/ask-matt — a user-invoked router over the skills in the repo: “you don’t remember every skill, so ask.” It describes flows (paths through the skills) anchored on one main flow, three on-ramps, a codebase-health lane, a vocabulary layer underneath, and a list of standalone skills.
A meta / dispatcher capability spanning the whole lifecycle rather than one stage, so it carries no implements: edge. Its cross-framework counterparts are Addy’s addy-using-agent-skills, gstack’s gstack-router, and Superpowers’ sp-using-superpowers: each is the “which skill fits?” front door for its pack.
The main flow
- mp-grill-with-docs sharpens the idea in a working directory. With no working directory, use mp-grill-me.
- Branch: if a question needs a runnable answer, detour through mp-prototype, bridged out and back by mp-handoff.
- Branch: is this a multi-session build?
- Yes → mp-to-spec → mp-to-tickets, then either mp-implement per ticket (
/clearbetween each) or mp-implement-spec for the whole spec at once (implementer subagents across the ready frontier, one integration branch). - No → mp-implement in the same context.
- Either way the build drives mp-tdd and closes with mp-code-review. When the work goes up as a PR, mp-pr shapes the body.
- Yes → mp-to-spec → mp-to-tickets, then either mp-implement per ticket (
- mp-retro closes the loop: it suggests changes to the agent’s environment (checks, standards, pointers, tooling) so the next build starts better.
On-ramps: mp-triage (raw incoming issues only; tickets from /to-tickets are already agent-ready, so “don’t triage them”), mp-diagnosing-bugs (then /retro once the fix is in, and mp-improve-codebase-architecture only where the finding is a missing seam), and mp-wayfinder (the “most cognitively demanding flow”, reserved for an idea that won’t fit one session; a well-scoped feature belongs on mp-grill-with-docs). When wayfinder’s map clears, “it hands off, it doesn’t build”: merge onto the main flow at mp-to-spec, not straight into /implement.
Standalone: mp-grill-me, mp-grilling, mp-prototype, mp-research, mp-to-questionnaire, mp-wizard, mp-wait-what, teach, mp-writing-for-agents. Codebase health: mp-improve-codebase-architecture. Vocabulary underneath: mp-domain-modeling, mp-codebase-design.
Phase boundaries
A phase is a chunk of work inside a session (the grilling, the implementation, the QA). At the boundary between two phases there are five options, in order:
- Continue: the one to rule out first, “the only move that keeps the conversation as a primary source rather than a summary of one”.
/clear: when nothing here matters to what’s next.- mp-handoff: only for when something must travel: a new harness, a new directory, a colleague, or a side task forked mid-phase.
- Subagent: a tightly scoped task run AFK in its own window.
/compact: the default, at the bottom of the tree rather than the first reach.
The reasoning is disclosed to PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md (pattern-session-handoff). Context hygiene keeps steps 1–3 in one unbroken window up to /to-tickets, within the smart zone (~150k tokens).
See Also
- matt-pocock-skills — the toolkit this routes.
- addy-using-agent-skills · gstack-router · sp-using-superpowers — the cross-framework routing counterparts.
Version history
v1.3.1 (2026-10-04)
- Replaced the stale mp-diagnosing-bugs → mp-improve-codebase-architecture post-mortem hand-off with
/retro(mp-retro).
v1.3.0 (2026-10-04)
- Added mp-implement-spec, mp-pr, and mp-retro; pr and retro became the main flow’s new tail after mp-code-review.
- Dropped
resolving-merge-conflicts(mp-resolving-merge-conflicts, removed upstream).
v1.2.0 (2026-08-05)
- Added the five-option phase-boundary tree (replacing a two-bullet “Crossing sessions” section) and narrowed mp-handoff to when context must travel.
- Added the two wayfinder routing warnings (over-reaching; losing the way at the handoff).
- Added routes for mp-grilling, mp-to-questionnaire, mp-wizard and mp-wait-what; split mp-grill-me from mp-grill-with-docs on whether you are in a working directory.
- Smart-zone figure raised from ~120k to ~150k tokens.
Initial ingest (2026-07-09, v1.1)
- Newly paged (catalogued before). The main flow ran grill-with-docs → to-spec → to-tickets → implement → code-review, with two on-ramps (wayfinder, diagnosing-bugs) and the vocabulary layer underneath.