bhouvana

instinct-audit

Use when the user asks for a whole-repo or whole-history audit of engineering judgment — "audit this repo", "did we leave reasoning behind", "find undocumented breaking changes", "provenance audit". Broader than instinct-review, which checks one diff; this looks across history. Explicit invocation only; one-shot report, changes nothing.

instinct

Load before any non-trivial engineering action: writing new code, changing existing code or its behavior, choosing between designs, adding or updating a dependency, or deleting/replacing an abstraction. Establishes whether this is the right change and the smallest correct version of it before implementation starts. Skip for pure information questions with no code change, and for requests where the user has already specified the exact change and is asking only for its execution.

instinct-debt

Use when the user asks to see accepted engineering debt, "what did instinct defer", "list the instinct: markers", "instinct debt ledger", or wants a report of deliberately-accepted limitations across the codebase. Explicit invocation only; one-shot report, changes nothing.

instinct-help

Use when the user asks what Instinct is, how it works, or wants a quick reference to the Gate/tiers without re-reading SKILL.md or the RFCs. Explicit invocation only.

instinct-review

Use when the user asks to review a diff, PR, or set of already-made changes for engineering judgment — not code style, the decision quality behind the change. Explicit invocation only; does not fire ambiently the way the core `instinct` skill does.