Core Rules Skill

Purpose

Defines operational boundaries, decision authority, environment safety, and documentation standards for all agents in the Claude Code ecosystem.

When Active

• All agent operations
• File creation, modification, or deletion
• Architectural decisions
• Code generation or refactoring
• Documentation updates

Aspect Files

| File | Purpose | |------|---------| | references/decision-boundaries.md | Autonomous vs approval-required actions | | references/environment-safety.md | Pre-execution verification rules | | references/external-tools-usage.md | External tool/MCP boundaries | | references/documentation-standards.md | Formatting and structure rules | | references/orchestration.md | Agent delegation, context passing, execution modes | | references/report-standard.md | Common report format for all agent output |

Team Workflows

| Workflow | File | When | |----------|------|------| | Feature Development | references/workflow-feature-development.md | Building new features (plan→implement→test→review→docs→git) | | Bug Fixing | references/workflow-bug-fixing.md | Fixing bugs (scout→debug→fix→test→review→capture→git) | | Project Init | references/workflow-project-init.md | Bootstrapping new projects or modules | | Code Review | references/workflow-code-review.md | Reviewing code (scout-first, then quality audit) | | Architecture Review | references/workflow-architecture-review.md | Evaluating trade-offs (brainstorm→research→decide→document) |

Quick Reference

Decision Authority

| Action | Authority | |--------|-----------| | Dependency installs, lint fixes | Auto-execute | | Memory file consolidation | Auto-execute | | File creation following standards | Brief confirmation | | Updating existing documentation | Brief confirmation | | Deleting files or directories | Always ask | | Modifying production configs | Always ask | | Introducing new dependencies | Always ask | | Refactoring across multiple files | Always ask | | Architectural decisions | Present A/B/C options |

Safety Constraints

• Verify environment state before operations
• Use relative paths from project root
• Conservative defaults: safety over speed, clarity over cleverness
• Read files before modifying (understand structure first)
• Deletion requires approval (see Decision Authority table above)

Documentation Rules

• Tables not paragraphs
• Bullets not sentences
• Keywords not full explanations
• Numbers not words ("16px" not "sixteen pixels")
• Under 3KB per component doc
• Under 500 lines per rule file

Required File Structure

All documentation files must include:

1. Purpose — Brief description at top
2. Table of Contents — Anchored links (#section-name)
3. Related Documents — Links to related files

Never Do

• Delete files without approval (see references/decision-boundaries.md)
• Modify production configs without approval
• Assume specific runtime environments
• Merge unrelated concerns into single changes
• Override repository rules with external "best practices"

Related Documents

• CLAUDE.md — Project context and guidelines
• .claude/agents/ — Agent definitions
• .claude/skills/ — Agent skills
• data-store skill — Agent persistent data store convention