Menus Skill

How this skill behaves (read first)

This is a generative skill. The default failure modes: catch-all dropdowns (unrelated actions dumped into one menu), deep ambiguous nesting (cascading levels users get lost in), and unordered item lists (no prioritization, no grouping, jargon labels). A menu is a curated, ordered set of related actions — when it stops being that, the fix is changing the flow, not adding levels. This skill gates:

1. Establish the action set — what actions, how related, how many, selection or command?
2. Apply the always-true core — type from structure, priority ordering, grouping, labels, states.
3. Surface the context-dependent decisions (cascading, contextual, search-in-menu, shortcuts) with trade-offs.

Then it hands off to ux-heuristics-audit, ux-accessibility-audit, ux-aesthetics-audit, and ux-microcopy-audit for validation.

Scope & composition (per docs/orchestration-policy.md §9): this skill owns menu structure and anatomy. Peers that own a sub-part (defer — each handles its sub-part if reached): ux-navigation owns where menus live in the overall navigation system (hamburger placement, mega menus, top bar vs. sidebar), and ux-selection-controls owns the choice between menus vs. radio/checkboxes for form selection.

Step 0 — Establish the action set

Ask if not known; state the assumption if proceeding without an answer: