Prospect — upstream-of-plan idea generation Skill

Prospect — upstream-of-plan idea generation

Read workflow.md for full phase-by-phase execution.

Generate many candidate ideas grounded in the repo, critique every one with explicit rejection reasons, and surface only the survivors bucketed by leverage. Output is a ranked artifact under .flow/prospects/<slug>-<date>.md that feeds promote / capture / chart / interview - never a fixed conveyor.

Chart boundary (fn-135)

Prospect is plural ("what should we do?"). Chart is singular ("how do we get this one idea to something specifiable?"). A selected survivor routes to /flow-next:chart only when it is still singular, oversized, and unclear. Otherwise promote or capture - do not manufacture a chart for a clear candidate. Unsure of the next hop: /flow-next:guide.

Role: idea-prospecting coordinator (sequential single-chat - generate -> critique -> rank -> write -> handoff). Personas are prompt-level scaffolding inside this skill, not parallel subagent dispatch.

Preamble

CRITICAL: flowctl is BUNDLED — NOT installed globally. which flowctl will fail (expected). Define once; subsequent blocks (here and in workflow.md) use $FLOWCTL:

FLOWCTL="${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT:-${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}}/scripts/flowctl"
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL="<plugin-root>/scripts/flowctl"   # <plugin-root> = the directory two levels above this skill's SKILL.md file (the harness gave you that file's absolute path when the skill loaded); substitute it literally
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL=".flow/bin/flowctl"

Inline skill (no context: fork) — keeps AskUserQuestion available throughout. Subagents can't call blocking question tools (Claude Code issues #12890, #34592), and Phases 0 + 6 both require user choice. (sync-codex.sh rewrites this to a plain-text numbered prompt in the Codex mirror.)

Input

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Format: [focus hint] — freeform single string. Optional. May be:

Concept — DX improvements, review-skill polish, test-suite health
Path — plugins/flow-next/skills/ (ideate inside a subtree)
Constraint — quick wins under 200 LOC, minor-bump only, no new deps
Volume hint — top 3 (exactly 3 survivors), 50 ideas (generate ≥50), raise the bar (60-70% rejection target)

If empty, the skill picks its own coverage targets (15-25 candidates → 5-8 survivors).

Ralph-block (R8)

/flow-next:prospect is exploratory and human-in-the-loop. Autonomous loops have no business deciding what a repo should tackle next — that's a judgement call. Hard-error with exit 2 when running under Ralph.

if [[ -n "${REVIEW_RECEIPT_PATH:-}" || "${FLOW_RALPH:-}" == "1" ]]; then
  echo "Error: /flow-next:prospect requires a user at the terminal; not compatible with Ralph mode (REVIEW_RECEIPT_PATH or FLOW_RALPH detected)." >&2
  exit 2
fi

No env-var opt-in. Ralph never decides direction.

Workflow

Execute the phases in workflow.md in order:

Resume check — list active artifacts <30d; ask extend / fresh / open via blocking question. Corrupt artifacts surfaced but never offered for extension.
Ground — scan repo with graceful degradation: git log (30d), open specs, CHANGELOG top, memory matches, memory audit (if present), strategy snapshot (verbatim name / target_problem / approach / tracks / last_updated from flowctl strategy read --json when sections_filled >= 1; husk-vs-presence gate uses sections_filled, NOT [[ -f STRATEGY.md ]]). Emit a structured 30-50 line snapshot — titles + tags only, never raw bodies.
Generate — divergent-convergent + persona seeding (≥2 of senior-maintainer / first-time-user / adversarial-reviewer, picked by focus hint per personas.md). One divergent prompt; no self-judging.
Critique — separate prompt pass that does NOT see the focus hint or persona texts; rejection floor ≥40% (≥60% under raise the bar); fixed taxonomy (duplicates-open-epic | out-of-scope | out-of-scope-vs-strategy | insufficient-signal | too-large | backward-incompat | other); out-of-scope-vs-strategy is advisory only (user can override at promote time via existing --force flag); floor violation surfaces blocking question with frozen options regenerate | loosen-floor | ship-anyway.
Rank — bucketed: high leverage 1-3, worth-considering 4-7, if-you-have-the-time 8+. Forced-format leverage sentence per survivor (Small-diff lever because X; impact lands on Y.); no numeric scores.
Write artifact — atomic write-then-rename to .flow/prospects/<slug>-<date>.md via flowctl.write_prospect_artifact. Same-day collisions suffix with -2, -3. Optional floor_violation / generation_under_volume flags round-trip when upstream phases set them.
Handoff - blocking prompt for promote / chart (only if still singular+oversized+unclear) / interview / skip via the platform's question tool; frozen numbered-options fallback when no blocking tool is available.

Phases 0-6 are implemented. Promote command + list/read/archive land in tasks 4-5.

Forbidden

Running under Ralph — hard-block via the guard above.
Setting context: fork — blocking question tools must stay reachable.
Network calls — grounding is local-filesystem only (git, flowctl, memory, CHANGELOG).
Writing to .flow/specs/ directly — only flowctl prospect promote may do that.
Auto-archiving artifacts — only the explicit prospect archive subcommand moves files.
Dumping raw file bodies into the grounding snapshot — titles + tags only; structured 30-50 lines max.

Agent Skills: Prospect — upstream-of-plan idea generation

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