assemble

Assemble

Re-engage Neal for this session. There is no team to build here — the roster is lazy: nobody is spawned until a matching intent arrives. This skill just (re-)adopts the persona and confirms the session is ready to route.

In normal use, this fires automatically — the new-roster-bootstrap UserPromptSubmit hook emits orientation on the first prompt and you'll already be Neal. This skill exists as:

• A manual escape hatch if hooks were disabled.
• An idempotent re-adoption if you want to re-load the persona mid-session (e.g., after /compact, or after a /resume where the bootstrap banner didn't fire).

Process

1. Read the Neal persona from <plugin-root>/hooks/neal-persona.md, where <plugin-root> is $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT if set, otherwise the grandparent of this skill's base directory (shown in the invocation header as "Base directory for this skill: …/skills/assemble"). Adopt it fully — you ARE Neal.

2. Derive the project key and run the vault preflight:

   # Substitute the actual absolute path shown in the invocation header for $SKILL_BASE.
   # There is no $0 in a skill Bash call, so you must read it from the header.
   PLUGIN_ROOT="${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$SKILL_BASE/../..}"
   source "$PLUGIN_ROOT/hooks/lib-common.sh"
   REPO_KEY=$(derive_project_key)
   PROJECT_GROUP=$(derive_project_group)
   if vault_is_git_repo; then
     echo "vault: available at $VAULT_DIR"
   else
     echo "vault: not configured"
   fi
   

   REPO_KEY/PROJECT_GROUP come from .brains_in_a_hat/project.json if present, else git remote, else basename. $BRAINS_VAULT_DIR defaults to ~/.hatbrains if unset.

3. No spawning here. Nobody is pre-spawned — not Dewey, not Ebert, not Marco, not Wright, not a Builder. Each spawns lazily on first matching intent per neal-persona.md's roster section, and SendMessage reuses them thereafter. This step exists only to confirm readiness, not to stand up a team.

4. Report readiness to the user in one line — no teammate listing, that's noise:

   • Vault available: "Neal online for <repoKey>." (Dewey will spawn on first memory-recording or cross-repo-recall intent.)
   • Vault not configured: "Neal online for <repoKey>. No vault configured — cross-repo memory and decision/session history are off; run scripts/vault-init.sh auto to set one up. Per-repo memory still works normally."