# Skills — the full 25-skill catalog

The plugin ships **1 core + 1 featured + 6 tier-1 + 14 tier-2 + 3 always-bundled = 25 skills**. Source-of-truth lives in [`skills/`](../skills/) (one `.md` per skill); the plugin bundle at [`plugins/continuous-improvement/skills/`](../plugins/continuous-improvement/skills/) is regenerated by `npm run build`.

This page is the full catalog. The [README](../README.md) summarizes; this is the table.

## Full table

| # | Skill | Tier | Law | What it does |
|---|-------|------|-----|--------------|
| 1 | [`continuous-improvement`](../SKILL.md) | core | — | The 7 Laws spec itself (research → plan → execute → verify → reflect → learn → iterate) |
| 2 | [`proceed-with-the-recommendation`](../skills/proceed-with-the-recommendation.md) ⭐ | featured | all 7 | Walks any agent's recommendation list top-to-bottom, routes each item, verifies per item, halts on `needs-approval` |
| 3 | [`gateguard`](../skills/gateguard.md) | 1 | 1 | Runtime PreToolUse hook (`hooks/gateguard.mjs`) + skill: physically blocks Edit/Write/MultiEdit and every destructive Bash until fact-list investigation is presented. Read-only and routine Bash bypass. |
| 4 | [`tdd-workflow`](../skills/tdd-workflow.md) | 1 | 3 + 4 | RED → GREEN → REFACTOR enforcement with 80%+ coverage across unit/integration/E2E |
| 5 | [`verification-loop`](../skills/verification-loop.md) | 1 | 4 | Six-phase verification (build, types, lint, tests, security, diff) with PASS/FAIL report |
| 6 | [`deploy-receipt`](../skills/deploy-receipt.md) | 1 | 4 | Closes the merge-to-production gap on auto-deploy targets (Railway, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, Netlify, Fly.io). "Done" requires the deployed SHA matching merged HEAD + a healthcheck returning 200 — runs after the vendored `finishing-a-development-branch`. |
| 7 | [`safety-guard`](../skills/safety-guard.md) | 2 | 3 | Three-mode runtime guard (careful/freeze/guard) that blocks destructive commands and locks edits to a directory |
| 8 | [`strategic-compact`](../skills/strategic-compact.md) | 2 | 5 | Suggests `/compact` at logical phase boundaries instead of arbitrary auto-compaction |
| 9 | [`token-budget-advisor`](../skills/token-budget-advisor.md) | 2 | 2 | Token estimator that offers 25/50/75/100% depth choices before answering |
| 10 | [`wild-risa-balance`](../skills/wild-risa-balance.md) | 2 | 2 | Pairs WILD (bold) generation with RISA (safe) execution; splits recommendation lists into pilots above a baseline |
| 11 | [`recovery-classification`](../skills/recovery-classification.md) | 2 | 4 | After any verification-ladder or auto-loop failure, classify the failure class (provider, tool-schema, deterministic-policy, git, worktree, runtime) before retrying — turns generic "try again" into an intentional retry-vs-pause-vs-self-heal-vs-stop decision |
| 12 | [`state-reconciliation`](../skills/state-reconciliation.md) | 2 | 4 | Pre-dispatch invariant: reconcile DB-vs-disk-vs-memory state before any unit runs, so a stale flag, missing artifact, or out-of-sync row never re-dispatches a unit that already completed or never started |
| 13 | [`worktree-safety`](../skills/worktree-safety.md) | 2 | 4 | Pre-dispatch invariant: validate worktree root before any source-writing tool call — catches missing `.git`, fallback path-only creation, stale leases, foreign-session ownership, and non-worktree git operations before they corrupt history |
| 14 | [`grill-me`](../skills/grill-me.md) | 2 | 1 | Pre-execution alignment interrogation — interview one question at a time with a recommended answer, walk every branch, stop when shippable. Ported from [mattpocock/skills](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills) under MIT. |
| 15 | [`grill-with-docs`](../skills/grill-with-docs.md) | 2 | 1 + 7 | `grill-me` with persistent outcomes — challenges the plan against the existing `CONTEXT.md` glossary, sharpens fuzzy terms, updates `CONTEXT.md` + `docs/adr/` inline. Bundles CONTEXT.md + ADR format specs. Ported from [mattpocock/skills](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills) under MIT. |
| 16 | [`handoff`](../skills/handoff.md) | 2 | 5 | End-of-session compaction into an `mktemp`-backed markdown brief a fresh agent can pick up cold. Ported from [mattpocock/skills](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills) under MIT. |
| 17 | [`ralph`](../skills/ralph.md) | companion | 6 | Autonomous loop that executes a PRD story-by-story with quality checks between iterations |
| 18 | [`superpowers`](../skills/superpowers.md) | companion | activator | Law activator — routes tasks to the correct Law-aligned specialist so the right discipline fires automatically |
| 19 | [`workspace-surface-audit`](../skills/workspace-surface-audit.md) | companion | 1 | Audits the active repo, MCP servers, plugins, env, then recommends high-value skills/workflows |
| 20 | [`recall`](../skills/recall.md) | 1 | 1 | Makes past sessions first-class research material by searching the observation log with BM25 ranking, so 'have I hit this before?' is answerable before re-deriving a fix or repeating a mistake |
| 21 | [`audit`](../skills/audit.md) | 2 | 4 | Audits a window of recent commits for real defects, confirms each finding before touching code so false positives die first, and checks every surface a change touches |
| 22 | [`goal-monitor`](../skills/goal-monitor.md) | 2 | 2 | Detects when a session has drifted away from its stated goal by scoring recent tool activity against the '## Goal' section of task_plan.md |
| 23 | [`reconcile`](../skills/reconcile.md) | 2 | 1 | Establishes git ground truth — branch, status, stashes, worktrees, ahead/behind — before any mutation, halts on protected or destructive operations, and verifies a push actually landed |
| 24 | [`skill-distillation`](../skills/skill-distillation.md) | 2 | 7 | Distills repeated successful tool sequences into reusable draft instincts, so a pattern that worked three times becomes a captured recipe instead of being re-derived from scratch every session |
| 25 | [`model-forward`](../skills/model-forward.md) | 1 | all 7 | Standing stance: go with the model, not against it. Skills are scaffolding that merges into the model over time; the durable core is goal-driven execution plus self-discipline guardrails |

## Optional companions

The orchestrator skill `proceed-with-the-recommendation` also routes to optional companion skills from external plugins (e.g. `obra/superpowers`, `code-review`, `frontend-design`, `commit-commands`). Each routing target has an inline fallback in the orchestrator, so the plugin works on a clean install with nothing else present — install the dedicated companion only when you want a specialist over the fallback. Full target list with source-plugin and risk-if-absent: [`plugins/continuous-improvement/README.md` § Required vs Optional companions](../plugins/continuous-improvement/README.md#required-vs-optional-companions).

## Beginner gets — by default

Tier 1 + featured + companion. Auto-installed when you run the plugin install commands in the [README](../README.md). No flags, no choices.

## Expert gets — additionally

Tier 2 (`safety-guard`, `strategic-compact`, `token-budget-advisor`, `wild-risa-balance`), the MCP server (19 tools), session-observation hooks for Mulahazah, and `/learn-eval` for capturing session patterns into new skills.

## Drop-in single-file install

Want one skill without the whole plugin? Copy the `.md` file straight into `~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md`:

```bash
SKILL=proceed-with-the-recommendation
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/$SKILL
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/naimkatiman/continuous-improvement/main/skills/$SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/$SKILL/SKILL.md
```

## See also

- [README](../README.md) — landing page and install
- [CONTRIBUTING.md → Evolution: adding a new skill](../CONTRIBUTING.md#evolution--adding-a-new-skill) — how to add a 26th skill
- [SKILL.md](../SKILL.md) — full 7 Laws spec
