Skills Reference
The kit ships 15 skills under kit/.claude/skills/. Each is a SKILL.md in
its own folder. None of them is customized: every skill is
repository-invariant and ends with a ## Project layer section naming what
it reads from AGENTS.md (the binary invocation, the version pin, the gate
command list, the stack gate, the default branch), from spec-spine.toml
(closed enums, extra keys, state_dir), and from the path-scoped rules
(invariants, never-touch artefacts, specialist agents). Keep the project
layer there and the skills stay byte-identical to the kit, so a kit update
is a copy, not a merge. spec-spine's own repository runs the same fifteen
on itself and pins them byte-identical to the kit with a test (spec 048).
The loop
In the order AGENTS.md "Working the backlog" runs it. These mirror the
stages an orchestrator drives one spec per session through (build, ship,
shepherd, verify), so a human-driven session and a driven one follow the
same protocol.
| Skill | What it does | Wraps |
|---|---|---|
prime | Run the AGENTS.md New Sessions protocol; reads only, never repairs the tree. | spec-spine check, registry plan |
setup | One-time setup: install the pinned spec-spine, the stack toolchain, verify the loop once. | the gate as AGENTS.md lists it |
next | Name the next work order from the ready set, minus drafts, with in-flight specs and blockers reported. Read-only. | registry plan --json, registry show --json |
build <id> | One spec, start to finish: preflight, branch, flip in-progress, implement inside the territory, gate before every commit, verify, flip complete. | steps 2 to 6 of the protocol |
verify <id> | Run the spec's verify:cli fences locally, the way a verify stage runs them after merge. not-declared is an honest zero, not a pass. | spec-spine verify <id> |
ship | Gate, review, commit on the feature branch, open the PR. The waiver is a human checkpoint standing authorization never covers. | the gate, /code-review, /commit, gh pr create |
shepherd | Watch the PR's checks by head sha, answer review threads, remediate through the gate (two rounds), merge with squash, confirm the merge on disk. | gh pr checks, gh pr merge, git pull --ff-only |
spec | Author a new spec at the next free ordinal, born draft, validated in a temporary copy. Approval stays a human flip. | registry list --ids-only, compile --repo, lint --fail-on-warn |
Two rules /next applies on top of registry plan: a draft whose
dependencies are met is listed as awaiting approval, never offered
(approval is a human act), and a spec at implementation: in-progress is
listed as in flight, never offered as new work.
The two the loop calls
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
commit | Conventional, impact-focused commit with the spec ordinal as scope; the regenerated shards staged with the change; no AI attribution, no session links, no em dash. |
code-review | Correctness, spec drift, and the legitimacy of every mid-build spec edit, with the gate's read-only forms as evidence and the path-scoped invariant rules applied or delegated. |
Read skills read
prime, next, verify, and code-review never run a writing verb: a bare
compile inside a review would repair a stale committed registry as a side
effect of reading it, hiding the defect. They use compile --check and
index check, report a stale verdict, and leave the repair to the session
as later, committed work.
The verify verb
spec-spine verify <id> runs every non-comment line inside a
```verify:cli fence under a spec's ## Verification heading, from
the repository root, in order, stopping at the first non-zero exit. It
prints passed, FAILED at command N, or not-declared, counts and skips
verify:browser blocks, and reads the spec markdown, never .derived/.
/verify calls it; the kit no longer ships the shell script that preceded
it (spec-spine 0.15.0 absorbed it as the verb).
Not shipped
Project-specific pieces: a domain-specialist agent, invariant rules with
paths: frontmatter, a build-commands.md rule naming your composite, a
Makefile, a CI workflow. The gate command list in AGENTS.md is the
contract the skills read; see Adopt in your repo.