behavior-coach

Purpose

A repeatable method for turning how a strong model works into a skill file that survives the model. The output is a standalone, spec-compliant skill (a SKILL.md, optionally with references) that encodes the source model's load-bearing process — how it decomposes, verifies, decides what's next, and reports — in rules a weaker or different target model can actually follow.

The founding insight, stated by the method's earliest practitioners and confirmed under test: a skill file does not transfer raw capability; it transfers process. The target won't suddenly reason at the source's level, but it keeps the decomposition habits, the self-checks, and the answer structure that made the source's output sharper.

What this skill is

A pipeline the agent executes when asked to distill one model's behavior for use in another. It produces a new skill directory as its artifact. It is delta-driven: the output encodes only what the target model doesn't already do — a rule that re-teaches baseline behavior is dead weight that dilutes the rules that matter.

Design principles

Deltas, not portraits. Never write down everything the source does. Diff the source against the bare target and encode only the differences that changed outcomes. The target model is already smart; only add process it doesn't have.
Observation over self-report. What the source model says about its own process is a hypothesis; what it does in a transcript is evidence. Introspection probes are allowed as cheap hypothesis generators, but no self-reported trait is encoded until a task probe corroborates it; the other provenance classes carry their own gates in the extraction reference.
Rules must be checkable. "Be rigorous" transfers nothing. "Paste the relevant command output — secrets redacted — under every works-claim, or reclassify the claim as unverified" transfers, because compliance is observable from the transcript alone.
Pressure-tested before shipped. A rule that holds in a calm session and folds under deadline pressure is not a rule. Every produced skill goes through the RED/GREEN/REFACTOR loop before it is delivered.