9 min read
Agent Engineering Skills
Agent engineering skills turn messy coding, design, debugging, issue, and architecture work into repeatable procedures. Source: Skill Registry, 2026-07-15
When To Use This
Use this family for coding flow, architecture, domain modeling, planning, implementation, debugging, tests, and engineering communication.
Core Model
Executable behavior lives in skills/**/SKILL.md. This page owns family-level routing, tradeoffs, and failure modes. Exhaustive inventory lives in Skill Registry. Full retired article bodies live in Retired Skill Article Ledger.
Concept Position
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Family | Generated skill-family synthesis |
| Concept owned | Agent engineering skills turn messy coding, design, debugging, issue, and architecture work into repeatable procedures. |
| Operationalizes into | Skill Registry, Skill Resolver, executable SKILL.md source |
| Use this page when | choosing the right skill family before loading executable source |
Decision Matrix
| Need | Route |
|---|---|
| Use Kevin's engineering-flow router for planning. | Load the named SKILL.md from Skill Registry and use this page for context. |
| Use codebase/design/domain skills before broad implementation. | Load the named SKILL.md from Skill Registry and use this page for context. |
| Use tests/TDD/debugging skills when proof is central. | Load the named SKILL.md from Skill Registry and use this page for context. |
Do Not Confuse
- Pure visual polish belongs in frontend-design-skills.
- Security review belongs in security-review-skills.
- Wiki maintenance belongs in agent-operations-skills.
Tool And Skill Routing
| Skill | Category | Origin | Executable source | Trigger signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| codebase-design | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/codebase-design/SKILL.md | Design deep modules and clean seams. Use when the user wants to improve architecture, design or compare module interfaces, decide where a seam belongs, make code more testable or AI-navig... |
| column-aligned-fields | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/column-aligned-fields/SKILL.md | Enforce column-aligned inline comments on dataclass and enum fields. Use when writing or reviewing Python dataclasses, enums, TypedDicts, or any structured type with inline field comments. |
| comment | engineering | dedalus | skills/engineering/comment/SKILL.md | Write doc comments, module docs, and inline comments that follow Dedalus conventions per language. Loads the canonical style guides from the monorepo. Covers Rust, Python, Go, and TypeScr... |
| commit | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/commit/SKILL.md | Create a git commit with conventional commit format. Injects current git state automatically. |
| diagnosing-bugs | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/diagnosing-bugs/SKILL.md | Disciplined diagnosis loop for hard bugs, regressions, failures, flakes, and performance problems. Use when the user says "diagnose", "debug this", "this is broken", "why is this failing/... |
| domain-modeling | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/domain-modeling/SKILL.md | Build and sharpen a project's domain model. Use when the user wants to pin down domain terminology, define a ubiquitous language, create or update CONTEXT.md / CONTEXT-MAP.md, record an A... |
| fix-types | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/fix-types/SKILL.md | Audit code for loose types that allow semantically invalid values to compile. Introduces newtypes, checked casts, enums over booleans, and documents wire/DB discriminant contracts. Use wh... |
| generate-interface | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/generate-interface/SKILL.md | Define or refactor subsystem interfaces into small, explicit contracts with clear ownership, narrow scope, stable semantics, and README-first documentation. Use when designing a new API,... |
| greentext | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/greentext/SKILL.md | Explain system behavior, request flows, architecture, or implementation logic as short 4chan-style greentext lines. Use when the user asks for a step-by-step explanation, says "explain th... |
| grill-with-docs | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/grill-with-docs/SKILL.md | Two-stage grilling session for any non-trivial app, feature, or refactor — FIRST map the SHAPE of the design tree (breadth: enumerate the decision axes, branch points, and dependencies),... |
| hotfix-preview | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/hotfix-preview/SKILL.md | Cherry-pick a commit from dev onto preview without a PR. Use when you need to cherry-pick a fix to preview without a PR, or for urgent fixes that can't wait for a full promote cycle. |
| implement | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/implement/SKILL.md | Implement a bounded piece of work from a PRD, issue, or agent-ready ticket. Use when Kevin invokes /implement or passes a specific PRD/issue and wants execution through TDD/checks/review. |
| improve | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/improve/SKILL.md | Survey any codebase as a senior advisor and produce prioritized, self-contained implementation plans for OTHER models/agents to execute. Strictly read-only on source code — never implemen... |
| improve-codebase-architecture | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/improve-codebase-architecture/SKILL.md | Scan a codebase for deepening opportunities, present a visual architecture report, then grill through the selected candidate. Use when Kevin invokes /improve-codebase-architecture, asks f... |
| invariant-first-coding | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/invariant-first-coding/SKILL.md | Reason from proven invariants before coding. Use when reviewing fallback logic, narrowing types, handling conversions, deciding whether an error path is real or impossible, removing overd... |
| issue | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/issue/SKILL.md | Create a GitHub issue using the Dedalus issue templates (bug, feature, question). Injects branch and commit context automatically, prompts for Linear link. Use when creating a GitHub issu... |
| kevin-engineering-flow | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/kevin-engineering-flow/SKILL.md | Router for Kevin's engineering flow. Use when Kevin invokes /kevin-engineering-flow, asks which engineering skill or flow fits, or wants a path through grill-with-docs, prototype, PRD, is... |
| lamport | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/lamport/SKILL.md | Simplify a problem by replacing sequence reasoning with state invariants. Use when the user invokes /lamport, asks for Lamport-style reasoning, or when a task has many cases, phases, inte... |
| lerp | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/lerp/SKILL.md | Audit prose (comments, docs, READMEs, commit messages, PR descriptions) for jargon, unexplained acronyms, and assumed context. Rewrites for the least experienced reader. Use after writing... |
| linear | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/linear/SKILL.md | Manage issues, projects & team workflows in Linear. Use when the user wants to read, create or updates tickets in Linear. |
| minimal-first-implementation | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/minimal-first-implementation/SKILL.md | Build the smallest correct version first. Name every case, implement only what has a real consumer, return typed errors for the rest. Use when designing new systems, extracting shared pac... |
| perf | engineering | dedalus | skills/engineering/perf/SKILL.md | Discipline for performance investigations. Ramp up from cheap experiments to expensive ones. Profile before patching. Isolate hypotheses with standalone probes before touching production... |
| postmortem | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/postmortem/SKILL.md | Run a blameless postmortem for a production incident. Investigate with data, write a structured report, build verification queries, and track remediation. Use when something broke in prod... |
| pr | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/pr/SKILL.md | Create or update a pull request using the target repository's own conventions, with a neutral fallback when the project has no template. |
| prototype | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/prototype/SKILL.md | Build a throwaway prototype to answer one design question. Use when the user asks to prototype, spike, explore a design, compare UI variants, test a state machine, or flesh out a PRD deci... |
| recent-code-bugfix | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/recent-code-bugfix/SKILL.md | Find and fix a bug introduced by the current author within the last week in the current working directory. Use when a user wants a proactive bugfix from their recent changes, when the pro... |
| refine | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/refine/SKILL.md | Compound quality pass over recently changed code. Orchestrates seven standalone skills in sequence: comment, lerp, style, fix-types, interface, test-invariants, exemplar-audit. Each pass... |
| resolving-merge-conflicts | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/resolving-merge-conflicts/SKILL.md | Resolve an in-progress git merge or rebase conflict without discarding work. Use when conflict markers, MERGE_HEAD, rebase state, or "resolve conflicts" appears. |
| rtfm | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/rtfm/SKILL.md | Verify claims against primary sources before writing code or docs. Read the actual API, run the actual command, check the actual docs. Do not guess. Do not assume. Do not ship until verif... |
| simple | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/simple/SKILL.md | Frame any technical answer as a reproducible five-part diagnosis. Use when the user asks for a root-cause explanation, a fix proposal, a debugging write-up, or says "explain why", "what's... |
| state-machine-dfa | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/state-machine-dfa/SKILL.md | Document state machines with mermaid diagrams and DFA transition files. Use when writing, reviewing, or adding state-driven logic to modules that have sequential phase transitions, lifecy... |
| tdd | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/tdd/SKILL.md | Test-driven development with red-green-refactor. Use when the user wants test-first implementation, asks for TDD, mentions red-green-refactor, wants integration tests, or when a feature/b... |
| teacher-mode | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/teacher-mode/SKILL.md | Act as a wise, effective teacher who makes sure the human deeply understands the work an agent just did, before the session ends. Runs incrementally with a running checklist, has the huma... |
| tests | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/tests/SKILL.md | Write tests that prove the right invariant at the smallest honest layer. Use when adding, reviewing, deleting, or refactoring tests; choosing test boundaries; turning bug reproductions in... |
| to-issues | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/to-issues/SKILL.md | Break a PRD, plan, or spec into independently grabbable vertical-slice issues/tickets. Use when the user says "/to-tickets", "turn this into issues", "break this down", "make tickets", "c... |
| to-prd | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/to-prd/SKILL.md | Turn the current conversation, notes, or prototype findings into a PRD/spec without re-interviewing. Use when the user says "/to-spec", "write a PRD", "turn this into a spec", "make this... |
| torvalds | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/torvalds/SKILL.md | Design engineering principles for removing special cases. Use when designing new systems, extracting shared packages, refactoring conditional logic, deciding whether to add a flag or chan... |
| triage | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/triage/SKILL.md | Triage issues, bug reports, support threads, or external PRs into clear labels, verification state, and agent-ready briefs. Use when the user says "/triage", "triage these issues", "sort... |
| tsdown | engineering | skills-sh | skills/engineering/tsdown/SKILL.md | Bundle TypeScript and JavaScript libraries with blazing-fast speed powered by Rolldown. Use when building libraries, generating type declarations, bundling for multiple formats, or migrat... |
| update-docs | engineering | dedalus | skills/engineering/update-docs/SKILL.md | Update documentation after code changes. Covers source-level docs (module docs, docstrings, inline comments) and docs-site pages. Use after any code change to keep documentation in sync w... |
| visual-plan | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/visual-plan/SKILL.md | Turn a planned product, UI, architecture, or agent workflow change into a visual, inspectable plan with flow maps, diagrams, file maps, storyboard states, risks, and verification gates. U... |
| zero-tech-debt | engineering | personal | skills/engineering/zero-tech-debt/SKILL.md | Rework a recent change as if the intended UX and architecture existed from day one, deleting compatibility cruft and accidental complexity. Use when Kevin invokes /zero-tech-debt, asks to... |
Failure Modes
- Jumping into implementation before setup/router skills.
- Letting a broad skill own product facts.
- Forgetting resolver/eval updates after a repeated flow becomes a skill.
Timeline
- 2026-07-15 | Regenerated this concise family synthesis page from Skill Registry after archiving verbose retired skill-article bodies to Retired Skill Article Ledger. Source: User request, 2026-06-27
- 2026-07-15 | Concepts category refresh linked this generated family page to Concept System Map and kept it generated because executable skill source owns the procedure details. Source: User request, 2026-07-01
Related Pages
63 pages link here
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