Sassy Skills

Lean and mean skills for shipping fast — with full control and 100% reliability.

Sassy Skills is a suite of explicit-invocation Agent Skills. It follows the Agent Skills format, so it works with any harness that can load SKILL.md workflows.

It covers the whole path from a rough idea to a shipped PR, and from a bug report to a verified fix — without giving up human control at the moments that matter.

Table of contents

• Why this suite
• Quick start
• Skills
• Project config
• Workflows
  • From idea to ship
  • From bug to ship
• Gates and controls
• Repository layout
• Installation
• Repository maintenance

Why this suite

• Lean. Skills are indexes and workflows, not documentation dumps. Detail moves into references/ only when it is conditionally needed.
• Explicit. Every skill is invoked deliberately. No silent background behavior.
• Controlled. Code approval, manual QA, and ship review are visible gates that all run in sequence. There are two mode tokens, mode:manual (default) and mode:auto, accepted by sassy-ship and sassy-compound only; every other skill takes no mode.
• Reliable. Work runs through sassy-cycle with isolated subagents for implementation, review, validation, and fixes.
• Context-efficient. Orchestrators coordinate; subagents do the heavy reading and return compact results.
• Never surprising. Nothing is committed just because a step finished. Shipping is its own phase.

Quick start

Examples use simple slash commands.

An optional first step: /sassy-setup detects the project and writes .sassywares/config.yaml, so plans, learnings, and PR bases land where your repo actually keeps them. Skipping it is fine — every key falls back to a documented default.

/sassy-plan Add workspace invitations

That discussion settles the work, then offers a pick:

Settled. Pick one:
1. Write it to docs/plans/<slug>.md
2. Start working now — stop before ship
3. Take it all the way — run it, ship it, babysit the PR

Pick 1 to get a plan file, then run one phase at a time:

/sassy-work docs/plans/add-workspace-invitations.md

Or take the whole plan through one session:

/sassy-lfg docs/plans/add-workspace-invitations.md

For small work that does not need a plan document, choose 2 or 3 at the picker, or invoke the executor directly with the brief:

/sassy-work "Add a copy-link button to the invite modal"
/sassy-lfg "Add a copy-link button to the invite modal"

Debugging:

/sassy-debug https://github.com/org/repo/issues/123

Skills

Planning and execution

Code quality

Shipping

Knowledge and docs

Meta

Project config

Every skill resolves one file, .sassywares/config.yaml, found by walking up from where you are. It is optional — no file means the documented defaults.

artifacts:                       # where plans, learnings, handbooks, and the glossary live
  plans: docs/plans
  solutions: docs/solutions
  handbooks: docs/handbooks
  concepts: CONCEPTS.md
knowledge:
  read: [docs/solutions, CONCEPTS.md]   # searched for prior learnings
  write: true                           # false = this project takes no learnings
git:
  repo: origin                   # a remote name | workspace (repos below, none here) | none (no git)
  base_map:                      # head branch -> the base it targets
    "*": staging                 # ordinary work branches from and targets staging
    staging: main                # staging releases to main
  # remote: owner/backup         # workspace only: the snapshot mirror
  # mirror_branch: main          # workspace only: the mirror's branch
repos:                           # workspace only: each nested repo -> the base its PRs target
  fe: dev
commit:
  branch: current
pr:
  babysit: true
  merge: false                   # true authorizes merging every babysat PR here
  delete_branch: false
hooks:
  pr:
    "*":                         # keyed by the PR's HEAD branch
      before_create: [tap2-version mode:auto]   # after the commit, before the PR opens
      after_create: []           # the moment the PR exists
      before_merge: []           # this run is about to merge
      after_merge: []            # this run observed the merge
    staging:                     # a per-point override for one head
      before_create: []

Extending the pipeline

A project adds its own steps by naming a skill that lives in its own .agents/skills/. Nothing declared means nothing runs. Keys are the head branch — the one a PR comes from — and every point can be overridden per head; entries may carry args (<skill> <args…>).

Hooks run in declared order, one subagent each, and fail closed: a declared skill that is missing or returns blocked stops the run. Only before_create may commit its own output, because it runs after the pipeline's commit. before_merge and after_merge never fire unless this run merges.

This is deliberately not a fork mechanism. A project skill that adds a step is a hook; one that restates our steps is a copy, and copies rot. Rules are not hooks either — those belong in AGENTS.md.

Precedence is always explicit token > session instruction > config > skill default. sassy-setup writes the file from the tree it detects and keeps pr.merge off unless you say otherwise. The full schema, resolution chains, and the three topologies are in skills/sassy-setup/references/config.md.

In a workspace there is exactly one ignore file, and it is not at the root:

.sassywares/
├── config.yaml
└── workspace/
    ├── snapshot      installed by sassy-setup
    ├── .gitignore    what the snapshot leaves out
    └── mirror/       the side clone, excluded by the script itself

Workflows

From idea to ship

flowchart LR
  A[Idea] --> B[sassy-plan]
  B --> C[Discussion]
  C --> D{3-option picker}
  D -->|1. plan document| E[docs/plans/slug.md]
  D -->|2. start working| F[sassy-work]
  D -->|3. take it all the way| G[sassy-lfg]
  E --> F
  E --> G
  F --> H[sassy-cycle]
  G --> H
  H --> I{Code approval}
  I -->|changes| H
  I --> Q{Manual QA}
  Q -->|fails| H
  Q -->|passes, via sassy-work| J[Commit on the run branch and stop]
  Q -->|passes, via sassy-lfg| K[sassy-ship]
  K --> L{Ship review}
  L -->|approve or mode:auto| M[Commit, PR, babysit]

Option 1 produces a durable plan with phased slices and manual QA tables. Options 2 and 3 keep the whole job as one settled in-context brief and write no plan file.

sassy-work handles one phase and hands off the next. sassy-lfg drains the whole plan in one session. Both delegate to sassy-cycle and stop at one gate carrying code approval plus the manual QA checklist; nothing is Done, committed, or shipped until both pass. With an in-context brief there are no QA rows, so the gate is code approval alone.

The branch is cut once, before the first change, by sassy-work or sassy-lfg — never at commit time — and sassy-ship never creates it. commit.branch (default new) decides whether the run cuts one at all; see Branching.

sassy-ship is the close-out. It summarizes what is about to ship and waits, unless the caller passed mode:auto.

From bug to ship

flowchart LR
  A[Bug or issue] --> B[sassy-debug]
  B --> C[Triage]
  C --> D[scout helper]
  D --> E{Fix gate}
  E -->|1. fix it now| F[sassy-work]
  E -->|2. write a plan| G[sassy-plan]
  E -->|3. hand off| H[sassy-handoff]
  E -->|4. stop| I[Diagnosis only]
  F --> J{Code approval}
  J -->|changes| F
  J -->|approved| K[sassy-ship]
  K --> L{Ship review}
  L -->|approve| M[Commit, PR, babysit]

sassy-debug diagnoses inline, using the read-only scout as a helper to ground the failure surface; the causal reasoning stays in the main context. It then stops at the fix gate with the causal chain, proposed fix, and risks.

The fix gate offers four options:

• Fix it now — hand the fix brief to sassy-work: one cycle, its own code approval gate, a commit, then a stop before ship
• Write a plan — carry the diagnosis into sassy-plan, which ends in its own 3-option picker
• Hand off — continue in a fresh session via sassy-handoff
• Stop here — keep the diagnosis and change nothing

sassy-debug takes no mode. Shipping keeps its own mode:manual gate unless you invoke sassy-ship yourself with mode:auto.

Gates and controls

The artifact decides QA: a plan document carries manual QA tables that gate phase completion, an in-context brief does not. Gates are deliberate stops; the only way past one is the user's approval. mode:auto is accepted only by sassy-ship and sassy-compound.

Branching

sassy-work, sassy-lfg, and sassy-debug decide the branch before they touch code, from commit.branch (default new) compared against base_map. On new, the run cuts a branch and every commit — phases, docs, ship — lands on it, so no change ever exists on a base branch. A run that is already on a branch that is not a base reuses it, which is how a handed-off phase, a resumed run, or sassy-lfg after sassy-work converges instead of cutting a second branch.

A base is any base_map value, not just the remote default: in a repo whose "*" targets staging, standing on staging counts as standing on a base. That distinction is the whole point of the key — see skills/sassy-setup/references/branching.md.

The three skills take branch:infer|current|new to override the config for one run: infer (default) means the config decides, new forces a branch, current commits where you stand. sassy-ship never creates a branch; finding the head on a base branch with unpublished commits is a stop-and-ask.

Repository layout

sassy-skills/
├── skills/
│   ├── sassy-plan/
│   ├── sassy-work/
│   ├── sassy-lfg/
│   └── ...
├── scripts/
│   └── sync.sh
├── AGENTS.md
├── CONCEPTS.md
└── README.md

Installation

The suite installs from this repository with the open skills CLI. That CLI vendors the skill files into your project and pins them, so a clone needs no network and every checkout runs the same skills.

npx skills add sassywares/sassy-skills

That writes three things:

• .agents/skills/sassy-* — the skill files themselves, read by pi and Cursor
• .claude/skills/sassy-* — links for Claude Code, which reads only its own directory
• skills-lock.json — source and content hash per skill

Commit the vendored skills and the lock; ignore .claude/skills, which is a link created at install time.

npx skills update -y              # pull the latest from this repo
npx skills experimental_install   # restore exactly what the lock pins
npx skills remove                 # take the suite out again

npx skills check is an alias for update: it moves the pin, it does not validate it. To check a project's setup without touching the pin, run sassy-setup with mode:check.

sassy-setup does all of this for you — installing the suite, adding the ignore line, verifying the pin, and committing what it wrote.

While editing the suite

.pi/settings.json in this repo declares ./skills, so pi loads your working copy directly. Consumers see a change once it is pushed to main and they run npx skills update — no release step in between.

Also published as a package

@sassywares/skills is on npm for harnesses that install packages rather than skill directories:

pi install npm:@sassywares/skills

Repository maintenance

scripts/sync.sh bumps the patch version, commits, pushes main, then tags and pushes the tag — so a change to a skill is released in one step. Any agent that changes a skill must run it immediately, without asking for confirmation. It installs nothing anywhere; consumers get a change when they run npx skills update after a push. AGENTS.md documents the workflow for agents working on this repo.

Releases

Publishing is tag-driven. The Publish workflow (.github/workflows/publish.yml) validates every skills/*/SKILL.md, checks that the tag matches package.json, and publishes @sassywares/skills to npm on a v* tag push.

scripts/sync.sh does this for you on main. The manual sequence is the fallback for recovering a failed run:

npm version patch --no-git-tag-version
git add -A && git commit -m "chore: release v$(node -p "require('./package.json').version")"
git push origin main
git tag "v$(node -p "require('./package.json').version")"
git push origin --tags