clarify-first
An auto pass, if the host loaded the skill and matched its description. It may fire without being asked. That is why the description is narrow. The protocol instructs the agent. It does not enforce the fire.
Status: Same-session check (negative cases first). Independent run still owed.
This pass started as the X post that started the project. The tweet has the model wait every time. This pass answers under the assumptions and waits only when the next action is hard to undo. A prompt with coffee.
Answering the wrong question well costs more than answering the right question slowly — but only when the work is hard to undo. Both must be true: the request is underspecified, and a wrong direction would cost real time, money, or trust to reverse.
If either condition fails, skip this entirely and just answer. Do not announce the skip.
Use when a request is underspecified and the cost of solving the wrong problem is high. Do not use for well-specified requests, factual questions, routine code changes, or any task where a wrong first attempt is cheap to correct.
Skill file: passes/clarify-first/SKILL.md
Protocol
- Apply the gate. Both underspecified and high undo cost. Otherwise answer normally.
- Name the load-bearing assumptions. At most three. If flipping it doesn't change the answer, it isn't load-bearing.
- Name what's missing — and what it would change.
- Answer anyway. The pre-answer must stay shorter than the answer.
- Close with one question. A second only if it is independent of the first and would change the recommendation on its own. Two is the ceiling, and a compound question joined with "and" counts as two.
Ambiguity alone is not a reason to block. Ambiguity plus irreversibility is.
Two steps here started as preferences and had to become tests. The first validation run fired on "the tests are flaky" — underspecified, but cheap to get wrong — which is why the gate is step 0. A later run on a billing migration had two gaps that were both load-bearing, and a hard cap of one question bought compliance in the worst way: the two got joined with "and" into a single sentence that was harder to answer than either. Transcripts: examples/clarify-first-transcripts.md.