Setup Matt Pocock's Skills

SkillMonitoring & ops

Configure this repo for the engineering skills — set up its issue tracker, triage label vocabulary, and domain doc layout. Run once before first use of the other engineering skills.

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 Setup Matt Pocock's Skills skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by asymmetric-al/core in .agents/skills/setup-matt-pocock-skills/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Scaffold the per-repo configuration that the engineering skills assume:

  • Issue tracker — where issues live (GitHub by default; local markdown is also supported out of the box)
  • Triage labels — the strings or actions used for the canonical category and state triage roles
  • Domain docs — where CONTEXT.md and ADRs live, and the consumer rules for reading them

This is a prompt-driven skill, not a deterministic script. Explore, present what you found, confirm with the user, then write.

Process

1. Explore

Look at the current repo to understand its starting state. Read whatever exists; don't assume:

  • git remote -v and .git/config — is this a GitHub repo? Which one?
  • AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md at the repo root — does either exist? Is there already an ## Agent skills section in either?
  • CONTEXT.md and CONTEXT-MAP.md at the repo root
  • docs/adr/ and any src/*/docs/adr/ directories
  • docs/agents/ — does this skill's prior output already exist?
  • .scratch/ — sign that a local-markdown issue tracker convention is already in use

2. Present findings and ask

Summarise what's present and what's missing. Then walk the user through the three decisions one at a time — present a section, get the user's answer, then move to the next. Don't dump all three at once.

Assume the user does not know what these terms mean. Each section starts with a short explainer (what it is, why these skills need it, what changes if they pick differently). Then show the choices and the default.

Section A — Issue tracker.

Explainer: The "issue tracker" is where issues live for this repo. Skills like to-tickets, triage, to-spec, and qa read from and write to it — they need to know whether to call gh issue create, write a markdown file under .scratch/, or follow some other workflow you describe. Pick the place you actually track work for this repo.

Default posture: these skills were designed for GitHub. If a git remote points at GitHub, propose that. If a git remote points at GitLab (gitlab.com or a self-hosted host), propose GitLab. Otherwise (or if the user prefers), offer:

  • GitHub — issues live in the repo's GitHub Issues (uses the gh CLI)
  • GitLab — issues live in the repo's GitLab Issues (uses the glab CLI)
  • Local markdown — issues live as files under .scratch/<feature>/ in this repo (good for solo projects or repos without a remote)
  • Other (Jira, Linear, etc.) — ask the user to describe the workflow in one paragraph; the skill will record it as freeform prose

If — and only if — the user picked GitHub or GitLab, ask one follow-up:

Explainer: Open-source repos often receive feature requests as pull requests, not just issues — a PR is an issue with attached code. If you turn this on, /triage pulls external PRs into the same queue and runs them through the same labels and states as issues (collaborators' in-flight PRs are left alone). Leave it off if PRs aren't a request surface for you.

  • PRs as a request surface — yes / no (default: no). Record the answer in docs/agents/issue-tracker.md. For local-markdown and other trackers, skip this question — there are no PRs.

Section B — Triage label vocabulary.

Explainer: When the triage skill processes an incoming issue, it assigns a category role — bug or enhancement — and moves it through a state machine — needs evaluation, waiting on reporter, ready for an AFK agent to pick up, ready for a human, or won't fix. To do that, it needs labels or equivalent tracker actions that match strings you've actually configured. If your repo already uses different label names (e.g. type:bug instead of bug, or status:todo instead of needs-triage), map them here so the skill applies the right ones instead of creating duplicates.

The two canonical category roles:

  • bug — something is broken
  • enhancement — new feature or improvement

The five canonical state roles:

  • needs-triage — maintainer needs to evaluate
  • needs-info — waiting on reporter
  • ready-for-agent — fully specified, AFK-ready (an agent can pick it up with no human context)
  • ready-for-human — needs human implementation
  • wontfix — will not be actioned

Default: each role's string equals its name. Ask the user if they want to override any category or state role. If a state such as wontfix is represented by closing instead of a label, record that action explicitly.

Section C — Domain docs.

Explainer: Some skills (improve-codebase-architecture, diagnosing-bugs, tdd) read a CONTEXT.md file to learn the project's domain language, and docs/adr/ for past architectural decisions. They need to know whether the repo has one global context or multiple (e.g. a monorepo with separate frontend/backend contexts) so they look in the right place.

Confirm the layout:

  • Single-context — one CONTEXT.md + docs/adr/ at the repo root. Most repos are this.
  • Multi-contextCONTEXT-MAP.md at the root pointing to per-context CONTEXT.md files (typically a monorepo).

3. Confirm and edit

Show the user a draft of:

  • The ## Agent skills block to add to whichever of CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md is being edited (see step 4 for selection rules)
  • The contents of docs/agents/issue-tracker.md, docs/agents/triage-labels.md, docs/agents/domain.md

Let them edit before writing.

4. Write

Core repository override: Do not add or expand an ## Agent skills catalog in root AGENTS.md. Core uses progressive skill discovery plus docs/ai/rules/agent-skill-routing.md. Store issue-tracker and domain setup in the docs/agents/ files below; update the routing rule only when a durable Core route is genuinely missing. Preserve CLAUDE.md as the exact @AGENTS.md adapter. In this repository, skip the generic instruction-file selection and ## Agent skills block below; do not edit either root instruction file.

Pick the file to edit:

  • If CLAUDE.md exists, edit it.
  • Else if AGENTS.md exists, edit it.
  • If neither exists, ask the user which one to create — don't pick for them.

Never create AGENTS.md when CLAUDE.md already exists (or vice versa) — always edit the one that's already there.

If an ## Agent skills block already exists in the chosen file, update its contents in-place rather than appending a duplicate. Don't overwrite user edits to the surrounding sections.

The block:

## Agent skills

### Issue tracker

[one-line summary of where issues are tracked, plus whether external PRs are a triage surface]. See `docs/agents/issue-tracker.md`.

### Triage labels

[one-line summary of the label vocabulary]. See `docs/agents/triage-labels.md`.

### Domain docs

[one-line summary of layout — "single-context" or "multi-context"]. See `docs/agents/domain.md`.

Then write the three docs files using the seed templates in this skill folder as a starting point:

For "other" issue trackers, write docs/agents/issue-tracker.md from scratch using the user's description.

5. Done

Tell the user the setup is complete and which engineering skills will now read from these files. Mention they can edit docs/agents/*.md directly later — re-running this skill is only necessary if they want to switch issue trackers or restart from scratch.

Signals

GitHub stars
391
Forks
7
Last commit
Sep 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
setup-matt-pocock-skills-asymmetric-al
Source
github.com/asymmetric-al/core