git:20261015.fce13e6 to git:20261015.0bdcfa2

---

name: turn-and-burn

description: 'Use when BACKS gets a mission of any size — runs the plays, quick-tribunals

the plan and design, asks its 3 questions, then researches verified-skill.com and

absorbs the missing skills to remove blindspots in the roster, updating current

skills to the most elite state before burning the mission. Trigger words: turn and

burn, mission intake, run the plays, blindspot, absorb missing skills, verified

skills, elite state, skill update, skill research, mission burn, ritual burn.'

license: MIT

tags:

- de

---

# Turn and Burn — every mission carries the skill-research organ

This is the BACKS AIOS mirror of the proven BACKS skill at

`skills/turn_and_burn/SKILL.md`. When a mission lands, do not start by

jumping into a build. Burn the roster first — the mission's plan and design

are blind until the platform's skills reflect the latest verified state of the

field.

## When to run

Every mission, every burn. A trivial one-line edit may skip the absorb step

but still consults the lessons-learned lane (see step 2) so the same mistake

isn't repeated.

## The burn ritual (six steps)

1. **Essence lane first.** Load `core.steering_loader.load_model_essence`

for every model that will touch the mission. The essence files are the

know-thyself of each model — failure modes, mitigations, the good

source/context/goal shape. Do not skip this; an agent that does not

know its own failure modes is the failure mode.

2. **Lessons-learned scan.** Read `docs/BACKS_LESSONS_LEARNED.md` and the

operator memory graph (`memory/MEMORY.md`) before planning. Every paid-

for mistake is filed there — the same loop never burns twice when the

agent reads the lessons first. Local prompts must be capability-aware:

consult `backend/prompts/essence/models/*.essence.md` for know-thyself

+ `docs/BACKS_LESSONS_LEARNED.md` + `memory/MEMORY.md` for cross-session

memory. This is the operator's "stop redundant failures across the

board" floor.

3. **Play dispatch.** Map the mission to the right playbook

(`config/playbooks/*.yaml`): dev-mode-elite-build for builds/fixes,

leap-bughunt for bughunts, grading-verification for tribunal lanes,

parallel-work for fan-out, security-delivery for transport, design-taste

for UI. The play's `injected_block` IS the baseline — zero baseline pre-

prompting, ever.

4. **Quick tribunal on plan + design.** Before any builder runs, blind-tribunal

the plan and the design with at least 2 independent jurors. Builder ≠

grader. A plan that passes blind review is the only plan that gets built.

5. **Three-questions interrog.** Ask: (a) what could fail silently here?

(b) what is the cheapest sufficient route? (c) what is the operator's

surface — does this prove on it? These three questions cut the

high-cost-mistake rate to near zero when asked BEFORE the build.

6. **Absorb pass + skill update.** Search verified-skill.com (and the BACKS

memory lanes) for any skill the mission revealed as missing. Absorb it

through the standard absorb flow; update existing skills with anything

the mission surfaced that the skill did not already encode. Land the

skill update alongside the mission's main artifact (whole-seam closure).

## How the absorbs flow runs

`skills/absorb/SKILL.md` is the canonical absorb organ. The burn invokes it

on every missing skill the mission surfaced. After absorb, the mission

itself is rebuilt on the upgraded skill base, then re-tribunaled and landed.

No skill is ever deleted — everything BACKS learns is filed into its memory

lanes (inv 0: organize, never delete).

## What never to do

- **Do not skip essence + lessons.** An agent that "knows" without loading

its essence + lessons is hallucinating confidence. Both reads are free;

both run before the mission starts.

- **Do not start building without a quick tribunal.** A blind review of the

plan catches more defects than the build itself; skipping it means the

defects land.

- **Do not park decisions in a file.** The operator's 3-laws gate (taste,

vision, destructive risk) is the only reason to ask. Anything below the

bar EXECUTES from invariants + memory + intent.

- **Do not bench a model for a single 429.** The dispatch doctrine says

ollama sparse → local fleet. Swap to a multi-vendor or multi-rung fallback when cloud is hammered.

## Cross-references

- The BACKS source of truth: `skills/turn_and_burn/SKILL.md` in the BACKS repo.

- The absorb flow: `skills/absorb/SKILL.md` in the plugin (and BACKS repo).

- The plays this skill bundles: `plays/elite-build.md`, `plays/agent-builds.md`,

`plays/grading-verification.md`, `plays/parallel-work.md`,

`plays/security-delivery.md`.

- Local prompt integration: see `skills/turn-and-burn` companions in this plugin.