitly reject all and propose D). When eliciting the pick with AskUserQuestion, mirror the body's option labels and order verbatim — do not reorder or rephrase (reference.md § Mirroring labeled options).

   Then check advanced_by for unclosed prerequisites, and read any you find before recording. An advances edge does not record whether it is strict, so the only way to learn that a prerequisite reframes this card is to open it. Lowering the gate is what makes the card autonomously pullable, so a decision taken over an unread prerequisite is one an unattended worker may act on before any human sees the card again. goc decide prints the same advisory (non-blocking — it names the prerequisites and lowers the gate anyway), but it prints it as the decision lands, which is too late to inform it.

2. Run the CLI.

   goc decide <title> \
       --decision "<one-line what>" \
       --because "<one-line why>"
   

3. Commit follows repo policy. goc decide honors .game-of-cards/config.yaml workflow.auto_commit (default true), committing body + log + gate flip as decide: <title> — <decision>. Override per invocation with --no-commit / --commit.

If the decision reverses or re-scopes a verdict the card already states, goc decide only writes the ## Decision block — every other surface still asserting the old verdict is now stale. Reconcile by hand: the summary: frontmatter, any > ⚠ body banner, DoD wording, and mentions in neighbor cards. The CLI prints a reminder on re-scope language and goc validate flags DECISION_CONTRADICTS_VERDICT. For a true re-scope, prefer supersede + create over an in-place rewrite. Full checklist: reference.md § Re-scope reconciliation.

When an agent invokes this skill (lazy Andon)

An agent may decide on its own only after consulting the consuming repo's project-specific rubric:

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

1. Cite the rubric. --because MUST start with a clause naming the rubric consulted and what it returned (citation form per the hook above).
2. Cite the primary source when the answer rests on literature: DOI/PMID, textbook chapter, or project-doc section.
3. No agent-decide for human-judgement questions — resource allocation, scope splits, deadlines, stakeholder alignment, taste calls. Raise the gate instead.
4. Default to human when ambiguous. If the rubric doesn't give a clean answer, raise the gate; don't guess.

A decision recorded in violation of this contract can be rewound — reference.md § Rewinding an agent decision.

When NOT to use this skill

• Card needs implementation, not a decision. If you're ready to do the work yourself, just do the work.
• Decision changes scope. "Scope this differently / split / reframe" is not a resolution — use the advance-card skill (with <title> superseded) + the create-card skill for the replacement.
• Gate is session and the session never happened. Capturing a real session's outcome is valid; shortcutting a session that never took place is not — schedule the session instead.

What this skill does NOT do

• Does NOT implement the card (that's pull-card's next round).
• Does NOT close the card (that's the finish-card skill's DoD-gated contract).
• Does NOT mutate status — the card stays open.

Cross-references

• reference.md (this skill's directory) — edge cases routed above.
• the scan-deck skill — surfaces parked cards; its "decisions to make" Q&A calls this skill per card.
• the advance-card skill — status machine + waiting_on overlay; gate ≠ status.
• the card-schema skill — human_gate enum and the ## Decision required body convention.

Sibling files on this host

This skill ships reference.md alongside its body. If a direct file read fails (sandboxed sessions cannot see the plugin install path), fetch the file through the goc tool: {verb: "skill", args: ["decide-card", "<file>"]}.