figure-it-out ยท diff
git:20260827.f7b391a to git:20260907.b1269d9
7 added, 43 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: figure-it-out
- description: "Design an auditable playbook when no narrower one fits: a large migration, an ambitious multi-part change, or work a human reviews after stepping away. Scales rigor to the task, runs a hypothesis loop, and logs decisions via show-me-your-work. Use for /figure-it-out, 'figure it out', a large migration, or when no narrower playbook applies."
+ description: Plan and execute a complex task when existing playbooks do not cover its dependencies or completion criteria.
disable-model-invocation: true
---
# Figure it out
- When the task matches no playbook, design one. The deliverable before any code is the workflow itself: a sequence of phases that scales rigor to the task, runs the scientific method, and leaves a decision trail a human can audit after stepping away. Bias toward more rigor. The cost of building the wrong thing dwarfs the cost of being careful.
-
- Don't reinvent a playbook you already have. A focused single-unit task that matches Bug fix, Perf, Feature, Visual parity, Eval, or Multi-phase plan routes there. But a large or cross-cutting version of one (a migration across many call sites, an ambitious multi-part change), or work the user reviews after stepping away, belongs here even though a single-unit version would be a Feature. The rigor and the audit trail are the point.
-
- ## Start
-
- Open a todolist whose first item is to read the Principles section of the **poteto-mode** skill. Then add the phases below as todos.
-
- ## Phase A: Frame
-
- Ground first, then commit. Don't start the run until you can state:
-
- - The definition of done as a falsifiable predicate (the **prove-it-works** principle skill). "Done well" has to be checkable.
- - Scope, quantified: rough units and effort, plus the blockers grounding surfaced. Raise them before spending hours, not after fifty doomed commits.
- - The rigor level, biased high. One-way doors and high blast radius get more; reversible low-stakes steps get less. Rigor is gates and artifacts, not "try harder".
-
- Present the framing and tradeoffs before committing to a long run. Reversible work proceeds (the **never-block-on-the-human** principle skill), but a multi-hour run earns one checkpoint.
-
- ## Phase B: Design the workflow
-
- Decompose into atomic, independently-landable units. Sequence riskiest-unknown-first so option value stays high. Scaffold and verification come before features (the **foundational-thinking** principle skill).
-
- - Build the verification harness before the work, with the baseline captured from the pre-change state, so the check reads as "old value vs new value".
- - For one-way-door design decisions, run the **architect** skill (it runs **arena**) with diverse, isolated, opinionated candidates and a read-only judge on a different model family. Skip it for mechanical work whose shape is already concrete. A second arena over a settled design is over-engineering (the **laziness-protocol** principle skill).
- - Decide what fans out. Parallelize only across genuine seams, and give each worker its own worktree or branch (the **separate-before-serializing-shared-state** principle skill). Don't over-fan.
- - Write the designed phase list down. That list is what the human reviews.
-
- Then put the design into motion. Add its steps to the todolist as concrete items, after the Phase C entry and before Phase D. Run each under the Phase C loop discipline, and weave the Phase D log through them, a row as each step lands, rather than saving the whole trail for the end.
-
- ## Phase C: Run the loop
-
- Each unit is an experiment: state the hypothesis, make the smallest change, measure against the predicate on the real artifact, keep it if it advanced, revert it if it didn't.
- Apply the **sequence-verifiable-units** principle skill, verifying each unit before starting the next instead of batching checks at the end.
-
- - Verify by inspecting the artifact, never a self-report. When something passes too easily, suspect the observation method before the system. A blank screenshot passes a lazy gate.
- - Pair delegated work with a judge and audit the delegates' artifacts yourself before trusting them. If a worker games the gate, reset and harden the contract. If the gate itself is wrong, fix the gate in its own change rather than routing around it.
- - A verdict is VERIFIED, NOT VERIFIED, or INCONCLUSIVE. Inconclusive is not a pass. Don't hide a negative.
+ Design a workflow only where the task needs one. Start from the desired result, scope, dependencies, and available evidence. Reuse a matching playbook instead of adding a second planning layer.
- ## Phase D: Keep the audit trail
+ Define checkable completion criteria and a stopping condition for experiments. Use the user's time or cost budget when supplied. Resolve ordinary choices autonomously; ask about missing decisions that materially change the outcome.
- Log the run via the **show-me-your-work** skill, one canonical TSV with a row per decision and per unit, evidence as links. figure-it-out's work is usually ambitious enough to commit the trail so the reviewer can read it in the PR; commit it when confidence has to be shown. Prefer evidence produced by committed scripts so a reviewer can re-run it. The trail plus the diff is what lets the human come back and trust the work.
+ Sequence work to resolve important uncertainties early. Reuse validation tools and existing tests; create a harness when repeated measurements or uncovered risks justify it. Delegate independent units when useful and keep their ownership distinct.
- ## Phase E: Verify and hand back
+ Execute through verification and fixes. Continue from completed work when the user adds constraints. Revisit only the affected assumptions or steps.
- Check the whole against the Phase A predicate on the real product, not just the harness. Encode any recurring correction as a gate, a lint rule, a check, or a script, so the win can't silently regress (the **encode-lessons-in-structure** principle skill).
+ Use **show-me-your-work** for an explicitly requested audit or a long run that needs a durable handoff. Preserve evidence and unresolved decisions without logging routine actions. No automatic commits, PRs, or external submissions.
- **Reply:** the playbook you designed, the rigor level and why, the decision-trail path, what's verified against the predicate, and what's still open.
+ Deliver the outcome, material choices, checks performed, and remaining limits.