Wayfinder

A loose idea has arrived — too big for one agent session, and wrapped in fog: the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet. Wayfinding is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a shared map on the repo's issue tracker, then works its decision tickets — questions whose resolution is a decision, not slices of a build to execute — one at a time until the route is clear.

The destination varies per effort, and naming it is the first act of charting — it shapes every ticket. It might be a spec to hand off and iterate on, a decision to lock before planning starts, or a change made in place like a data-structure migration. The map is domain-agnostic — engineering work, course content, whatever fits the shape.

Plan, don't do

Wayfinder is planning by default: each ticket resolves a decision, and the map is done when the way is clear — nothing left to decide before someone goes and does the thing. The pull to just do the work is usually the signal you've reached the edge of the map and it's time to hand off. An effort can override this in its Notes — carrying execution into the map itself — but absent that, produce decisions, not deliverables.

Refer by name

Every map and ticket is an issue, so it has a name — its title. In everything the human reads — narration, the map's Decisions-so-far — refer to it by that name, never by a bare id, number, or slug. A wall of #42, #43, #44 is illegible; names read at a glance. The id and URL don't vanish — a name wraps its link — but they ride inside the name, never stand in for it.

The Map

The map is a single issue on this repo's issue tracker, labelled wayfinder:map — the canonical artifact. Its tickets are child issues of the map.

The map is an index, not a store. It lists the decisions made and points at the tickets that hold their detail; a decision lives in exactly one place — its ticket — so the map never restates it, only gists it and links.

Where the map, its child tickets, blocking, and frontier queries physically live is tracker-specific. Use existing tracker configuration. Do not run setup implicitly. If a remote publication destination is missing, prepare a local map before asking where it belongs. Consult the tracker doc's "Wayfinding operations" section for how this repo expresses them. If no tracker has been provided, default to the local-markdown tracker.

The map body

The whole map at low resolution, loaded once per session. Open tickets are not listed — they are open child issues, found by query.

## Destination

<what reaching the end of this map looks like — the spec, decision, or change this effort is finding its way to. One or two lines; every session orients to it before choosing a ticket.>

## Notes

<domain; skills every session should consult; standing preferences for this effort>

## Decisions so far

<!-- the index — one line per closed ticket: enough to judge relevance, then zoom the link for the detail the ticket holds -->

- [<closed ticket title>](<ticket-url>) — <one-line gist of the answer>

## Not yet specified

<!-- see "Fog of war": in-scope fog you can't ticket yet; graduates as the frontier advances -->

## Out of scope

<!-- see "Out of scope": work ruled beyond the destination; closed, never graduates -->

Tickets

Each ticket is a child issue of the map; the tracker's issue id is its identity. Its body is the question, sized to one independently answerable decision:

## Question

<the decision or investigation this ticket resolves>

Each ticket carries a wayfinder:<type> label — one of research, prototype, grilling, task (see Ticket Types).

A session claims a ticket by assigning it to the dev driving the map, first, before any work, so concurrent sessions skip it. That assignee is the claim: an open, unassigned ticket is unclaimed.

Blocking uses the tracker's native dependency relationship — essential because it renders the frontier visually in the tracker's own UI, so the human sees what's takeable without opening the map. Only a tracker that lacks native blocking falls back to a body convention. A ticket is unblocked when every ticket blocking it is closed; the frontier is the open, unblocked, unclaimed children — the edge of the known.

The answer isn't part of the body — it's recorded on resolution (see Work through the map). Assets created while resolving a ticket are linked from the issue, not pasted in.

Ticket Types

Every ticket is either HITL — human in the loop, worked with a human who speaks for themselves — or AFK, driven by the agent alone. A HITL ticket only resolves through that live exchange; the agent never stands in for the human's side of it (a grilling agent that answers its own questions has broken this).

• Research (AFK): Reading documentation, third-party APIs, or local resources like knowledge bases to surface a fact a decision waits on. Resolved by a /research subagent. Use when knowledge outside the current working directory is required.
• Prototype (HITL): Raise the fidelity of the discussion by making a cheap, rough, concrete artifact to react to — an outline, a rough take, a stub, or UI/logic code via the /prototype skill. Links the prototype as an asset. Use when "how should it look" or "how should it behave" is the key question.
• Grilling (HITL): Conversation. The default case. Use grill-with-docs for unresolved choices.
• Task (HITL or AFK): Manual work that must happen before a decision can be made — nothing to decide, prototype, or research, but the discussion is blocked until it's done. Signing up for a service so its API can be judged, provisioning access, moving data so its shape can be seen. This is the one type that does rather than decides — and it earns its place by unblocking a decision, not by delivering the destination. The agent drives it alone where it can (AFK); otherwise it hands the human a precise checklist (HITL). Resolved when the work is done; the answer records what was done and any resulting facts (credentials location, new URLs, row counts) later tickets depend on.

Fog of war

The map is deliberately incomplete: don't chart what you can't yet see. Beyond the live tickets lies the fog of war — the dim view of decisions and investigations you can tell are coming but can't yet pin down, because they hang on questions still open. Resolving a ticket clears the fog ahead of it, graduating whatever's now specifiable into fresh tickets — one at a time, until the way to the destination is clear and no tickets remain.

The map's Not yet specified section is where that dim view is written down: the suspected question, the area to revisit later. It's the undiscovered frontier toward the destination — everything here is in scope, just not sharp enough to ticket. Write as loosely or as fully as the view allows; it doubles as a signpost for collaborators reading where the effort is headed.

Fog or ticket? The test is whether you can state the question precisely now — not whether you can answer it now.

• Ticket when the question is already sharp — even if it's blocked and you can't act on it yet.
• Not yet specified when you can't yet phrase it that sharply. Don't pre-slice the fog into ticket-sized pieces: it's coarser than a ticket, and one patch may graduate into several tickets, or none, once the frontier reaches it.

Not yet specified excludes what's already decided (Decisions so far), what's already a live ticket, and what's out of scope (the next section).