Skills
State: open/active · Genre: plan
Status: working draft, 2026-10-02. Part of the strategy hub. Supports milestone 1, Ontology foundation, in the roadmap.
Two packages
Section titled “Two packages”| Package | What it holds | Depends on |
|---|---|---|
Prose package (working name craft) | Script-free skills. Each one is a terse description of one process, done the way we want. Portable to any harness and any repo. | Nothing. |
sdlc | Thin skills that link a prose skill and add the deterministic tail: create or update entities through sdlc ops, run gates, open a PR. | The sdlc CLI. |
The method lives once, in prose. sdlc makes it operational. A skill can start as prose only and
get an sdlc wrapper later, once the method proves out. Both packages live in the agent-pants
vault next to each other, under solutions/ontological/plugin/plugins/.
Linking is open: /skill“ calls, rendered per harness since
#2481, or plain references.
Every skill, in either package, can declare lifecycle extension points that a project fills with files. See Skill lifecycle extensions.
Build order for milestone 1
Section titled “Build order for milestone 1”- skill-author. Every later skill is written with it.
capability-groom. Takes a capability from definition to a chosen shape and architecture.decision-makeandresearch, whichcapability-groomcalls on.- The rest of the ontology group.
Catalog
Section titled “Catalog”✱ marks a skill that exists today and is narrowed or relinked.
| Phase | Prose skill | sdlc wrapper |
|---|---|---|
| Meta | skill-author | Scaffold a skill in the vault and run the skill-prose gate. |
| Ontology | capability-groom: define, research, propose and select a capability’s shape and implementation architecture. | Record the capability entity and a decision entity. |
capability-survey ✱ (from capability-map) | sdlc capability create and update. | |
capability-verify ✱ (from capability-review) | Fix frontmatter, stamp last_reviewed. | |
product-define ✱ | Product entity. | |
driver-capture: the needs and pressures behind the work. | Driver entity. | |
decision-make: options, choice, consequences. | Decision entity. | |
standard-define ✱, principle-define ✱ | Standard and principle entities. | |
term-define | Term entity. | |
| Research | research: a time-boxed question answered with sourced findings. | Reference entities. |
spike: prove or disprove one technical claim in code. | A throwaway branch and a finding. | |
| Plan | milestone-shape ✱: exit criteria, scope, roster. | Milestone entity. |
roadmap-shape: order milestones, set gates. | Roadmap entity, sdlc roadmap check. | |
task-split: a capability or milestone into tasks. | Task entities. | |
task-define ✱: meet the readiness contract. | Ensure-ready. | |
backlog-triage ✱ | Promote or defer. | |
| Build | implement ✱ (the method inside task-work) | Lease, worktree, PR. |
test-design: acceptance criteria into tests. | — | |
| Review | code-review ✱: rubric-driven. | pr-review. |
review-respond ✱: the S-0018 triage. | pr-respond. | |
| Audit | bug-hunt ✱, docs-sweep ✱, duplication-scan, api-scan ✱ | One PR per area. |
| Release | release-prepare: version, changelog, notes. | Bump and tag locally. |
| Close | close-out ✱, retro: friction into backlog. | Task state, backlog entities. |
| Operate | — | orchestrate ✱, status ✱, cleanup ✱, onboard (Adopting a project). |
Entity kinds with no skill today: decision, driver, reference, roadmap, term. The catalog covers all five.
Project file paths skills already read
Section titled “Project file paths skills already read”Two sdlc.yaml keys already point a skill at a project file. Lifecycle extensions generalize
this pattern.
| Key | Read by | This repo’s value |
|---|---|---|
orchestrator.review.rubric_path | pr-review | S-0017-code-review-rubric |
orchestrator.review.response_policy | pr-respond | S-0018-review-response-policy |