principle-scope-the-session SKILL.md skillA
principle-scope-the-session from edbertchan/catstack is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add edbertchan/catstack/principle-scope-the-session@git:20260825.847374dPins git:20260825.847374d in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- edbertchan/catstack
- Path
corpus/skills/principle-scope-the-session/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260825.847374d, committed Aug 25, 2026
- Size
- 2,754 bytes
- Repository stars
- 6
- License
- none declared
Apply when a session's actual work drifts away from what it was opened to do — a side-investigation becomes the main thread, or an unrelated request gets absorbed into an existing session. Start a fresh session instead of letting scope creep silently expand the one you're in.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Scope the Session
A session should end up doing the thing it was opened to do. When the actual work drifts to something else — a side-investigation that becomes the real task, or an unrelated request folded into an existing thread — that drift is a signal to start a new session, not to keep going in the old one.
**Why:** Everything a session already did stays in its context and gets re-billed on every subsequent turn. A session that absorbs a second, unrelated deliverable pays for the first deliverable's full context on every turn of the second one — and blast radius, cost, and learnings all become impossible to attribute cleanly to either task.
**Pattern:**
- If a side-investigation ("let me first check the fleet's disk usage") turns up the real work to do, that's the moment to open a new session scoped to what you just found — not the moment to keep building in the session that happened to discover it.
- If a request arrives that's unrelated to what the current session is doing, and it's substantial enough to need its own review or verification, give it its own session rather than folding it into the current thread's context.
…Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add edbertchan/catstack/principle-scope-the-session@sha256:49fbe0ac6197adebThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260825.847374d, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_h7dnqvs7pzo2rpp6)
2 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Aug 25, 2026.
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 (2754 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
edbertchan/catstack · 6 stars · license none declared · pushed 2026-10-22 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_h7dnqvs7pzo2rpp6 GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=edbertchan/catstack/principle-scope-the-session GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/49fbe0ac6197adeb89f5b9d0d2008600646f8bdd5c9506e4b59631056eb7d22a
Your AI assistant 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.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.