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SKILL.md
npx skills add timschoch/mattpocock-skills --skill wayfinder
Plan a huge chunk of work (more than one agent session can hold) as a shared map of decision tickets on your issue tracker, and resolve them one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.
npx skills add timschoch/mattpocock-skills --skill wayfinder
A loose idea has arrived, too big for one agent session, and wrapped in fog: the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet. Wayfinding is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a shared map on the repo's issue tracker, then works its decision tickets (questions whose resolution is a decision, not slices of a build to execute) one at a time until the route is clear.
The destination varies per effort, and naming it is the first act of charting: it shapes every ticket. It might be a spec to hand off and iterate on, a decision to lock before planning starts, or a change made in place like a data-structure migration. The map is domain-agnostic: engineering work, course content, whatever fits the shape.
Wayfinder is planning by default: each ticket resolves a decision, and the map is done when the way is clear, with nothing left to decide before someone goes and does the thing. The pull to just do the work is usually the signal you've reached the edge of the map and it's time to hand off. An effort can override this in its Notes, carrying execution into the map itself, but absent that, produce decisions, not deliverables.
Every map and ticket is an issue, so it has a name: its title. In everything the human reads (narration, the map's Decisions-so-far), refer to it by that name, never by a bare id, number, or slug. A wall of #42, #43, #44 is illegible; names read at a glance. The id and URL don't vanish; a name wraps its link, but they ride inside the name, never stand in for it.
The map is a single issue on this repo's issue tracker, labelled wayfinder:map, the canonical artifact. Its tickets are child issues of the map.
The map is an index, not a store. It lists the decisions made and points at the tickets that hold their detail; a decision lives in exactly one place, its ticket, so the map never restates it, only gists it and links.
Where the map, its child tickets, blocking, and frontier queries physically live is tracker-specific. The issue tracker should have been provided to you. If not, tell the user to run /setup-matt-pocock-skills. Consult the tracker doc's "Wayfinding operations" section for how this repo expresses them. If no tracker has been provided, default to the local-markdown tracker.
The whole map at low resolution, loaded once per session. Open tickets are not listed: they are open child issues, found by query.
Each ticket is a child issue of the map; the tracker's issue id is its identity. Its body is the question, sized to one 100K token agent session:
Each ticket carries a wayfinder:<type> label, one of research, prototype, grilling, task (see Ticket Types).
A session claims a ticket by assigning it to the dev driving the map, first, before any work, so concurrent sessions skip it. That assignee is the claim: an open, unassigned ticket is unclaimed.
Blocking uses the tracker's native dependency relationship: essential because it renders the frontier visually in the tracker's own UI, so the human sees what's takeable without opening the map. Only a tracker that lacks native blocking falls back to a body convention. A ticket is unblocked when every ticket blocking it is closed; the frontier is the open, unblocked, unclaimed children, the edge of the known.
The answer isn't part of the body; it's recorded on resolution (see Work through the map). Assets created while resolving a ticket are linked from the issue, not pasted in.
Every ticket is either HITL (human in the loop, worked with a human who speaks for themselves) or AFK, driven by the agent alone. A HITL ticket only resolves through that live exchange; the agent never stands in for the human's side of it (a grilling agent that answers its own questions has broken this).
The map is deliberately incomplete: don't chart what you can't yet see. Beyond the live tickets lies the fog of war: the dim view of decisions and investigations you can tell are coming but can't yet pin down, because they hang on questions still open. Resolving a ticket clears the fog ahead of it, graduating whatever's now specifiable into fresh tickets, one at a time, until the way to the destination is clear and no tickets remain.
The map's Not yet specified section is where that dim view is written down: the suspected question, the area to revisit later. It's the undiscovered frontier toward the destination: everything here is in scope, just not sharp enough to ticket. Write as loosely or as fully as the view allows; it doubles as a signpost for collaborators reading where the effort is headed.
Fog or ticket? The test is whether you can state the question precisely now, not whether you can answer it now.
Not yet specified excludes what's already decided (Decisions so far), what's already a live ticket, and what's out of scope (the next section).
Fog only ever gathers toward the destination. The destination fixes the scope, so work beyond it is out of scope: it isn't fog, and it doesn't belong in Not yet specified. It gets its own Out of scope section on the map: work you've consciously ruled out of this effort. Scope, not sharpness, lands it here.
Out-of-scope work never graduates (the frontier stops at the destination), so it returns only if the destination is redrawn, and then as a fresh effort, not a resumption.
Ruling something out of scope is a scoping act, not a step on the route. When a ticket that already exists turns out to sit past the destination (mis-scoped in while charting, or exposed by a resolution), close it (a closed ticket is unambiguously off the frontier) and leave one line in the Out of scope section: the gist plus why it's out of scope, linking the closed ticket. It stays out of Decisions so far, which records the route actually walked; a scope boundary isn't a step on it.
Two modes. Either way, never resolve more than one ticket per session, with the exception of research tickets.
User invokes with a loose idea.
wayfinder:map): Destination and Notes filled in, Decisions-so-far empty, the fog sketched into Not yet specified.research ticket you just created, spin up a subagent that calls the Skill tool with "research" to resolve it in parallel, capturing its findings on a throwaway research/<name> branch with a context pointer from the ticket.User invokes with a map (URL or number). A ticket is optional: without one, you pick the next decision, not the user.
in-progress label before any work.## Notes block names. If in doubt, call the Skill tool twice, for "grilling" and "domain-modeling".in-progress label, and append a context pointer to the map's Decisions-so-far.The user may run unblocked tickets in parallel, so expect other sessions to be editing the tracker concurrently.
## Question
<the decision or investigation this ticket resolves>