AutoSkillit: Skill for Claude Code

Check Bearing — Strategic Alignment Review

When to Use

• Before merging a branch — verify it does not close off strategic paths
• During PR review — understand how changes affect long-term options
• After a sprint — assess cumulative alignment of recent work
• When evaluating whether to pursue a particular implementation approach
• As a gate in the implementation or merge-prs recipe

Arguments

/check-bearing {target} compass_path=<path>

• {target} — Required. One of:

  • A branch name (e.g., feature/add-provenance)
  • A PR number (e.g., #142)
  • A PR URL (e.g., https://github.com/owner/repo/pull/142)
  • HEAD — assess uncommitted + staged changes on the current branch
  • --since <branch> — assess all changes since divergence from that branch

• compass_path=<path> — Required. Absolute or relative path to a compass document produced by /chart-course. The file must contain a ---compass-data--- ... ---end-compass-data--- block.

Target Resolution

Branch name:

• Detect base branch via git merge-base against main and develop
• Use the closer base (fewer commits ahead)
• Diff: git diff {merge_base}...{branch}

PR number or URL:

• Extract PR metadata via gh pr view {number} --json baseRefName,title,body,files
• Diff: gh pr diff {number}

HEAD:

• Diff: git diff (unstaged) + git diff --cached (staged)

--since :

• Diff: git diff {branch}...HEAD
• Log: git log --oneline {branch}...HEAD

Critical Constraints

NEVER:

• Modify any source code files — this is a read-only analysis skill
• Create files outside {{AUTOSKILLIT_TEMP}}/check-bearing/
• Assess implementation quality — that is audit-impl's domain
• Recommend specific code changes — report alignment facts, not fixes
• Skip directions because they seem irrelevant — assess ALL directions in the compass
• Mark a direction as CLOSES without specific architectural evidence showing why the change creates a barrier that would require significant rework to undo
• Use the compass priority field to suppress findings — all closures matter regardless of priority
• Conflate "this change doesn't advance direction X" with "this change harms direction X" — most changes are genuinely NEUTRAL to most directions