intake

The intake: the words come from the people, the gate comes from the db

A fresh monty init leaves an empty ontology. The code has names; the people have meanings; nobody has written down which is which. The intake asks — in a form, because a form is a record and a chat is not — and ends with monty onto add, never with prose. Everything lands in .monty/answers/.

The loop

monty intake ask <phase.json>       # serves the form, BLOCKS until submitted, writes .monty/answers/<phase>.answers.json
monty intake answers                # everything answered so far, merged — read this before writing the next phase
monty intake status                 # what is open, what is answered, whether the glossary is rendered
monty intake glossary --open        # the closing page: the whole ontology, rendered from the database

ask blocks until the submit — run it with the Bash tool's run_in_background and keep working; the process exits the moment the answers land, which re-invokes you with the result line answered .monty/answers/<phase>.answers.json (N answers). If you would rather watch the file than the process, a Monitor on until [ -f .monty/answers/<phase>.answers.json ]; do sleep 1; done; echo answered gives the same single notification. Tell the person the form has opened (the URL is the first line ask prints) and that the next round opens when it is ready — never poll them in chat for answers the form is collecting.

Phase 1 — the domain (fixed)

phases/1-domain.json in this skill folder is the opening round; serve it as-is. It asks what the system is, who it serves, what the central things are called, which words cause arguments, and what frameworks' words are spoken at the boundary.

Phase 2 — what the code is asking for (written from phase 1 + the scan)

Run monty scan --candidates 15 (and monty explain if the repo is unfamiliar). Copy phases/2-candidates.json and REWRITE it: one question per load-bearing candidate, quoting the count (the code declares "Harness" 14 times — what is it?), with the phase 1 answers shaping the options. A phase 2 that could have been asked of any repo is one you did not write. Keep it to 6–10 questions; every question exists because the scan or a phase 1 answer raised it.