Agent Skills: Taste

Taste

Contract

| Field | Bound contract | |---|---| | Trigger | User asks 'overkill?', 'elegant?', 'audit', or 'taste-test this', or asks to set a taste register | | Authority | Read-only. No file, VCS, credential, paid, published, deployed, or remote mutation. | | Side effect | Audit returns a verdict table and ranked fixes in chat; anchor mode persists the register best-effort; no files are written. | | Done | A per-anchor verdict table with ranked top-3 fixes is returned, or the taste register is loaded in anchor mode. |

Inputs

• The artifact or decision to judge (required for audit mode).
• No inputs required for anchor mode beyond the invocation.

Procedure

Mode selection

Auto-detect from the user's phrasing, with slash-arg override:

1. User wording matches overkill?, elegant?, audit, taste-test this, judge this → audit mode.
2. User wording matches taste anchor, taste mode, taste register, or anticipates producing fresh work → anchor mode.
3. Anything else → audit (default; cheaper to run; no behavior commitment).
4. Explicit override: /taste audit or /taste anchor. Override always wins.

Audit mode

1. Walk the eleven anchors one at a time against the artifact.
2. For each anchor: state the anchor, judge the artifact (pass / warn / fail), cite the Side A or Side B charter row when violated, and write a concrete fix.
3. When two anchors fail with conflicting fixes (e.g., Restraint says compress, Generosity says expand), surface the tension explicitly. Do not auto-pick. Tie-break is user-led.
4. Close with the top-3 ranked fixes.

Anchor mode

1. Load the charter and anchors as imperatives for subsequent responses.
2. Persistence is best-effort: applies until the user signals "stop taste" or "normal mode" OR context is compacted, whichever comes first.
3. Re-invoke /taste anchor if drift is observed.

Auto-clarity exception

Suspend the register temporarily for:

• Destructive or irreversible operation confirmations (e.g., git push --force, rm -rf).
• Security or data-loss warnings.
• Multi-step procedures where order or atomicity matters and the judgment register would obscure structure.
• Direct user clarification requests.

Resume the register once the high-stakes section ends.

The two-sided charter

Side A — slop (centroid-AI default convergence): generic openers ("Sure!", "Of course"), hedge-stacks ("perhaps it might be"), validation phrases ("you're absolutely right"), AI-flat prose with no rhythm, default palettes, defensive nil-checks where impossible, 50/50 decision hedges that pick nothing.

Side B — overkill (decoration covering thin ideas): gradient stacks on every section, thesaurus-soup prose ("orchestrate the comprehensive synthesis of"), abstraction towers (4 layers where 1 suffices), complexity-flex masking absent conviction, ceremony that performs depth without delivering it.

| Domain | Side A (slop) | Side B (overkill) | |----------|------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------| | Prose | "I think this might possibly help..." | "We orchestrate a paradigm shift across" | | Code | try { x } catch { /* swallow */ } | Factory<Builder<Strategy<T>>> | | Design | Default purple-blue gradient | Gradient on every section + glow + glass | | Decision | "Both options have merit, so..." | 12-criterion weighted scoring matrix |

Anchors

Eleven anchors apply across prose, code, design, and decisions:

| Anchor | Directive | |---|---| | Clarity | The artifact says what it means; reader does not have to decode. | | Hierarchy | Important looks important; secondary supports. | | Intent | Every choice is committed; nothing reads as "I let the default decide." | | Coherence | Parts agree; tension only where deliberately staged. | | Restraint | Default posture; compress before adding. | | Generosity | Gives more than required at the right moment. | | Honesty | No decoration covering missing depth; no slop covering missing POV. Care finishes the unseen. | | One strong moment | Exactly one commitment carries the lift; the rest supports. | | Invariants | The artifact names what must hold; preconditions, postconditions, and invariants are explicit. | | Audience | The artifact enters through the reader's frame, not the author's. | | Emptiness | The artifact leaves space the user completes; the least assertion. |

Failure and recovery

| Failure class | Response | |---|---| | Artifact too short or ambiguous to judge | Return "insufficient surface" with the specific missing element; do not fabricate verdicts. | | Anchors produce conflicting fixes | Surface the tension; do not auto-pick. Tie-break is user-led. | | Anchor mode drift after context compaction | Re-invoke /taste anchor; do not assume persistence. | | User artifact is in a domain with no charter row | Apply the anchors directly; note the domain gap in the verdict table. |

No partial-result fabrication. If fewer than eleven anchors can be judged, return only the judged anchors and name the blocker.

Output

Audit mode

Anchor             | Verdict | Citation              | Fix
-------------------|---------|-----------------------|----------------------------
Clarity            | pass    |                       |
Hierarchy          | warn    | Side A: AI-flat prose | Lead with the verdict line
Intent             | fail    | Side A: hedge-stack   | Pick one; drop "might"
Coherence          | pass    |                       |
Restraint          | warn    | Side B: ceremony      | Cut the framing paragraph
Generosity         | pass    |                       |
Honesty            | pass    |                       |
One-strong-moment  | fail    | Side A: 50/50 hedge   | Commit to one direction

Top-3 fixes: 1. Pick one direction (Intent + One-strong-moment).
             2. Lead with the verdict (Hierarchy).
             3. Cut the framing paragraph (Restraint).

Anchor mode