genie-hacks — Community Hacks & Patterns

Runtime syntax: invoke the plugin copy through the active runtime's owner-qualified skill selector; use a bare selector only when intentionally selecting a user-tier copy (a separately installed personal copy; Genie no longer seeds this tier). Cross-skill prose below uses bare names as portable semantic routes; the orchestrator resolves the selector for the active runtime.

Browse real-world Genie patterns contributed by the community. Search by problem, explore by category, or contribute your own.

When to Use

• User wants to discover Genie tips, tricks, or advanced patterns
• User asks a problem-oriented question — "how do I optimize costs?", "how do teams work?"
• User wants to contribute a hack they discovered
• User invokes genie-hacks with any subcommand (no subcommand → list)

Data Sources

• Registry: Read references/catalog.md (relative to this skill's directory) before answering any list/search/show/help request — it holds every hack (problem, solution, code, benefit, when-to-use) plus the category table. Never invent a hack that isn't in it.
• Contribute mechanics: Read references/contributing.md when running contribute — exact fork/branch/PR commands and error recovery.
• Published page: https://docs.automagik.dev/genie/hacks (source genie/hacks.mdx in automagik-dev/docs).

Commands

Command	Behavior
genie-hacks / list	Table of all hacks — ID, title, category — then the count and a contribute nudge.
search <keyword>	Case-insensitive match over title/problem/solution/code; show ID, title, category, problem snippet per match. None → suggest broader terms or list.
show <hack-id>	Full entry: problem, solution, code, benefit, when to use. Unknown ID → suggest the closest IDs.
help <problem>	Match the described problem to the top 3 relevant hacks; one-line "why" plus a quick tip each. Prefer a loose match over "no matches".
contribute	Guided submission → automated PR to automagik-dev/docs.

End list and show with a pointer to show <id> and contribute.

Contribute Flow

1. Gather — title, problem, solution (with code), category (one from the catalog's category table), benefit, when-to-use. One question at a time; friendly and low-friction.
2. Preview — render the hack in the catalog template; confirm: yes → submit, edit → re-prompt that field and re-preview, cancel → abort politely.
3. Submit — after the confirmed preview explicitly authorizes external submission, follow references/contributing.md: preflight GitHub access, fork/clone or use the GitHub connector, branch hack/<slug>, append under the category heading in genie/hacks.mdx, commit hack: <title>, and open the PR against dev.
4. Report — lead with the PR URL and what happens next (maintainer review, then it lands on the published page).

If gh is missing/unauthenticated or any GitHub step fails, save the formatted hack to ~/.genie/cache/pending-hacks/<hack-id>.md and relay the manual PR steps — never lose the user's write-up.

Rules

• Hack IDs are lowercase kebab-case and unique — check existing IDs before appending.
• Hacks must be realistic and tested — no aspirational or untested patterns.
• Catalog code must use the live v5 CLI (genie --help is the source of truth); v4-era entries carry a note with the live replacement.
• PRs always target dev — never main/master.
• Keep output concise — tables for list, full format only for show.
• Community discussion: https://discord.gg/automagik