Translating documentation

Invocation boundary

Run this workflow when the task is explicitly about maintaining bilingual pairs — a whole-document translation, a batch of new counterparts, or a requested pairing audit. It is model- and user-reachable on purpose, because the ask-demon cascade fires it after an earlier flow step touched docs or notes. Routine counterpart updates for a small prose change are made directly in one pass after loading the repository's terminology table; they do not need this skill.

What this skill is

This skill is guidance, not a translation memory. Both languages carry equal authority — a change is authored in either one, and that side is the source for that update. The rules below say what must hold, not how to phrase any sentence; phrasing judgment is yours, terminology is not.

Triage by change type

• Update (pair exists, one side edited): follow the update path. It is briefing-driven and deliberately cheap: no guidance-corpus re-reading, no git archaeology, smallest counterpart edit. Never re-translate a whole document to apply an update — a minimal update preserves the reviewed phrasing of everything that did not change.
• New pair (no counterpart yet): follow the whole-document path.
• Deleted or renamed doc: delete or rename the counterpart and the .i18n.yaml consistency record alongside it — the pairing gate reports an incomplete pair otherwise.

Frozen archived notes are not translation work; never update either side after archival.

The update path (briefing-driven)