retro
Installation
SKILL.md
The user has asked for a retrospective. You are suggesting improvements to the coding agent's environment to improve future runs.
Steps
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Call the Skill tool with
writing-for-agentsfor the writing style guide. -
Read the primary sources for the session the user specifies. This may mean searching through session logs on this machine. If the user doesn't specify a session, default to the current one.
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Look for candidates for improvement in these categories.
- Navigation: how easy was it for the agent to find the right files? Are there hidden dependencies between files? Would a navigation pointer make it easier? Use when the session took a long time to find a piece of information.
- Automated checks: are there automated checks that could catch errors the agent made? Linting, typing, tests, filesystem linters? Read the repo's own check command first (its
package.json/build-toollint/checkscripts, its CI workflow), so a check that already exists but sits unwired or silently broken is the finding, not a reinvention. A repo with no guardrail (no pre-commit hook and no CI job running its lint/typecheck/test command) is itself a finding: an un-linted repo is a standing missed opportunity, not a neutral default. Use when the agent made a mistake an automated check could have caught, or the repo has no guardrail at all. - Coding standards: should the reviewer agent be given a new rule to enforce? Should an existing rule be removed or clarified? Classify the violation first: a mechanical one (a fixed syntactic pattern, a banned API, an import shape, a file-location rule) gets a deterministic check, full stop: a custom rule in the repo's own linter, a new pre-commit hook, or a new CI job, whichever the repo's language and existing guardrail make cheapest. Default to building the check over writing the rule. Reserve
CODING_STANDARDS.mdfor genuine judgement calls (cross-file consistency, "matches the surrounding style," anything no guardrail could ever substitute for). Use when the reviewer agent failed to catch a mistake. - Global AGENTS.md: are there any steering instructions that should be moved to coding standards (or automated checks) instead? Use when the AGENTS.md file is particularly large - in the repo OR the user's global scope.
- Tool economy: did the agent make expensive tool calls that could be streamlined? Is there any custom tooling (CLI's, MCP's) that is particularly token-inefficient? Use when the agent made an expensive tool call.
- No-ops: look for instructions in steering files that don't modify the agent's behavior. Use when the steering files are large and unwieldy.
- Information access: look for opportunities to increase the agent's access to information. Teeing dev server logs, readonly access to third-party services. Use when a crucial piece of information was not available to the agent.
- Present these candidates to the user, in order of severity.