Vector Cadence Skills

Vector Cadence Skills is a production-ready skill suite for agentic software engineering workflows. It integrates the useful disciplines from Matt Pocock’s skills and Compound Engineering without making runtime skills depend on upstream command names or block-by-block composition.

Core idea

Each skill owns one lifecycle responsibility:

setup → orient → align → plan → review → slice → triage → execute → review → learn

Use only the amount of process the task needs. See references/minimal-mode.md for lightweight usage.

Skill catalog

| Skill | Purpose | |---|---| | vc-setup | Bootstrap repo instructions, docs, labels, validation commands, and optional budget guard. | | vc-orient | Map a codebase area before planning, debugging, or editing. | | vc-align | Clarify product/domain intent, risks, terminology, and rejected alternatives. | | vc-plan | Write implementation-ready technical plans with units, files, tests, and verification. | | vc-slice | Convert plans into vertical issues or agent briefs. | | vc-triage | Route issues to agent, human, needs-info, or wontfix states. | | vc-prototype | Build a throwaway artifact to answer one design question. | | vc-execute | Implement clear work with workspace safety, TDD, and tiered validation. | | vc-debug | Diagnose bugs with a feedback-loop-first and causal-chain process. | | vc-review | Review code/docs against Standards and Spec with severity/confidence routing. | | vc-architecture | Improve application module boundaries, seams, and testability. | | vc-learn | Capture reusable lessons after verified non-trivial work. | | vc-handoff | Compact state for another agent or future session. | | vc-harness-architect | Design Vector Cadence/pi harness, extensions, subagents, providers, search, and permissions. | | vc-skill-author | Create or improve Vc-compatible skills. |

Naming convention

Skill folders are named vc-*. Slash-command harnesses may expose them as /vc-*, but the canonical skill names are the folder/frontmatter names, such as vc-align.

Recommended workflows

Normal feature

vc-align → vc-plan → vc-review → vc-slice → vc-triage → vc-execute → vc-review → vc-learn

Use vc-review before slicing only for important plans. Use vc-learn only when there is a reusable lesson.

Small known change

vc-execute → optional vc-review

Unfamiliar code

vc-orient → vc-execute

Bug

vc-debug → vc-review → optional vc-learn

Use vc-execute if the diagnosis produces a plan but the fix has not been applied.

Harness work

vc-harness-architect → vc-plan → vc-slice → vc-execute → vc-review

Artifact model

| Artifact | Question answered | |---|---| | AGENTS.md | How should agents operate in this repo? | | CONTEXT.md | What are domain things called? | | STRATEGY.md | What product outcome matters? | | docs/align-notes/ | What did alignment reject, fear, or assume? | | docs/brainstorms/ | What should be built from a product/user view? | | docs/plans/ | How should it be implemented? | | issue tracker or docs/issues/ | What can an agent/human pick up? | | docs/solutions/ | What solved problem should future agents reuse? | | docs/knowledge/ | What was planned, what shipped, and what changed? | | docs/adr/ | Which durable trade-off should future agents respect? | | .out-of-scope/ | Which rejected idea should not be rediscovered? | | docs/handoffs/ | What state should a future agent resume from? |

Included support files

templates/AGENTS.md
templates/CONTEXT.md
templates/vc-budget.yml
scripts/validate-skills.mjs
skills.json
examples/
references/

Validation

From this directory, run:

node scripts/validate-skills.mjs

The validator checks frontmatter, name/path consistency, description length, broken markdown links, banned legacy runtime command names, and line-count warnings.

When not to use full Vector Cadence

Do not run the full lifecycle for:

• typos,
• formatting-only changes,
• obvious one-file fixes,
• mechanical renames,
• throwaway experiments,
• changes with exact user instructions and clear validation.

Use minimal mode instead.

Harness boundary

These markdown skills can guide workflows. They do not by themselves provide tools such as subagents, DeepSeek telemetry, Taste integration, code search indexing, or permission gates. Those belong in future Vector Cadence extensions or the Vector Cadence CLI.

Recommended package split:

@your-scope/vc-core
@your-scope/vc-skills
@your-scope/vc-extensions
@your-scope/vc-cli

Documentation

• DOCUMENTATION.md — comprehensive architecture documentation.
• references/architecture-overview.md — shorter architecture overview.
• references/source-integration-map.md — why each skill chose its source disciplines.
• references/minimal-mode.md — how to use Vector Cadence without excess process.
• references/final-skill-quality-bar.md — publishing checklist.