try-fix

Try Fix Skill

Attempts ONE fix for a given problem. Receives all context upfront, tries a single approach, tests it, and reports what happened.

Activation Guard

🚨 This skill is ONLY for proposing and testing code fixes. Do NOT activate for:

• Code review requests ("review this PR", "check code quality")
• PR summaries or descriptions ("what does this PR do?")
• Test-only requests ("run tests", "check CI status")
• General questions about code or architecture

If the prompt does not include a problem to fix and a test command to verify, this skill should not run.

Core Principles

1. Always run once activated - Never question whether to run. The invoker decides WHEN, you decide WHAT alternative to try
2. Single-shot - Each invocation = ONE fix idea, tested, reported
3. Alternative-focused - Always propose something DIFFERENT from existing fixes (review PR changes first)
4. Empirical - Actually implement and test, don't just theorize
5. Context-driven - Work with what's provided and git history; don't search external sources
6. Script-only restoration - The ONLY permitted cleanup command is pwsh .github/scripts/EstablishBrokenBaseline.ps1 -Restore. Never use git checkout, git clean, git restore, git reset, or git stash to revert or clean changes, including after artifacts have been captured.
7. Baseline-file boundary - After Step 2, modify ONLY files listed in .github/.baseline-state.json under RevertedFiles. The restore script tracks only those original fix files; editing any other tracked file makes restoration incomplete. If the state file is absent, or its NewFiles array is non-empty, report Blocked before editing: added production files are not safely restorable. If the approach requires another tracked file, report Blocked instead of editing it.
8. Preserve pre-existing untracked paths - Never modify or delete an untracked file or directory that existed before the attempt. Evaluators may inject the loaded skill as an untracked directory such as try-fix/; leave it exactly as found even when git status --short lists it. It is harness-owned input, not attempt-created drift. The restore script is the only cleanup step; do not use rm, Remove-Item, or another filesystem command to make the worktree appear clean.
9. Wait for command completion - If a shell tool reports that a command is still running and returns a shellId, call read_bash with that exact shellId and wait for the completed result. Never proceed, report, or end the session while baseline, test, artifact, self-review, or restore work is still running.
10. Contain attempt artifacts - Create every log, snapshot, state marker, and scratch file under $OUTPUT_DIR. Never persist $OUTPUT_DIR or other shell state in .github/, the repository root, or another workspace path. Shell variables do not persist between tool calls, so redeclare the same literal $OUTPUT_DIR at the start of each later shell command instead of writing a repository marker file.