The /ask-matt Skill

What it does

ask-matt is the router over the skills in this repo. You describe the situation you are in (an idea you cannot start, a pile of incoming bug reports, a session that has run long), and it names the skill or the sequence of skills that fits, plus where the human decisions in that sequence sit.

It recommends and stops. It does not grill, write a spec, open a file or fire the skill it just named; what you get back is the next thing to type, and you type it. It is also a hand-written map of the skills in this repo rather than a scan of what you have installed, so it will not route you over your own skills or another author's.

When to reach for it

You invoke this by typing /ask-matt; the agent won't reach for it on its own.

Prerequisites

The router names skills; it does not install them. Everything it points at has to be installed for the recommendation to be actionable, and it only knows the promoted skills in this repo.

The tracker-dependent routes (triage, to-spec, to-tickets, implement) assume setup-matt-pocock-skills has already configured an issue tracker in the repo. The router recommends them even before that has happened.

Flows, not skills

The skill's leading word is flow, a path through the skills rather than a single skill. When you name your situation, the router places you at a step on a flow. That is a different answer from "here is the skill that matches your keywords". There are five kinds of route, and the skill itself describes them in full:

• The main flow, idea to ship. Grill, spec, tickets, implement (one ticket at a time, or the whole task graph in parallel with implement-spec), review, then retro, which feeds what the build taught back into the agent's environment. It has two branches. One is a prototype detour, for when a question needs runnable code to settle it. The other is the spec-and-tickets split, which is only worth its cost when the build spans more than one session.
• On-ramps, for a situation that generates work and then merges onto the main flow: incoming bug reports, something broken, or an effort too foggy and too large to hold in one session.
• Codebase health, upkeep rather than feature work. improve-codebase-architecture surveys the code for deepening opportunities, and each one it finds re-enters the main flow as an idea.
• Standalones, which sit off every flow and which you use on their own: the prototype, the questionnaire, the research run.
• A vocabulary layer underneath, the two references the other skills pull in when the words rather than the process are the problem.

The phase boundary

The skill's other key idea is the phase boundary. A phase is a chunk of work inside a session (the grilling, the implementation, the QA), and the boundary between two of them is the only place the question "what do I do with this context?" belongs. Mid-phase there is nothing to decide: continue, or split what is left into subagents.

People often get two of these wrong, which is why the router gives the order and not only the list. /handoff looks like the general way to move between context windows, but it is not. All it gives you is portability. /compact is the last option in the tree, not the first, because each of the four options above it is cheaper or more precise.

Common questions

Isn't there just a list of the skills in the right order?

People keep asking for one in the README. This skill is that list. A static table would say wayfinder → to-spec → to-tickets → implement → code-review → retro and be wrong for most situations. The important parts are the branches: is there a codebase, does the build span sessions, can talking settle this question. The cost is that the router is maintained by hand, so it lags behind the repo. /grilling shipped long before the router named it.

It told me half the skills aren't installed.

This is a known bug, and it is not fixed. Most of the skills the router routes you through set disable-model-invocation: true, which means the harness leaves them out of the skill list it injects into the agent's context. The agent reads that list as exhaustive and reports them missing. In one reported session, it declared the whole spec-and-tickets flow absent and rerouted to bare /grilling and /tdd. Sixteen of the plugin's twenty-seven skills carry the flag, so this is the common case rather than an edge. They are installed. Type the slash command anyway, or check .claude-plugin/plugin.json, which is the authority on what is present.

It described a skill's behaviour, and the skill doesn't do that.

This is also a real bug, and also not fixed. The router answers from its own one-line summary of each skill rather than from the skill. One detailed report tracked three instances in a single session, including a recommendation to skip to-spec based only on the summary "turn the thread into a spec". The router never opened to-spec/SKILL.md. In every case it verified only after the user pushed back, and never on its own initiative. Skipping to-spec there cost a real seam check, and the tickets that came out undercounted the work. When the router states something about another skill that you will act on, ask it to open that SKILL.md first. The same applies to questions the map does not cover at all, such as whether to use plan mode: that answer is the model's inference, not something written down here.

Why is it prose instead of a numbered checklist?

It is a fair complaint. An open issue argues that most of the routing is deterministic and that the narrative makes it hard to scan. Nothing stops you asking for the compressed form: "just give me the sequence" gets you the sequence. The prose carries the conditional part: the branches, where a human decision is expected, and where to clear or compact between steps. A flat checklist drops exactly that.

Can it route over my own skills, or another author's?

No. Three separate proposals have asked for a router that reads your local skills/ directory and recommends from whatever is installed. ask-matt is not that. It is a map of one set, maintained by hand, and it knows nothing about skills you wrote or installed from elsewhere.

It told me to edit a SKILL.md.

That advice is often correct, but the edit rarely lasts. Someone asked it how to make implement close tickets, was told to add a line to the skill, and saw the problem at once. npx skills update overwrites the file, and the plugin install is read-only. Put standing behaviour in your own CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, or say it in the invocation. Changes you make in the prompt survive updates. People point the flow at Linear instead of GitHub this way, or ask it which open tickets could run in parallel.

It named a skill I don't have, or missed one I do.

Check the changelog for a rename before assuming it is gone. writing-great-skills became writing-for-agents with no alias, to-prd became to-spec, and pathfinder became wayfinder. Four skills were retired outright into the skills that absorbed them: ubiquitous-language, design-an-interface, qa and request-refactor-plan. If it misses a skill you have, that is the router's own lag, described above.

It's working if

• It ends by naming what to type and stops there, instead of starting the work itself.
• The route it gives back mentions where to clear or compact context and where you are expected to review, not just a list of skill names.
• Where two skills are close, it says which one and why the other is wrong for you.
• Any claim it makes about another skill's behaviour shows up in the trace as it reading that skill's SKILL.md.
• You recognise your own situation in what it hands back, rather than the nearest generic scenario.

Where it fits

ask-matt is a standalone router that sits over the whole set. It is never a step in a chain. It points into every chain, and the other docs pages link back to it so none of them has to redraw the graph. From here you most often land on grill-with-docs, the head of the main flow, or triage, the on-ramp for work that arrived rather than work you started.

It is a secondary source over the skills it describes. Where the router and a SKILL.md disagree, the SKILL.md is right.