chart

Chart

A loose idea has arrived — too big for one agent session, and wrapped in fog: the way from here to the destination isn't visible yet. Charting is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a shared map of decision tickets in the repo, then works the tickets one at a time — questions whose resolution is a decision, not slices of a build to execute — until the route is clear.

The destination varies per effort, and naming it is the first act of charting — it shapes every ticket. It might be a spec to hand off to /ideation:ideation, a decision to lock before planning starts, or a change made in place like a data-structure migration. The map is domain-agnostic — engineering work, course content, whatever fits the shape.

This skill is the upstream of ideation. /ideation:brainstorm decides whether (one idea, in conversation, no files); /ideation:ideation plans how (decided to build, one contract, produces specs). Chart is for the case that breaks ideation's shape: the effort is so large or foggy that even the route to a single contract isn't visible — you can't yet hold the whole journey in one session. It builds a persistent, multi-session map instead, and hands off to ideation once the destination is sharp enough to spec.

The map lives locally

There is no issue-tracker integration. The map is a markdown file and its tickets are markdown files, so the map is git-tracked, diffable, and editable by any session — the local-markdown tracker is the only tracker this skill supports.

docs/chart/{slug}/
  map.md                        # the map — the canonical index
  tickets/
    {ticket-slug}.md            # one file per ticket

The {slug} is kebab-cased from the destination, chosen when the map is created (the charting session names it, like ideation names its project).

Plan, don't do

Chart is planning by default: each ticket resolves a decision, and the map is done when the way is clear — nothing left to decide before someone goes and does the thing. The pull to just do the work is usually the signal you've reached the edge of the map and it's time to hand off (to ideation, or to the destination's own doer). An effort can override this in its Notes — carrying execution into the map itself — but absent that, produce decisions, not deliverables.