v1.0.0 to v1.0.0

---

name: tla-plus-expert

version: 1.0.0

description: TLA+ formal specification expert for writing specs, model checking, and applying formal methods to amplihack workflows

activation_keywords:

- "TLA+"

- "TLA"

- "formal specification"

- "formal spec"

- "model checking"

- "model checker"

- "TLC"

- "PlusCal"

- "invariant"

- "liveness property"

- "safety property"

- "temporal logic"

- "state machine spec"

- "protocol verification"

agent: amplihack:specialized:tla-plus-expert

---

# TLA+ Expert Skill

## Purpose

Provides expert-level TLA+ formal specification assistance for designing, verifying, and reasoning about concurrent and distributed systems within amplihack.

## When This Skill Activates

- User asks to write or review a TLA+ specification

- User needs help with model checking (TLC) configuration or output interpretation

- User wants to formally verify a protocol or workflow design

- User asks about invariants, liveness properties, or safety properties

- User wants to apply formal methods to amplihack components

- User mentions PlusCal or wants to translate between PlusCal and TLA+

- User references Lamport, Demirbas, or formal methods best practices

## How It Works

This skill delegates to the `tla-plus-expert` agent which has deep knowledge of:

1. **TLA+ language and idioms** — writing specs, operators, temporal formulas

2. **TLC model checker** — configuration, trace interpretation, state space management

3. **Seven mental models** (Demirbas) — abstraction, global shared memory, local guards, invariants, stepwise refinement, atomicity refinement, communication

4. **Industry case studies** — 8 production uses from AWS, MongoDB, Microsoft Azure

5. **AI + TLA+ limitations** — SysMoBench findings on LLM capabilities and guardrails

6. **amplihack experiment infrastructure** — manifest-driven experiments, heuristic scoring, TLC validation integration

## Integration with Existing Infrastructure

The amplihack repo includes a TLA+ experiment runner at `crates/amplihack-eval/src/tla_prompt_experiment.rs` with:

- Manifest-driven experiment matrix (models x prompt variants x repeats)

- 6 heuristic scoring dimensions

- Real TLC validation support

- Replay and live execution modes

TLA+ specs live in `experiments/hive_mind/tla_prompt_language/specs/`.

## Usage Examples

```

# Write a spec for a new protocol

/tla-plus-expert Write a TLA+ spec for our consensus voting workflow

# Review an existing spec

/tla-plus-expert Review specs/SmartOrchestrator.tla for correctness

# Help with TLC output

/tla-plus-expert TLC found a counterexample in my spec, help me understand it

# Decide if TLA+ is appropriate

/tla-plus-expert Should I formally specify this retry cascade logic?

# Generate invariants

/tla-plus-expert What invariants should I check for a parallel workstream manager?

```

## Key Resources

- TLA+ specs: `experiments/hive_mind/tla_prompt_language/specs/`

- Experiment runner: `crates/amplihack-eval/src/tla_prompt_experiment.rs`

- TLC binary: `/usr/local/bin/tlc` (if installed)

- Issue #3939: TLA+ integration roadmap