Agent-Skills.md

Agent Skills: Spike

Time-boxed technical investigation with structured output. Use for feasibility studies, architecture exploration, integration assessment, performance analysis, or risk evaluation. Creates spike tasks in ohno, enforces time-boxing, generates spike reports, and creates actionable follow-up tasks. Triggers on "spike on X", "investigate whether we can", "how hard would it be to", "what's the best approach for", or any exploratory technical question needing bounded research.

UncategorizedID: srstomp/pokayokay/spike

Repository

srstomp/pokayokay
srstomp
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pnpm dlx add-skill https://github.com/srstomp/pokayokay/tree/HEAD/plugins/pokayokay/skills/spike

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plugins/pokayokay/skills/spike/SKILL.md

Skill Metadata

Name
spike
Description
Time-boxed technical investigation with structured output. Use for feasibility studies, architecture exploration, integration assessment, performance analysis, or risk evaluation. Creates spike tasks in ohno, enforces time-boxing, generates spike reports, and creates actionable follow-up tasks.

Spike

Structured technical investigation to reduce uncertainty. Answer specific questions, not "explore X."

Key Principles

  • Every spike answers a specific, measurable question
  • Strict time-box (default 4h) — produce a decision at the end, even if incomplete
  • Output is a decision (GO/NO-GO/PIVOT/MORE-INFO), not a general exploration
  • Create follow-up tasks from findings, not just a report

When NOT to Use

  • Multi-day evaluations — Use deep-research for comprehensive technology evaluations with stakeholder reports
  • Already know what to build — Skip straight to implementation; spikes are for reducing uncertainty, not planning known work
  • Bug investigation — Use error-handling or /fix; bugs have reproduction steps, spikes have open questions

Quick Start Checklist

  1. Define the question clearly (what are we trying to learn?)
  2. Set a time-box (hours, not days — use deep-research for multi-day)
  3. Identify evaluation criteria upfront
  4. Investigate with focused experiments or prototypes
  5. Checkpoint at 50% — assess progress, decide if pivoting
  6. Produce mandatory conclusion: GO / NO-GO / PIVOT / MORE-INFO

Mandatory Outputs

  • Decision: GO, NO-GO, PIVOT, or MORE-INFO
  • Evidence: What was tested, results observed
  • Follow-up tasks: Created in ohno if GO
  • Report: Saved to .claude/spikes/[name]-[date].md

References

| Reference | Description | |-----------|-------------| | spike-types.md | Feasibility, architecture, integration, performance spikes | | question-patterns.md | How to frame good spike questions | | output-templates.md | Spike report templates and examples |