Wayfinder

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. Wayfinding is about finding that way, not charging at the destination. This skill charts the way as a shared map of investigation tickets, then works them one at a time 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 plan to hand to /deep-plan, a decision to lock before drafting starts, or a change made in place like a data-structure migration.

Activation

This skill activates only through the /wayfinder command; never reach for it on your own. If the opening interview surfaces no fog — the whole journey fits one session — say so and stop: the effort doesn't need a map.

Plan, don't do

Wayfinder is planning by default: each ticket resolves a decision, and the map is done when nothing is 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. An effort can override this in the map's Notes — carrying execution into the map itself — but absent that, produce decisions, not deliverables.

The map

The map is the canonical artifact. By default it lives as local markdown under .ai/wayfinder/<map-slug>/: map.md (the map body — template in assets/map-template.md) plus one file per ticket under tickets/. If the project already runs a real issue tracker, the map may live there instead — a parent issue labelled wayfinder:map with tickets as child issues, using the tracker's native blocking (for Jira, draft tickets with the jira-spike / jira-task skills). Tracker-specific tool names are examples only; local markdown is the portable default.

The map is an index, not a store: each decision lives in exactly one place — its ticket — and the map only gists and links, never restates. A session loads map.md once at low resolution and zooms into individual ticket files on demand.