intent git:20261031.143478cA

Immutable. This exact content never changes and is served at /api/v1/blob/296abdb965795c48.

---
name: intent
description: Turn a rough ask into a clear work order. Use when the ask is rough, unspoken, or double-readable — before planning or building.
---

Look up what the record, the repo, or the world can answer. Only what the user alone holds routes to a skill.

Route each thing still left to invent by what it is, invoking the named skill with the Skill tool:

- The words admit two readings that would build different things → use **clarify** skill.
- The user holds what they want but can't yet say it → use **elicit** skill.
- The user is missing something already settled and can't ask past it → use **explain** skill.
- The ask arrives committed, its decisions undefended → use **interrogate** skill.
- The ask names a step or an artifact and leaves the outcome it serves unnamed — the same kind of task keeps coming, or the artifact exists to inform a decision → use **reframe** skill before asking what it is for.

Route again until nothing is left to invent.

Ask what is still open first, with AskUserQuestion. A gap whose wrong guess costs less to undo than the question costs to ask is not open: the work order states it as an assumption. A restated ask is the user's to take: offer it beside the ask as given. Before rewriting the ask, use **deepen** skill on it. Then state the work order, naming no skill: the ask, the bar it must meet, and what it must NOT do where that surfaced. As short as it goes with nothing in the spec lost.

The WHAT is confirmed and what's open is the technical path → use **shape** skill.