Skills Reference¶

Complete reference for all 69 AgentOps skills (60 user-facing + 9 internal).

Skills are the primitive layer of AgentOps. Higher-level entry points like /implement, /validation, /rpi, and /evolve compose those primitives into repeatable flows.

Behavioral Contracts: Most skills include scripts/validate.sh behavioral checks to verify key features remain documented. Run skills/<name>/scripts/validate.sh when present, or the GOALS.yaml behavioral-skill-contracts goal to validate the full covered set.

Skill Router (Start Here)¶

Use this when you're not sure which skill to run. For a full flow overview, run /using-agentops.

Text Only

What are you trying to do?
│
├─ "Not sure what to do yet"
│   └─ Generate options first ─────► /brainstorm
│
├─ "I have an idea"
│   └─ Understand code + context ──► /research
│
├─ "I know what I want to build"
│   └─ Break it into issues ───────► /plan
│
├─ "Now build it"
│   ├─ Small/single issue ─────────► /implement
│   ├─ Multi-issue epic ───────────► /crank <epic-id>
│   └─ Full flow in one command ───► /rpi "goal"
│
├─ "Fix a bug"
│   ├─ Already scoped? ────────────► /implement <issue-id>
│   └─ Need to investigate? ───────► /bug-hunt
│
├─ "Build a feature"
│   ├─ Small (1-2 files) ─────────► /implement
│   ├─ Medium (3-6 issues) ───────► /plan → /crank
│   └─ Large (7+ issues) ─────────► /rpi (full pipeline)
│
├─ "Validate something"
│   ├─ Work ready to close? ──────► /validation
│   ├─ Code quality only? ───────► /vibe
│   ├─ Plan ready to build? ──────► /pre-mortem
│   └─ Quick sanity check? ───────► /council --quick validate
│
├─ "Explore or research"
│   ├─ Understand this codebase ──► /research
│   ├─ Compare approaches ────────► /council research <topic>
│   └─ Generate ideas ────────────► /brainstorm
│
├─ "Learn from past work"
│   ├─ Turn the corpus into operator surfaces ─► /knowledge-activation
│   ├─ What do we know about X? ──► /knowledge <query>
│   ├─ Save this insight ─────────► /retro --quick "insight"
│   └─ Full retrospective ────────► /post-mortem
│
├─ "Parallelize work"
│   ├─ Multiple independent tasks ► /swarm
│   └─ Full epic with waves ──────► /crank <epic-id>
│
├─ "Ship a release"
│   └─ Changelog + tag ──────────► /release <version>
│
├─ "Session management"
│   ├─ Prep or review Dream runs ─► /dream
│   ├─ Where was I? ──────────────► /status
│   ├─ Save for next session ─────► /handoff
│   └─ Recover after compaction ──► /recover
│
└─ "First time here" ────────────► /quickstart

Core Flow Skills¶

/research¶

Deep codebase exploration using Explore agents.

Bash

/research authentication flows in services/auth

Output: .agents/research/<topic>.md

/plan¶

Decompose goals into trackable beads issues with dependencies.

Bash

/plan "Add user authentication with OAuth2"

Output: Beads issues with parent/child relationships

/implement¶

Execute a single beads issue with full lifecycle.

Bash

/implement ap-1234

Phases: Context → Tests → Code → Validation → Commit

/brainstorm¶

Structured idea exploration. Four phases: assess clarity, understand idea, explore approaches, capture design.

Bash

/brainstorm "add user authentication"

Output: .agents/brainstorm/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md

/rpi¶

Full RPI lifecycle orchestrator. Discovery → Implementation → Validation in one command.

Bash

/rpi "Add user authentication"
/rpi --fast-path "fix typo in README"
/rpi --from=implementation ag-1234

Phases: Discovery (/discovery) → Implementation (/crank) → Validation (/validation)

/crank¶

Autonomous multi-issue execution. Runs until epic is CLOSED.

Bash

/crank <epic-id>

Execution model: Wave-based orchestration via /swarm with runtime-native workers.

/validation¶

Full validation close-out. Wraps /vibe + /post-mortem + /retro + /forge.

Bash

/validation
/validation ag-1234

Use when: The work is ready for final review, closeout, and learning capture.

/vibe¶

Comprehensive code validation across 8 aspects with finding classification (CRITICAL vs INFORMATIONAL), suppression framework for known false positives, and domain-specific checklists (SQL safety, LLM trust boundary, race conditions) auto-loaded from /standards. Correlates findings against pre-mortem predictions.

Bash

/vibe services/auth/

Checks: Security, Quality, Architecture, Complexity, Testing, Accessibility, Performance, Documentation

/retro¶

Quick-capture a learning. For full retrospectives, use /post-mortem.

Bash

/retro --quick "debugging memory leak"

Output: .agents/learnings/

/post-mortem¶

Full validation + knowledge lifecycle. Council validates, extracts learnings, activates/retires knowledge, then synthesizes process improvement proposals and suggests the next /rpi command. The flywheel exit point. Now includes RPI session streak tracking, prediction accuracy scoring (HIT/MISS/SURPRISE against pre-mortem predictions), and persistent retro history to .agents/retro/ for cross-epic trend analysis. Supports --quick, --process-only, and --skip-activate flags.

Bash

/post-mortem <epic-id>
/post-mortem --quick            # Lightweight post-mortem
/post-mortem --process-only     # Process improvements only
/post-mortem --skip-activate    # Skip knowledge activation

Output: Council report, learnings, knowledge activation/retirement, process improvement proposals, next-work queue (.agents/rpi/next-work.jsonl)

Utility Skills¶

/beads¶

Git-native issue tracking operations.

Bash

bd ready              # Unblocked issues
bd show <id>          # Issue details
bd close <id>         # Close issue

/bug-hunt¶

Root cause analysis with git archaeology.

Bash

/bug-hunt "login fails after password reset"

/knowledge¶

Query knowledge artifacts across locations.

Bash

/knowledge "patterns for rate limiting"

Searches: .agents/learnings/, .agents/patterns/, .agents/research/

/llm-wiki¶

Maintain a compounding wiki for external reading material.

Bash

/llm-wiki ingest raw/articles/example.md
/llm-wiki query "what do we know about this topic?"
/llm-wiki lint

Status: Proposal skill for external raw/ to wiki/ knowledge, separate from the internal .agents/ compiler.

/complexity¶

Code complexity analysis using radon (Python) or gocyclo (Go).

Bash

/complexity services/

Threshold: CC > 10 triggers refactoring issue

/doc¶

Generate documentation for code.

Bash

/doc services/auth/

/pre-mortem¶

Simulate failures before implementing. Includes error/rescue mapping (tabular risk/mitigation), scope mode selection (Expand/Hold/Reduce with auto-detection), temporal interrogation (hour ½/4/6+ timeline), and prediction tracking with unique IDs (pm-YYYYMMDD-NNN) correlated through vibe and post-mortem.

Bash

/pre-mortem "add caching layer"

Output: Failure modes, error/rescue maps, predictions with IDs, mitigation strategies, spec improvements

Orchestration Skills¶

/council¶

Multi-model validation — the core primitive used by vibe, pre-mortem, and post-mortem. Auto-extracts significant findings from WARN/FAIL verdicts into the knowledge flywheel.

Bash

/council validate recent
/council --deep recent

/swarm¶

Parallel agent spawning for concurrent task execution.

Bash

/swarm <epic-id>

/codex-team¶

Spawn parallel Codex execution agents.

Bash

/codex-team <epic-id>

Additional Utility Skills¶

/handoff¶

Session handoff — preserve context for continuation.

Bash

/handoff

/release¶

Pre-flight checks, changelog generation, version bumps, and tagging.

Bash

/release

/status¶

Single-screen dashboard of project state.

Bash

/status

/quickstart¶

Interactive onboarding — mini RPI cycle for new users.

Bash

/quickstart

/dream¶

Interactive Dream operator surface for setup, bedtime runs, and morning reports on top of the shared ao overnight engine.

Bash

/dream setup
/dream start "close the loop on today's auth work"
/dream report

Output: Dream setup preview or .agents/overnight/<run>/summary.{json,md}

/trace¶

Trace design decisions through knowledge artifacts.

Bash

/trace "why did we choose Redis?"

/knowledge-activation¶

Operationalize a mature .agents corpus into reusable belief, playbook, briefing, and gap surfaces.

Bash

/knowledge-activation
ao knowledge activate --goal "productize knowledge activation"
ao knowledge gaps

/recover¶

Post-compaction context recovery. Detects in-progress RPI and evolve sessions, loads knowledge, shows recent work and pending tasks.

Bash

/recover                     # Recover context after compaction

/evolve¶

Autonomous fitness-scored improvement loop. Measures GOALS.yaml, fixes the worst gap, compounds via knowledge flywheel.

Bash

/evolve                      # Run until stopped or the full producer ladder is exhausted
/evolve --max-cycles=5       # Cap at 5 cycles
/evolve --dry-run            # Measure only, don't execute

/product¶

Interactive PRODUCT.md generation. Interviews about mission, personas, value props, and competitive landscape.

Bash

/product

Output: PRODUCT.md in repo root

/heal-skill¶

Detect and auto-fix skill hygiene issues (missing frontmatter, unlinked references, dead references).

Bash

/heal-skill --check                     # Report issues
/heal-skill --fix                       # Auto-fix what's safe
/heal-skill --check skills/council      # Check specific skill

Checks: MISSING_NAME, MISSING_DESC, NAME_MISMATCH, UNLINKED_REF, EMPTY_DIR, DEAD_REF

/converter¶

Convert skills to other platforms (Codex, Cursor).

Bash

/converter skills/council codex          # Single skill to Codex format
/converter --all cursor                  # All skills to Cursor .mdc format

Targets: codex (SKILL.md + prompt.md), cursor (.mdc + optional mcp.json), test (raw bundle)

/openai-docs¶

Use official OpenAI docs MCP access for current API/platform guidance with citations.

Bash

/openai-docs "responses api tools"

/oss-docs¶

Scaffold and audit open-source documentation packs (README, CONTRIBUTING, changelog, AGENTS).

Bash

/oss-docs

/pr-research¶

Research upstream contribution conventions before implementing an external PR.

Bash

/pr-research https://github.com/org/repo

/pr-plan¶

Create a scoped contribution plan from PR research artifacts.

Bash

/pr-plan

/pr-implement¶

Execute fork-based contribution work with isolation checks.

Bash

/pr-implement

/pr-validate¶

Run PR-specific validation (scope creep, isolation, upstream alignment).

Bash

/pr-validate

/pr-prep¶

Prepare structured PR bodies with validation evidence. Includes commit split advisor (Phase 4.5) suggesting bisectable commit ordering.

Bash

/pr-prep

/pr-retro¶

Capture lessons from accepted/rejected PR outcomes.

Bash

/pr-retro

/update¶

Reinstall all AgentOps skills globally from the latest source.

Bash

/update                      # Reinstall all 69 skills

Internal Skills¶

These fire automatically and are not directly invoked:

Skill	Purpose
`inject`	Load knowledge at session start (`ao inject`)
`extract`	Extract decisions/learnings from transcripts
`forge`	Mine transcripts for knowledge artifacts
`ratchet`	Progress gates for RPI workflow
`flywheel`	Knowledge health monitoring
`provenance`	Trace knowledge artifact lineage
`standards`	Language-specific coding standards (auto-loaded by /vibe, /implement)
`shared`	Shared reference documents for multi-agent backends
`beads`	Issue tracking reference
`using-agentops`	Workflow guide (hook-capable silent state prep, explicit Codex startup fallback)

Subagents¶

Subagent behaviors are defined inline within SKILL.md files (not as separate agent files). Skills that use subagents spawn them as Task agents during execution. 20 specialized roles are used across /vibe, /pre-mortem, /post-mortem, and /research.

Agent Role	Used By	Focus
Code reviewer	/vibe, /council	Quality, patterns, maintainability
Security reviewer	/vibe, /council	Vulnerabilities, OWASP
Security expert	/vibe, /council	Deep security analysis
Architecture expert	/vibe, /council	System design review
Code quality expert	/vibe, /council	Complexity and maintainability
UX expert	/vibe, /council	Accessibility and UX validation
Plan compliance expert	/post-mortem	Compare implementation to plan
Goal achievement expert	/post-mortem	Did we solve the problem?
Ratchet validator	/post-mortem	Verify gates are locked
Flywheel feeder	/post-mortem	Extract learnings with provenance
Technical learnings expert	/post-mortem	Technical patterns
Process learnings expert	/post-mortem	Process improvements
Integration failure expert	/pre-mortem	Integration risks
Ops failure expert	/pre-mortem	Operational risks
Data failure expert	/pre-mortem	Data integrity risks
Edge case hunter	/pre-mortem	Edge cases and exceptions
Coverage expert	/research	Research completeness
Depth expert	/research	Depth of analysis
Gap identifier	/research	Missing areas
Assumption challenger	/research	Challenge assumptions

ao CLI Integration¶

Skills integrate with the ao CLI for orchestration:

Skill	ao CLI Command
`/research`	`ao lookup`, `ao search`, `ao rpi phased`
`/retro`	`ao forge markdown`, `ao session close`
`/post-mortem`	`ao forge`, `ao flywheel close-loop`, `ao constraint activate`
`/implement`	`ao context assemble`, `ao lookup`, `ao ratchet record`
`/crank`	`ao rpi phased`, `ao ratchet`, `ao flywheel status`