Topic: prompt-engineering
2,538 skills in this topic.
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brainstorming
Use when exploring design approaches, generating ideas, or making architectural decisions. Triggers: 'explore options', 'what are the tradeoffs', 'how should I approach', 'let's think through', 'sketch out an approach', 'I need ideas for', 'how would you structure', 'what are my options'. Also invoked by develop when design decisions are needed.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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branch-context
Triggers: 'branch diff', 'what changed on this branch', 'merge base', 'stacked branches', 'branch-context.sh', 'what does this branch do', 'PR description', 'changelog', 'branch comparison', 'diff since', 'what work is on this branch'. Also relevant during PR creation and finishing-a-development-branch workflows.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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code-review
Use when reviewing code. Triggers: 'review my code', 'check my work', 'look over this', 'review PR #X', 'PR comments to address', 'reviewer said', 'address feedback', 'self-review before PR', 'audit this code'. For heavyweight multi-phase analysis, use advanced-code-review instead.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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creating-issues-and-pull-requests
Use when creating GitHub pull requests or issues with template compliance. Triggers: 'create a PR', 'open a pull request', 'file an issue', 'create issue'. Also invoked by finishing-a-development-branch. NOT for: deciding whether to merge or PR (use finishing-a-development-branch).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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debugging
Use when debugging bugs, test failures, or unexpected behavior. Triggers: 'why isn't this working', 'this doesn't work', 'X is broken', 'something's wrong', 'getting an error', 'exception in', 'stopped working', 'regression', 'crash', 'hang', 'flaky test', 'intermittent failure', or when user pastes a stack trace/error output. NOT for: test quality issues (use fixing-tests), adding new behavior (use develop).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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deep-research
Use when researching complex topics, evaluating technologies, investigating domains, or answering multi-faceted questions requiring web research. Triggers: 'research X', 'investigate Y', 'evaluate options for Z', 'what are the best approaches to', 'help me understand', 'deep dive into', 'compare alternatives', 'look into', 'find out about'. NOT for: exploring design approaches (use brainstorming) or domain modeling (use analyzing-domains).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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dehallucination
Use when verifying that AI-generated claims, references, or assertions are grounded in reality. Triggers: 'does this actually exist', 'is this real', 'did you hallucinate', 'verify these references', 'check if this is fabricated', 'reality check', 'ground truth'. Invoked as quality gate by develop and deep-research. NOT for: verifying technical claims in code (use fact-checking).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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designing-workflows
Use when designing systems with explicit states, transitions, or multi-step flows. Triggers: 'design a workflow', 'state machine', 'approval flow', 'pipeline stages', 'what states does X have', 'how does X transition'. Also invoked by develop when workflow patterns are detected.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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develop
Use when building, creating, modifying, or planning any code change. Triggers: "implement X", "build Y", "add feature Z", "create X", "change how X works", "modify Y", "update the Z", "refactor X", "rework Y", "restructure Z", "make X do Y", "let's plan how to", "plan the implementation", "how should we implement", "how would you build", "what's the best way to implement", "I want to...", "We need...", "Would be great to...", "Can we add...", "Let's add...", "Let's build...", "Let's make...", "start a new project". Also for: new projects, repos, templates, greenfield development, refactoring, migrations, multi-file modifications, any code change requiring planning. PREFER THIS OVER plan mode or ad-hoc implementation for ANY substantive code change. NOT for: bug fixes (use debugging), pure research (use deep-research), questions about existing code without intent to change it, or test-only fixes (use fixing-tests).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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devils-advocate
Use when challenging assumptions, surfacing risks, or stress-testing designs and decisions. Triggers: 'challenge this', 'play devil's advocate', 'what could go wrong', 'poke holes', 'find the flaws', 'what am I missing', 'is this solid', 'red team this', 'what are the weaknesses', 'risk assessment', 'sanity check'. Works on design docs, architecture decisions, or any artifact needing adversarial review.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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dispatching-parallel-agents
Use when deciding whether to dispatch subagents, when to stay in main context, or when facing 2+ independent parallel tasks. Triggers: 'should I use a subagent', 'parallelize', 'multiple independent tasks', 'run these at the same time', 'split this up', 'do both at once', 'dispatch template', 'context minimization'.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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distilling-prs
Use when reviewing PRs to triage, categorize, or summarize changes requiring human attention. Triggers: 'summarize this PR', 'what changed in PR #X', 'triage PR', 'which files need review', 'PR overview', 'categorize changes', or pasting a PR URL. NOT for: deep code analysis (use advanced-code-review) or quick review (use code-review).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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documenting-projects
Use when generating, improving, or auditing project documentation. Triggers: 'document this project', 'write docs', 'generate documentation', 'docs are outdated', 'need a README', 'create tutorials', 'API reference docs', 'doc audit', 'documentation review', '/document-project'. Standalone README: use /write-readme. NOT for: code changes (use develop), code review (use code-review), or research (use deep-research).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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documenting-tools
Use when writing MCP tools, API endpoints, CLI commands, or any function that an LLM will invoke. Also use when LLMs misuse tools due to poor descriptions. Triggers: 'document this tool', 'write tool docs', 'MCP tool', 'tool description quality', 'model keeps calling this wrong', 'improve tool description'. For human-facing API docs, standard documentation practices apply instead.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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emotional-stakes
Use when writing subagent prompts, skill instructions, or any text where accuracy is critical and hallucination would cause harm. Triggers: 'make this accurate', 'high-stakes prompt', 'this needs to be truthful', 'critical instructions', 'get this right'. NOT for: general prompt improvement (use instruction-engineering) or prompt ambiguity review (use sharpening-prompts).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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enforcing-code-quality
Behavioral protocol for all code changes. Invoked automatically by develop and test-driven-development. Triggers: 'code quality', 'no shortcuts', 'production quality', 'enforce standards'. NOT for: reviewing others' code (use code-review) or test quality (use fixing-tests).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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executing-plans
Use when you have an implementation plan ready to execute. Triggers: 'run the plan', 'start building', 'execute the tasks', 'implement the steps', 'next task in the plan', 'work through the plan'. Also invoked by develop after planning phase completes. NOT for: creating plans (use writing-plans).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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fact-checking
Use when verifying technical claims in code, docs, or comments before merge. Triggers: 'is this claim correct', 'verify this', 'fact check', 'is this accurate', 'check these assertions', 'are these comments true'. NOT for: checking if AI hallucinated references (use dehallucination).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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finding-dead-code
Use when reviewing code changes, auditing new features, or cleaning up. Triggers: 'find dead code', 'find unused code', 'check for unnecessary additions', 'what can I remove', 'is this used anywhere', 'can I delete this', 'orphaned code', 'unused imports'.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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finishing-a-development-branch
Use when implementation is complete, tests pass, and you need to decide the integration path. Triggers: 'done with this branch', 'ready to merge', 'ship it', 'wrap this up', 'how should I integrate this', 'what next after implementation'. NOT for: PR creation mechanics (use creating-issues-and-pull-requests).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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fixing-tests
Use when tests themselves are broken, test quality is poor, or user wants to fix/improve tests. Triggers: 'test is broken', 'test is wrong', 'test is flaky', 'make tests pass', 'tests need updating', 'green mirage', 'tests pass but shouldn't', 'audit report findings', 'run and fix tests'. NOT for: bugs in production code caught by correct tests (use debugging).
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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fractal-thinking
Use when deeply exploring uncertainty, systematically decomposing complex questions, or gaining certainty about multi-faceted problems. Triggers: 'think deeply about', 'explore this recursively', 'I need certainty about', 'decompose this question', 'what am I missing'. Invoked by brainstorming, fact-checking, debugging, and deep-research. NOT for: simple questions with known answers or linear task execution.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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fun-mode
Use when starting a session and wanting creative engagement. Triggers: '/fun', 'use a persona', 'be creative', 'make this fun', 'use a character', 'spice it up'. Session-level mode, not task-level.
axiomantic/spellbook 5
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gathering-requirements
Use when eliciting or clarifying feature requirements, defining scope, identifying constraints, or capturing user needs. Triggers: 'what are the requirements', 'define the requirements', 'scope this feature', 'user stories', 'acceptance criteria', 'what should this do', 'what problem are we solving', 'what are the constraints'. Also invoked by develop during discovery.
axiomantic/spellbook 5