wish — Plan Before You Build

wish — Plan Before You Build

Runtime syntax: invoke the plugin copy through the active runtime's owner-qualified skill selector; use a bare selector only when intentionally selecting a user-tier copy (a separately installed personal copy; Genie no longer seeds this tier). Cross-skill prose below uses bare names as portable semantic routes; the orchestrator resolves the selector for the active runtime.

Convert a validated idea into an executable wish document at .genie/wishes/<slug>/WISH.md.

When to Use

• Non-trivial work needs planning before implementation.
• User wants to scope, decompose, or formalize a feature/change.
• Prior brainstorm output exists and needs to become actionable.

Wish artifacts live in .genie/wishes/ in the shared worktree. Execution-group definitions go in WISH.md (git) so other agents and skills can read them; per-group execution state lives in the state DB via genie task (see the work skill for how groups are claimed and completed). When spawned as a native subagent, use the curated context from your dispatch prompt directly.

Design link pre-flight

Before writing the wish, check the design exists and, when present, verify the review evidence with the helper shipped in this skill:

test -f .genie/brainstorms/<slug>/DESIGN.md
node "<wish-skill-dir>/references/design-review-evidence.mjs" verify ".genie/brainstorms/<slug>/DESIGN.md"

• Present and verification exits 0: consume the reviewer-bound evidence and emit | **Design** | [DESIGN.md](../../brainstorms/<slug>/DESIGN.md) |.
• Present but verification fails: stop and return to design review. Missing evidence, a non-SHIP verdict, or a content-digest mismatch cannot be waived; editing DESIGN.md invalidates its prior review. Never repair the failure with a locally recomputed digest — only a new design review may return the reviewed-sha256 passed to stamping.
• Absent: emit | **Design** | _No brainstorm — direct wish_ | (no link) — valid for hotfixes, trivial changes, or plans obvious enough that a brainstorm adds no value. The linter (scripts/wishes-lint.ts) accepts the literal stub text; a bracket-link to a non-existent brainstorm file fails lint.

Flow

1. Gate check: if the request is fuzzy (no prior design, unclear scope, vague requirements), run brainstorm first and say so. If a design exists, do not scaffold until its digest-bound design-review evidence verifies as SHIP.

2. Align intent: clarify until success criteria are testable.

3. Pass the simplicity gate: state the simplest complete design, justify every mechanism beyond it with a present requirement or measurement, and defer plausible future complexity behind a concrete trigger. A wish cannot outsource this decision to implementation.

4. Define scope: explicit IN and OUT lists. OUT cannot be empty.

5. Decompose: small, loosely coupled execution groups.

6. Scaffold — always copy the template, never hand-write WISH.md. Resolve the absolute directory containing this loaded SKILL.md, replace only the two placeholder assignments below, and run the complete command from the repository root: