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the-inconvenience-store/inconvenient-skills

v1.4.4MIT

Inconvenient agent skills for real engineering — grilling, spec/ticket flows, TDD, code review, domain modelling and more.

ask-inconvenient

Ask which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the skills in this repo.

code-review

Review the changes since a fixed point (commit, branch, tag, or merge-base) along two axes — Standards (does the code follow this repo's documented coding standards?) and Spec (does the code match what the originating issue/spec asked for?). Runs both reviews in parallel sub-agents and reports them side by side. Use when the user wants to review a branch, a PR, work-in-progress changes, or asks to "review since X".

codebase-design

Shared vocabulary for designing deep modules. Use when the user wants to design or improve a module's interface, find deepening opportunities, decide where a seam goes, make code more testable or AI-navigable, or when another skill needs the deep-module vocabulary.

diagnosing-bugs

Diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions. Use when the user says "diagnose"/"debug this", or reports something broken/throwing/failing/slow.

domain-modeling

Build and sharpen a project's domain model. Use when discussing codebase terminology, writing or editing a CONTEXT.md, or recording or editing an ADR.

engineering-principles

Shared decision principles for implementation, refactoring, architecture, review, debugging, verification, migration, and parallel work. Use when another engineering skill needs common judgment rules or the user names Laziness Protocol, Foundational Thinking, Redesign from First Principles, Subtract Before You Add, Minimize Reader Load, Outcome-Oriented Execution, Experience First, Exhaust the Design Space, Build the Lever, Model Behavior Structurally, Boundary Discipline, Type System Discipline, Make Operations Idempotent, Migrate Callers Then Delete Legacy APIs, Separate Before Serializing Shared State, Prove It Works, Fix Root Causes, Sequence Verifiable Units, Guard the Context Window, Keep Execution Unblocked, or Encode Lessons in Structure.

grill-me

A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design.

grill-with-docs

A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design, which also creates docs (ADR's and glossary) as we go.

grilling

Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.

guardrails

Set up or overhaul a project's development guardrails and reproducible checks. Use when a repository needs linting, formatting, tests, reproducible installation, dependency upkeep, CI, hooks, generated-code drift checks, or applicable framework standards.

handoff

Compact the current conversation into a handoff document for another agent to pick up.

implement

Implement a piece of work based on a spec or set of tickets.

improve-codebase-architecture

Scan a codebase for deepening opportunities, present them as a visual HTML report, then grill through whichever one you pick.

prototype

Build a throwaway prototype to answer a design question. Use when the user wants to sanity-check whether a state model or logic feels right, or explore what a UI should look like.

research

Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.

resolving-merge-conflicts

Use when you need to resolve an in-progress git merge/rebase conflict.

setup-inconvenient-skills

Configure a repo for the engineering skills — issue tracking, triage labels, domain docs, development guardrails, and repeatable real-surface verification. Run once before first use of the other engineering skills.

tdd

Test-driven development. Use when the user wants to build features or fix bugs test-first, mentions "red-green-refactor", or wants integration tests.

teach

Teach the user a new skill or concept, within this workspace.

to-questionnaire

Turn a decision you can't fully answer into a questionnaire for someone else to fill in.

to-spec

Turn the current conversation into a spec and publish it to the project issue tracker — no interview, just synthesis of what you've already discussed.

to-tickets

Break a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges, published to the configured tracker — edges as text in one file per ticket locally, or native blocking links on a real tracker.

triage

Move issues and external PRs through a state machine of triage roles — categorise, verify, grill if needed, and write agent-ready briefs.

verification

Create, run, or maintain project-local verification of real user-facing behavior. Use when the user asks to verify or prove a change on the real app, create a repeatable app-driving workflow, audit or refresh verification instructions, or when implementation needs evidence beyond tests and compilation.

wait-what

Stop. That last message did not land — re-pitch it.

wayfinder

Plan a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of decision tickets on your issue tracker, and resolve them one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.

wizard

Generate an interactive bash wizard that walks a human through steps only they can perform. Use when provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, walking an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, or running a one-off migration or cutover. Don't invoke this for steps the agent can perform itself.

writing-for-agents

Writing documents for agents. Use when creating or editing skills, or modifying AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md.