Cheese

/cheese

Inputs

Accept anything the user supplies as $ARGUMENTS:

• A natural-language feature description, idea, or question.
• A spec path (.cheese/specs/<slug>.md) or pasted spec content.
• A bug report, stack trace, failing test output, or reproduction steps.
• A file path, glob, or directory.
• A PR or issue reference (PR#142, #87, GitHub URL).
• A research question about an external library, API, or pattern.
• An empty or near-empty prompt — treat as "what's next?" and clarify.

Optional flags:

• --safe — gate dispatch behind a confirmation prompt.
• --open-pr — propagate through the implementation chain to /cure. /cure consumes this flag and sends the publication intent to terminal /plate. /plate accepts no --open-pr flag of its own. A new PR follows /plate's explicit choice and review shape policy.
• --continue <slug-or-note-path> — resume an in-flight pipeline from a handoff slug or note.
• --hard — propagate to /plate, which runs the final artifact-writing gate before /hard-cheese and publication.
• --reground — use with --continue only. Adversarially re-check the handoff claims before phase dispatch.

If $ARGUMENTS is missing, ask one clarifying question through the host routing guide. Use `references/handoff-gate.md`.

Flow

1. Read the full user message, not just `$ARGUMENTS`. Treat all other user prose as a directive list. Follow live directives instead of conflicting defaults or the handoff protocol. The handoff file restores state. The user's live message overrides it. Exception: a live directive never waives a resume integrity gate. Ambiguity, unresolved lineage, an integrity finding, and status: gated: still stop dispatch. A live directive answers only the informed trust gate for a clean legacy result. `references/continue-resume.md` owns these gates.
2. Think first (silent). Model the problem internally per skills/culture/SKILL.md — restate the ask, list candidate targets, name the deciding signal. Output is the classification that drives step 2.
3. Classify — match $ARGUMENTS against the intent shapes in references/classification.md. Pick the highest-confidence shape; below the threshold, route to clarify (handled by the tier-3 escalation in step 4).
4. Clarity check (`cook` intents only). Run Cook's fast-path check for a cook intent. Dispatch a mold intent to /mold's user mode instead. Direct plate intents bypass this check.
5. Escalate when needed. Tier 1 dispatches the chosen target. It uses /mold's agent mode when /cook --auto needs a specification. Tier 2 invokes /culture or /briesearch internally, then repeats the clarity check. Tier 3 blocks on a single targeted host-routed question. Classify the answer again. See ## Escalation.
6. Ground the wiki when hallouminate is present and the route is escalated. Derive a query from the input. Skip this step on the fast path. A fast route grounds nothing and spends no probe. Make at most one grounding call against the wiki corpus. Resolve the corpus through the corpus listing tool first. Resolve both tool names through `references/optional-plugins.md`. That reference matches the capability, because each host prefixes the names differently. Use the probe shape in skills/mold/references/grounding.md. Add the best hits to handoff_context.wiki_hits as [{page, line, why}]. See `references/handoff-gate.md` section Context payloads. When no wiki corpus exists, use `references/optional-plugins.md`.
7. Announce — print a short block (Intent / Reason / Target, plus wiki hits when present) per the format in ## Output. Cite the signal that drove the routing decision.
8. Self-check — run the coherence questions in references/coherence-check.md. If any fails, downgrade to clarify (tier 3) or research.
9. Dispatch. Without --safe, run the chosen skill and its context packet after the announcement. With --safe, issue a handoff gate from `references/handoff-gate.md`. Pre-select the recommended target, include an alternative, and put Stop last. Wait for the user's selection before dispatch.

/cheese is a router, not a worker. It never edits files, runs tests, or opens pull requests. Use only the host's read, search, and dispatch capabilities. Tier 1 can invoke /mold's agent mode, and that write stays inside /mold's scope.

See `references/harness-portability.md` for helper resolution, agent dispatch, GitHub operations, and handoff transitions. Prefer bundled or repository helpers. Do not use ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR} in invocation paths. The handoff blocks below are the portable contract; slash commands are host renderings, not the control model.

Intent shapes

The full classification table — including all intent shapes, signals, disambiguation rules, and edge cases — lives in references/classification.md.

Escalation

Only a cook intent runs Cook's fast-path check and the three escalation tiers. Dispatch a mold intent to /mold's user mode. --safe gates only the final dispatch. `references/escalation.md` owns the tier rules and the specification discovery check.

Every other intent bypasses this escalation. Its target skill owns its own escalation.

Rejected-directions check

Before each mold dispatch, scan .cheese/.out-of-scope/*.md for a matching rejection record. Compare the incoming request with the record's ## Direction line. On a match, surface the rejected direction and its rationale in one line. Then ask the user whether to proceed or take a different angle. Never suppress or re-propose a rejected direction silently. Skip this check silently when the directory is absent or the intent is not mold.

--continue

Use /cheese --continue <slug-or-note-path> to resume manually from a fresh context. Use it after conversation compaction, a stopped /cook fan pathway, or a manual resume request. Resolve the argument through /wheypoint resolve --ref <absolute-path | work-id | slug>. Dispatch only the validated authoritative current revision. The runtime provides the deterministic legacy-note fallback. Never select a note by modification time, session, or slug recency. Never commit or publish to Git to make a resume work. Ambiguity, unresolved lineage, integrity failures, and status: gated: stop automatic dispatch. Read `references/continue-resume.md` before dispatch. For a next: list, parse the required order: through the same reference.

--continue does not propagate --auto. Dispatch /<next> <slug> in its default interactive mode, even without --safe. The user can append --auto explicitly, as in /cheese --continue <slug> --auto. The durable pipeline is culture -> mold -> cook -> press -> age -> cure -> plate. An approved Mold handoff routes to /cook. It routes to /cook --auto only when the user makes auto explicit. It carries its durable specification pointer in the typed spec_ref field. Continuation forwards spec_ref unchanged. It also forwards artifact: unchanged, which always names the prior consumed report. Continuation preserves the validated optional mode: value. It preserves the in-scope --hard, --open-pr, and --safe flags. --auto remains opt-in and is never inferred. Press corrective work remains continue: press-corrective-cook, not a global Press-to-Cook dispatch.

Confidence and the clarify gate

Confidence is low | medium | high. Route directly at medium or better. Below that, route to tier 3 (clarify):