Ripwire Router

You are not in a "moment" — you are about to reach for a default

The table above assumes you recognized a moment. The most expensive case is the one where you did not: you simply went for Read, Grep, or Glob because they are always there. That reflex needs no recognition and no skill load, which is exactly why it wins by default and why it costs the most.

Match the default you were about to use, not a moment:

The discipline behind this row set is ripwire-orient's companion map-before-you-read.md; it is worth entering even mid-task, because less context is measurably MORE accurate, not merely cheaper (29% → 3% code-repair accuracy as context grew 32K → 256K, LongCodeBench). If a ripwire wrap primer or the opt-in skills/install.sh --hook nudge is installed, these same substitutions arrive without anyone loading this file — that is the point: a rule an agent must remember to look up is a rule that loses to a habit.

The legend: compact by default, full when a definition needs its reasoning

Every command these skills spell asks for the compact legend (--legend=compact: terse definitions of only the attributes the answer carries). Compact is also the CLI's DEFAULT now, so on a current binary the flag is redundant — it stays so a command reads the same on an older one. Add --legend=full when a definition's reasoning is needed — a term you do not recognise, a floor or cap you need explained, or a map a human will read. --for spells no flag: its compact legend is its own dialect, and the default.

The other exceptions are not a choice — the binary refuses --legend=compact on any command that does not answer with an XML legend, and a command it refuses runs not at all. Two families: the state-changing commands, which write something rather than answer (--quality-ack, --quality-baseline, --arch --baseline, --note-add, --replace-symbol-body / --insert-before-symbol / --insert-after-symbol, --edit-plan, --index-out=), which refuse either posture, and the non-XML renderings (--mermaid, --html, --report, --sarif, --situ, --recall=, --export), where --legend=full is accepted as a no-op because the full form is the only one they have. Those carry no --legend=compact. --pin-census= is not among them: it writes its census beside a map, and the map takes a posture like any other. This matters when you compose rather than copy: a flag that turns an XML verb into one of these — --zoom --mermaid, --quality-delta --quality-ack — takes the whole command with it, so the verb is not what decides, the command is. Nothing here is a rule you have to apply by hand: ripwire --help-task spells no posture at all (the binary's default decides), and test/skilltruthcheck.sh runs every --legend=compact command these skills spell against the binary and fails on a refusal.

Cross-cutting disciplines (fire ALONGSIDE a moment skill, not instead)

• ripwire-orient / map-before-you-read.md — the map-before-you-read token+accuracy discipline for any read, at any moment (a companion file since 2026-09-07; it was the standalone efficient skill).
• ripwire-quality-bar — the measure-what-you-made-worse convergence loop, at every "I think I'm done".
• ripwire-reuse-first — reuse-before-reinvent, at every new symbol.

These aren't a "moment" you land in; they're reflexes you carry into every moment.

Wrong tool for the job

ripwire parses C++, C, ObjC/ObjC++, Metal (MSL), C#, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, Bash, Go, Rust, Swift; JSON (config keys) — nothing else. A repo in another language (PHP, Kotlin, ...) gets a silently thin or empty map, not an error — don't mistake that for "nothing here." Reach for plain rg + reads instead. And ripwire maps structure, not build/link state — a build failure or a linker error is the compiler's/linker's question, not ripwire's; it can still tell you where the broken symbol lives (--grep/--callers), just not why the toolchain rejected it.

Reference skills (consulted, never "entered")

ripwire-layers (architecture-health / --arch CI gate), ripwire-graph-query (custom graph queries), ripwire-mcp (run ripwire as an MCP server). --doctor (setup-health row above) is diagnostic, not a moment skill. --eval / --eval-retrieval / --eval-mined are maintainer self-eval harnesses (not an agent moment) — --eval-mined=FILE scores ranker recall against real session-mined (query, gold-files) pairs from bench/mine_traces.py. The detail-ladder / token-squeeze (--compress) material lives inside ripwire-orient's companion file (skills/ripwire-orient/compress-ladder.md) now — it's not a standalone moment. You don't recognize "the graph-query moment" — reach for these when a moment skill points you at them.

The two-reflex primer — the moments the habit forgets

The always-loaded ripwire primer trains the READ verbs (--for/--recall/--callers/--expand/ --hotspots) but not the two WRITE-time reflexes, which is exactly where the most value leaks:

• Before you write a fn/class — even a "quick" one: ripwire <dir> --exemplar="<the sub-task in words>" --legend=compact → the repo's best-in-class instance of that shape to imitate (by ROLE, not text similarity), plus --for="<task>" to reuse before reinventing. Duplicates are born on tasks that felt too small to tool up for. (→ ripwire-reuse-first.)
• Before you call it DONE: ripwire <dir> --quality-delta --legend=compact → ONLY what your change made worse across 10 kinds (complexity, verbosity, nesting, params, duplication, dead-code, api-surface, error-masking, short-horizon-churn, new-clone-of-reused-helper); exit 2 = new debt. In a git repo it auto-compares vs git HEAD (no start-of-task ritual — just run it before you push). A finding is only half the job — the fix is not done until it is proven: --quality-delta (targeted kind gone, nothing else regressed) → --edit-check=SYM (contract intact) → --affected (the tests that prove it). That chain, and the shape → refactor playbook that picks the fix in the first place, are in ripwire-quality-bar. For a mid-task convergence loop, run ripwire <dir> --quality-baseline at the start to pin an explicit floor (it takes precedence over HEAD), then re-run --quality-delta after each edit. (→ ripwire-quality-bar.) Want the wider "does this still look rotten" picture alongside the delta, not just what you changed? — ripwire <dir> --quality-panel[=strict|default|lenient] --legend=compact, the six-family panel (→ ripwire-fresh-eyes). It is a lens, not a gate — always exits 0; --quality-delta above is the only pass here that gates.

ripwire --help lists every flag on one line; --help=--FLAG prints one flag in full and --help=all the whole catalog. Every skill re-verifies its commands against the shipped binary.

Installing these skills: bash skills/install.sh symlinks every ripwire-* skill into the Claude skill home (its codex mode targets ${AGENTS_HOME:-~/.agents}/skills; --codex-legacy retains ${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/skills) and prunes dangling links from removed skills. Add --hook explicitly for the advisory nudge (--codex --hook for Codex).