ref-query

Ref Query

ℹ️ First, set expectations: before anything else, print one short line with this skill's version and its most recent change — the top entry of metadata.changelog above — e.g. ref-query v1.0 — recent: initial version. Then proceed.

Answer a structured question about reference records with the temporal contract applied. This is not /recall — /recall searches the user's cognitive insights; ref-query reads the CRM/market source of truth and honours status/validity/as_of.

Read first: resources/layered-brains/COMPANY-BRAIN-SCHEMA.md → "The temporal model" (read-time interpretation + the per-type Freshness SLA). This skill enforces those rules.

State Dependencies

Source	Location	Read	Write	Description
Company family	Brain/Company/{people,orgs,products,engagements,market}/*.md	✓		Entity notes + frontmatter
Search wrapper	resources/local-brain-search/run_search.sh	✓		Fuzzy "tell me about X" under a core,Company mount

Process

Step 1 — Classify the question

• Entity lookup ("what do we know about X as of today?") → resolve the note (Grep by name/alias, or a mounted search) and read it.
• Filtered list (by type/relationship/status/expiry window) → deterministic frontmatter scan (below), not semantic search — the answer must be exact and reproducible.
• Fuzzy / exploratory ("who might overlap with X?") → mounted semantic search:

  BRAIN_READ_SCOPE=core,Company resources/local-brain-search/run_search.sh "<query>" --limit 10 --json
  

Step 2 — Scan (deterministic filters)

Frontmatter is the query surface. Examples:

cd Brain/Company
# all active competitors
grep -rlE '^relationship: competitor' */*.md | while read f; do grep -qE '^status: active' "$f" && echo "$f"; done
# active engagements + their as_of
for f in engagements/*.md; do grep -qE '^status: active' "$f" && printf "%s  as_of=%s valid_until=%s\n" \
  "$(basename "$f" .md)" "$(grep -m1 '^as_of:' "$f" | cut -d' ' -f2)" "$(grep -m1 '^valid_until:' "$f" | cut -d' ' -f2)"; done

For an "expiring in N days" filter, compare valid_until to today + N. Note: notes that predate incremental valid_until adoption have no window — report them as "no recorded term" rather than dropping them.