agent-glovebox: Skill for Claude Code

Explore / Plan Skill

Exact context beats approximation and a written plan beats diving in. Outside plan mode no plan gate fires, so this skill is the gate: run the same steps, write the plan to a scratch file under /tmp/claude, and execute without pausing. Skip this for trivial edits (typos, single-line tweaks) — say so.

1. Explore (read-only)

Understand before changing. Trace the relevant files and data models read-only. Prefer references over descriptions: cite path/to/file.py:42 and read the real code rather than guessing. Pipe real errors in (cat error.log | claude) instead of paraphrasing them. Launch parallel Explore agents when scope is uncertain or spans multiple areas.

Every constraint exploration surfaces gets a verdict, not just a description: work around, or delete toward? A constraint written down without one becomes terrain the plan navigates — which is how a removable duplication survives a planning phase that found it. Answer in one clause per constraint: "two registries → delete toward the packaged one" or "KVM absent on this runner → work around". "Delete toward" is the answer whenever one side is authoritative (a published package, a generated artifact, an upstream already depended on); the cost of the deletion belongs in the plan as work, not as a reason to bridge instead.

2. Plan (written, explicit)

Write an explicit plan: the problem, the approach, the specific files to touch, and the existing helpers/patterns to reuse (search for them — do not invent new code when a utility already exists).

Then name the ONE definition that will own each fact the change touches, before you list the files. For every rule, list, threshold, mapping or vocabulary the plan adds or edits, grep for what already answers it, and write one line per fact: which definition owns it, and what happens to the other copies. A plan step that reads "and also update" is the tell, and so is a diff that edits two files to change one behaviour. Collapse the copies onto one definition in this change, then make the fix at that definition — a deliberate variant is a named sibling beside the owner, never a second copy at a call site. Three functions each deciding which lever a merge state takes is not three edits: it is the divergence the defect came from. A sequence is a fact too. When two callers should share a behaviour, the owner is ONE function that runs the whole sequence, and both callers call it. Sharing its steps while each caller keeps its own ordering of them is still two copies. Before dispatching parallel work, name that function and the net line count the plan expects. .claude/rules/code-style.md owns the rest.