retro
Installation
SKILL.md
Turn a completed cycle into lessons the next cycle can actually use.
Goal
retro extracts durable learning from a work cycle without defending the artifact that produced it. A cycle can run, pass tests, and still be the wrong thing. The output is not a changelog or therapy note: it is a local, evidence-backed record of what worked, what misled the build, and what gate the next pass must clear.
Use retro when the artifact is done, failed, disappointing, or ambiguous enough that the next agent needs the cycle's lessons more than its momentum.
Workflow
- Read the original objective, final artifact, QA evidence, user complaints, and any local planning notes.
- Separate working assets from misleading progress: contracts, schemas, tests, services, vocabulary, and examples that earned reuse vs. UI, panels, scaffolds, or abstractions that only looked productive.
- Name each failure as an anti-pattern, not a mood.
- Convert repeated or high-impact failures into quality gates for the next pass.
- Convert vague user direction into architecture vocabulary a fresh agent can use.
- Write or refresh local docs for the cycle: a retro for lessons and a plan for next-cycle contracts, gates, and vocabulary.
- Verify that a from-scratch agent could avoid the same failure from those docs alone.