dogma: Skill for Claude Code

Source Caching

This skill enacts the Local Compute-First axiom from MANIFESTO.md: populate the source cache locally first, then research sessions read from disk rather than re-fetching through the context window. The fetch-before-act posture is governed by AGENTS.md § Programmatic-First Principle and § Security Guardrails. When this skill and those documents conflict, the primary documents take precedence.

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1. Pre-Warm at Session Start

At the beginning of any research session, warm the entire source cache before delegating to any scout:

# Dry run first — see what will be fetched without fetching
uv run python scripts/fetch_all_sources.py --dry-run

# Fetch all uncached sources (idempotent — skips already-cached URLs)
uv run python scripts/fetch_all_sources.py

This batch-fetches all URLs from OPEN_RESEARCH.md and existing research doc frontmatter. Scouts then read cached Markdown files with read_file rather than consuming tokens on live web fetches.

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2. Check Before Fetching Any Individual URL

Before fetching a specific URL, always check whether it is already cached:

uv run python scripts/fetch_source.py <url> --check
# Exit 0 = cached; Exit 2 = not cached

Never re-fetch a cached source without --force — it wastes tokens and rate-limit budget.

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3. Fetch and Cache a Single URL

uv run python scripts/fetch_source.py <url>
# Saves distilled Markdown to .cache/sources/<slug>.md
# Prints the slug and cache path on success

To force-refresh an already-cached page:

uv run python scripts/fetch_source.py <url> --force

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4. Get the Cached File Path

After caching, retrieve the path for use with read_file:

uv run python scripts/fetch_source.py <url> --path
# Prints: .cache/sources/<slug>.md

Use this path with the read_file tool to read the distilled content without re-fetching.

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5. List All Cached Sources