Kitsoki Proposal Authoring

Proposals live in docs/proposals/ and are a small, current queue of what's being worked toward — not an archive. The templates in docs/proposals/templates/ give every draft a consistent, skim-in-two-minutes shape. This skill picks the right one, fills it well, and splits big changes into reviewable slices.

Read these first — they're the contract, not background:

• docs/proposals/README.md — the lifecycle (Status line, trim-on-ship, delete-when-done) and the current queue.
• docs/proposals/templates/README.md — the shared spine, the which-template table, and the decomposition flow.

The shared spine

Every focused proposal is: a Status / Kind / Epic header, then Why / What changes / Impact, then kind-specific design sections, then Tasks / Open questions / Non-goals. Why/What/Impact is the OpenSpec core; the rest is existing kitsoki convention. Keep prose tight and link to code (file:line), existing docs, and the gold-standard stories instead of restating them.

Picking a template

Tie-breaker: choose the template whose design sections you'll actually fill in, and note spillover under Impact. If two kinds each carry real design weight, it's an epic.

Two ways to author: by hand, or the interactive design pipeline

This skill covers authoring a proposal by hand (below). kitsoki also ships the same discipline as a process story you can drive interactively — the design pipeline in stories/dev-story/ (reachable from the dogfood instance). Enter it ad-hoc via idea, or as the back half of the PRD → Design walk (type prd, author a PRD, then continue from the prd_published room to carry it into the design intake — see the dev-story README):

kitsoki run .kitsoki/stories/kitsoki-dev/app.yaml   # land in main; type `idea` (or `prd`)

Naming: the in-story pipeline is the design pipeline (rooms design / design_search / design_refine / design_draft / …); the templates (docs/proposals/templates/), the docs/proposals/ output directory, and this proposal-authoring skill keep their names — the pipeline emits proposal-shaped design docs into docs/proposals/.

It walks the proposal process from docs/proposals/proposals.md:

1. intake — a discovery conversation that distils a crisp idea.
2. brief — scaffolds a pre-filled 001-brief.md (the shared spine — Why / What changes / Impact + kind) into a per-session workspace at docs/proposals/.workspace/<slug>/; you edit it in VS Code, then an oracle.decide judge sanity-checks it (continue / clarify).
3. existing-state — the overlap gate: scans in-progress (.workspace/) and accepted (docs/proposals/*.md) proposals + feature docs, and steers you to amend an existing one rather than create a duplicate (proposals.md's core rule).
4. idea-completeness — gate on problem / why-kitsoki / usage.
5. references — curates the docs the proposal must build on (004-references.json).
6. draft — an oracle.task that classifies the kind, copies the matching templates/<kind>.md, and writes 005-proposal.md.
7. publish — moves the draft into docs/proposals/<slug>.md; the numbered checks stay in the (gitignored) workspace as the record.

The interactive flow applies the same spine + template selection this skill describes — use whichever fits. The design discipline behind it (deterministic vs. decide vs. task, the validation sandwich, the working-folder ergonomics) is docs/proposals/process-design.md §§1–5; the room-by-room mechanics are in stories/dev-story/rooms/design*.yaml, modelled on the gold-standard stories/prd/.

Authoring a focused proposal

1. Confirm the kind with the table above. State your pick and why in one line before writing.
2. Copy the template to docs/proposals/{slug}.md. Use a descriptive kebab-case slug; no need for a -proposal suffix (the folder says so).
3. Fill the spine first — Why / What changes / Impact. If you can't write a crisp Why, the proposal isn't ready; ask the user, don't pad it.
4. Fill only the design sections that apply. The templates are a menu. Delete headings you won't use — an empty "Migration" section is noise. Delete every {placeholder} and <!-- guidance --> comment as you go; a finished proposal has neither.
5. Ground every claim. Replace "reuse the bugfix pattern" with the actual stories/bugfix/rooms/…:line. Mimic the closest existing proposal of the same kind (see the queue in proposals/README.md).
6. Write the Tasks checklist as the execution contract — phased, small enough that each box is one sitting, ending in "migrate to docs/ and trim/delete this proposal."
7. Set the Status line honestly: Draft v1. Nothing implemented yet.

Kind-specific reminders the templates already encode, worth holding:

• story — novelty should be story-layer only; if you're inventing effects/host calls/widgets, that's a runtime slice — split it. Lean on the kitsoki-story-authoring skill for YAML shape.
• runtime — guard the moat: separate interpretive decisions from deterministic execution, keep decision points pluggable, record every decision. Say loudly if a change blurs that line.
• tui — rendering stays typed-elements + pongo2 (never hand-rolled Go strings); anything touching concurrent I/O needs a combined-I/O test that you've verified fails without the change (CLAUDE.md, rendering-tests skill).
• tracing — be explicit whether you're recording something new or consuming what's already traced, and protect replay determinism.

Decomposing a large proposal

When a change spans kinds (a story and an engine seam and a TUI surface), it's an epic. Two entry points:

A. Greenfield epic — the user describes something big from scratch:

1. Create docs/proposals/{epic-slug}.md from epic.md. Fill the big-picture Why / What changes / Impact.
2. Identify slices. A slice is right-sized when it has one coherent Why, fits in one reviewer's head, and could ship alone or with one named dependency. Cut along kind boundaries first (runtime vs. story vs. tui vs. tracing), then along shippable units within a kind.
3. For each slice, create a focused child proposal from its template, setting **Epic:** ../{epic-slug}.md. Push all detail into the child; the epic keeps only the seams between slices.
4. Fill the epic's Slices table (kind, one-line scope, depends-on, status, file link) and Sequencing (usually: runtime substrate → story → tui, with tracing slotted where its events are produced).
5. Record any Shared decision that spans slices in the epic so no child re-litigates it.

B. Refactor an existing oversized proposal — a single file already tries to do too much:

1. Read it; list the distinct concerns and tag each with a kind.
2. Propose the split to the user (slice list + kinds) before moving text.
3. Create the epic, move each concern's text into a child of the right template (rewriting to the spine — don't just paste), and link them.
4. Replace the original file with the epic, or delete it if the epic slug differs. Preserve nothing redundant — git history holds the old form.

Keep the epic's slice table current as children ship — it's the source of truth for "where is this epic."

Lifecycle (don't let the queue rot)

Per proposals/README.md:

1. Lands as a draft with a Status line saying what's not implemented.
2. As it ships, migrate implemented sections into normal docs/ (docs/stories/, docs/tui/, docs/tracing/, docs/architecture/), trim the proposal to what's still in design, and update the Status line to point at where the shipped pieces went.
3. When everything has shipped or been superseded, delete the file (and, for an epic, delete it once every slice is gone). Add/remove the entry in proposals/README.md's "Current proposals" list to match.

The standing instruction in CLAUDE.md: complete the implementation, move content to narrative docs, delete the proposal — don't leave unfinished work unless told to, and if so, trim the proposal to the remaining work.

After adding a new template or skill

Codex discovers project skills under .agents/skills/ directly. Expose new skills to Claude Code through the project-local symlinks:

make setup

If you add a new template kind, also: add a row to the which-template tables in templates/README.md and in this skill, and add a **Kind:** value to the spine.