principle-build-the-lever
Installation
SKILL.md
Build the Lever
Portability (required)
This skill is part of the portable pstack pack.
- Read the
pstackcapability contract and the adapter for the active coding agent before any helper delegation. - Prefer capability verbs (
explore,implement,review,parallel,ask_user,verify,model_role) over vendor tool names. - Resolve models through
model_role. Never require a vendor-specific model identifier. - When helper spawning is unavailable, run the work on the lead agent and state that fan-out was collapsed.
When the work isn't trivial, build the tool that does it instead of doing it by hand.
Why: Two payoffs. Throughput: a codemod, generator, or script does the work the same way every time and reruns for free. Confidence: the tool is one artifact a reviewer can read and rerun to check the work. Hand-done changes can only be re-verified by redoing them. A deterministic script turns "trust me" into "run this".
Pattern: Default to building the lever. Skip it only when the task is genuinely trivial, a couple of obvious edits you can see at a glance.