chisel-releases

Cross-agent skill for working on canonical/chisel-releases. Self-contained: the same skill directory drives claude code, pi, opencode, copilot, and codex.

Where things live

You work inside a checkout of canonical/chisel-releases -- your current working directory. Every repo path you read or write -- slices/<pkg>.yaml, tests/spread/..., chisel.yaml, sibling SDFs -- is relative to this checkout, exactly as written.

Paths below (commands/, shared/, scripts/, schemas/) are relative to this skill's own directory instead -- the one holding this SKILL.md. They are read-only.

Layout

• commands/ -- command workflows: markdown to read and follow, not executable scripts
• shared/CHISEL.md -- reference (format, branch model, schema versions, naming, sources of truth). NOTE: in the mason source repo this file lives at mason/_shared/CHISEL.md; the installer materialises it here.
• scripts/ -- runnable helpers: orientation, deb-list.py (inspect a .deb; --sdf emits a draft SDF), try-cut, scaffold-test.py (emit a spread test skeleton), check-slice.py (deterministic SDF linter), check-test.py (binary test-coverage check), check-diff.py (append-only regression check), review-diff.py (runs all three over a PR diff)
• schemas/commands.manifest.yaml -- command index (name -> file)

Orient first

Before anything else, run scripts/orientation [<package>]. It prints -- deterministically -- your working dir, this skill's own dir, the target release

• manifest format parsed from chisel.yaml, and which tools are available here (chisel, dpkg-deb, spread, uv, ...) so you know upfront what you can run. Treat its output as ground truth; don't infer any of it. Then read shared/CHISEL.md for format and conventions.

Commands

write-slice and review-slice are not standalone slash commands -- only /chisel-releases is registered. select a command from the invocation:

• /chisel-releases write-slice <pkg> (the first arg names the command), or
• plain language: "write a slice for <pkg>", "review slices/foo.yaml".

dispatch: take the first token of the args as the command name; if it matches a command below, read that file and follow its steps, treating the rest of the args as its input. on no match, or no args at all, print the numbered list below and wait for the user's reply before loading anything -- never guess.

1. write-slice -> commands/write-slice.md -- author + test + commit SDFs. does not open PRs.
2. review-slice -> commands/review-slice.md -- read-only review of SDFs.