Lean engineering-discipline skills for frontier-class models — plus a cape mode that enforces the same discipline on the model tiers that still need one.
Skills 14 in the Claude listing
Clarifying requirements Use when starting a new feature, component, or project whose requirements are underspecified or ambiguous — before designing or writing code Durable plans Use when planned work will outlive the current session — persisting a plan to disk, resuming work from an on-disk plan, or landing changes a plan file describes Escalate dont thrash Use when repeated attempts at the same problem keep failing without producing new evidence — before trying another variation of the last fix Exploring approaches Use when starting a new project or significant feature from a vague idea — before clarifying details or planning, especially when the user already has a preferred approach Fail loud Use when writing error handling — try/catch blocks, fallback values, default parameters, retries, or any code path that handles failure Measure before optimizing Use when asked to improve performance, or when about to optimize code believed to be slow Receiving feedback Use when receiving code review comments, reviewer suggestions, or technical corrections — before implementing any of them Root cause debugging Use when encountering a bug, test failure, regression, flaky test, or unexpected behavior — before proposing or applying any fix Safe refactoring Use when restructuring, renaming, moving, or extracting code that already works — before making the first edit Schema migration safety Use when writing database schema migrations or changing tables, columns, indexes, or constraints on a system with real data Surgical changes Use when editing existing code — bug fixes, small features, or any change inside a codebase you didn't just write Verify before done Use when about to claim work is complete, fixed, or passing — before committing, opening a PR, marking a task done, or relaying a subagent's success report Writing meaningful tests Use when writing or modifying tests, adding mocks, or tempted to add test-only methods to production code Writing solid plans Use when designing or planning a multi-step feature, refactor, or spec before implementation begins