ost-builder

OST Builder Skill

Build and maintain Opportunity Solution Trees from research evidence.

Preflight: Read target canvas file(s) before any Write/Edit

Hard rule. Before issuing Write or Edit against any .claude/canvas/*.yml, use the Read tool on that file in this session. Claude Code's Read-before-Write check requires the Read tool specifically — cat/head/grep via Bash do NOT satisfy it.

Edit vs Write — different cost profiles (verified 2026-05-14):

• Edit (exact-string replacement): Read with limit: 1 satisfies the check at ~50 tokens. State-tracking is per-file, not per-byte — subsequent Edit calls work anywhere in the file. Use this for partial updates against large canvas files (e.g., purpose.yml at 800+ lines).
• Write (full replacement): do a full Read first. Write obliterates the file; you should see what you're about to replace. The limit:1 shortcut is not appropriate here.

ID-bearing entries — scan the ID space before assigning (added 2026-05-15, v0.23.19): When adding a new component, opportunity, solution, or any other ID-bearing entry to a canvas file, run a Bash grep first to confirm the next ID in your prefix sequence is actually free:

grep -o "<prefix>-[0-9][0-9]*" .claude/canvas/<file>.yml | sort -u -t- -k2 -n | tail -3

Replace <prefix> with the canvas's ID prefix (comp for landscape, opp for opportunities, sol for solutions, ht for human-tasks, etc.). Then pick the next free integer, matching the zero-padding already used in that file. The sort is NUMERIC (-t- -k2 -n) rather than lexical, and that is not pedantry: a plain sort -u orders ht-1 after ht-080, so on a canvas with inconsistent padding it reports the wrong maximum and the next ID collides. Verified on the dogfood repo 2026-08-13, where lexical sort returned ht-1 as the highest human-task ID against an actual ht-080. grep -o is also deliberate: it matches IDs wherever they appear, including cross-references and prose, so an ID that was promised somewhere but not yet defined is not handed out twice. validate_canvas.py has a duplicate-ID check (lines 230-239) that catches the failure on CI, but a duplicate can persist in the working tree for days if CI isn't run between edit and discovery — see roadmap-repo corrections.md 2026-05-15 "Duplicate canvas ID created in landscape.yml" for the worked example.