resolve-before-asking skillA
resolve-before-asking is agent-read markdown (skill) from garrytan/gbrain: Gate on identity questions to the user. Before any "who is X?" (or role / relationship question) reaches the user, exhaust the brain's lookup chain: think → search + page read → mounted sources → timeline/graph → web. If escalation survives the chain, ask WITH a hypothesis, never a bare unknown. Also owns the no-placeholders-at-ingest rule: pages created during bulk ingestion get their relationship/role resolved immediately..
Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.
What the file says
# Resolve Before Asking — Exhaust the Brain Before Bothering the User > **Convention:** see [conventions/brain-first.md](../conventions/brain-first.md) > for the base lookup chain (search → query → get_page → external APIs). This > skill extends that chain one hop further, to the human boundary: asking the > user is the LAST resort, after the brain AND external escalation, not a > shortcut around them. > **Convention:** see [_brain-filing-rules.md](../_brain-filing-rules.md) — > pages touched by the ingest-resolution section file by primary subject > (`people/`, `companies/`). ## Purpose **Never ask the user "who is X?" when the answer already exists in the brain.** The memory answers before the human is bothered — that is the product promise. This skill defines the lookup chain that runs before any entity-identification question is sent to the user, and the escalation format when asking really is justified. ## The Bug This Kills The pattern: the agent encounters an entity with a rich brain page — timeline entries, meeting history, an imported message archive — and instead of reading them, asks the user "who is X?". This is lazy escalation. It spends the user's …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add garrytan/gbrain/resolve-before-asking@v1.0.0mdr add garrytan/gbrain/resolve-before-asking@sha256:1882c45b2e603bbbPin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_f5agoc2r36r6uhe2)
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Versions
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (13123 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
garrytan/gbrain · 30,275 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-23 · branch master
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_f5agoc2r36r6uhe2 GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=garrytan/gbrain/resolve-before-asking GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/1882c45b2e603bbb1e251d388cc2682270ee7eae99211d5a5322430f4667fb39
Your agent does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.