Consulting an Oracle

Overview

When in-session debugging has stalled, package the failed investigation into a single self-contained markdown file that a stronger one-shot model can answer cold. The oracle has zero project knowledge and no memory of prior runs — the prompt must stand alone.

Core principle: Just-enough context beats whole-repo dumps. A focused 1500-line prompt outperforms a 30k-line dump every time.

This skill produces a file. It does not call any model. Print the path and suggested invocation; let the user run it. This separation is deliberate: keeping prompt-construction decoupled from model-orchestration keeps the skill model-agnostic (works with any oracle the user picks — Codex, Claude, Gemini, paste-into-chat), keeps the artifact re-runnable later, and avoids coupling the skill to credentials, CLI availability, or cost decisions that belong to the user.

Announce at start: "I'm using the consulting-an-oracle skill to package this investigation."

When to Use

• 3+ failed fix attempts on the same symptom in this session
• User says "ask the oracle", "ask GPT-5", "write a letter to an expert", "draft a prompt for another model", "/tmp/letter.md"
• Investigation is consuming context with no convergence
• Before compaction, when the failed investigation should outlive this session as a one-shot prompt