Collaboration Contract Skill

Cross-team projects fail at the seams: each team runs on its own invisible rules (working-agreements are per-team; the seam has none), decision rights are assumed differently ("we thought design signed off; they thought we did"), and handoffs bounce because "done" meant different things. The collaboration contract is the seam's rulebook, one page, agreed at kickoff while everyone still likes each other: who decides what (the decision-rights table), how work crosses the boundary (the interface), how the teams talk (channel + cadence), and what done means per handoff — cheap to write on day one, expensive to reverse-engineer during the first fight.

What This Skill Produces

• The decision-rights table — the project's likely decisions × who decides / who's consulted, the ambiguous ones forced now
• The interface spec — how work moves between teams: the handoff format, the request path, the done-definition per handoff type
• The communication layer — the shared channel, the sync cadence (as light as the project allows), the escalation path with names
• The friction protocol — what happens at the first collision: the two-lead conversation before anything ascends

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The project and the teams — what's being built/done, which teams, their prior history (a scarred partnership needs the contract more and trusts it less — the tone adjusts)
• The likely decisions — the calls this project will force (scope, priority conflicts, quality bars, launch timing); the table pre-decides the deciders, and the awkward ones ("who wins when priorities conflict?") are exactly the ones to force now
• The handoff shapes — what actually crosses the seam (designs → build? data → analysis? approvals?); each shape gets its done-definition
• The leads — the two humans who own the seam; the contract is theirs to sign and theirs to enforce