Observe Before Editing

SkillAI & models

Lets your agent inspect a file's current state before making any edits to it.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the Observe Before Editing skill

About this capability

Observe Before Editing

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by parcadei/continuous-claude-v3 in .claude/skills/observe-before-editing/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Before editing code to fix a bug, confirm what the system actually produced.

Pattern

Outputs don't lie. Code might. Check outputs first.

DO

  1. Check if expected directories exist: ls -la .claude/cache/
  2. Check if expected files were created: ls -la .claude/cache/learnings/
  3. Check logs for errors: tail .claude/cache/*.log
  4. Run the failing command manually to see actual error
  5. Only then edit code

DON'T

  • Assume "hook didn't run" without checking outputs
  • Edit code based on what you think should happen
  • Confuse global vs project paths (check both: .claude/ and ~/.claude/)

Source Sessions

  • a541f08a: Token limit error was invisible until manual run revealed it
  • 6a9f2d7a: Looked in wrong cache path (~/.claude/ vs .claude/), assumed hook failure
  • a8bd5cea: Confirmed hook worked by finding output files in project cache
  • 1c21e6c8: Verified Artifact Index indexing by checking DB file exists

Signals

GitHub stars
4k
Forks
300
Last commit
Jan 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
observe-before-editing
Source
github.com/parcadei/continuous-claude-v3