Skills: eng-council consult leads with need/laziest-rung; alignment flags known-ceiling shortcuts

.claude/skills/alignment/SKILL.md

@@ -89,7 +89,12 @@ Review all changes in scope. If changes span multiple patterns below, apply all
    standing _why_, not the story of how this session arrived at it. Rewrite session-decision
    narration ("this bit us", "we decided", "supersedes the earlier plan", "used to do X") and
    directives-to-future-self ("keep the escape") into a standing property of the code; keep the
-   technical fact, drop the resolution framing.
+   technical fact, drop the resolution framing. A deliberate simplification with a known
+   ceiling — a naive scan that's fine at current sizes, a coarse heuristic, a
+   correct-but-unscalable default — gets a comment naming the ceiling and the upgrade path
+   (`// linear scan; index if the library grows large`), so it reads as a chosen shortcut,
+   not a missed one; unmarked, it invites a later reviewer to either "fix" it back into
+   complexity or flag the absent rationale.
 
 7. **Workarounds**: Flag code that works around a problem rather than solving it (`// HACK`,
    silent catch-and-ignore, feature detection for internal bugs). A justified workaround
@@ -126,24 +131,18 @@ Review all changes in scope. If changes span multiple patterns below, apply all
     apply migrations; destructive actions (delete, revert, reset) confirm; storage failures
     warn rather than silently lose data.
 
-13. **Documentation hygiene** (the docs are maintained artifacts; keep them at altitude):
+13. **Documentation hygiene** (the docs are maintained artifacts; keep them at altitude): - **Self-containment**: documentation and comments must not add pointers that require an
-    - **Self-containment**: documentation and comments must not add pointers that require an
     external repository to follow. Knowledge gets captured locally (`docs/spec/`,
-      `docs/architecture/`), not linked out.
+    `docs/architecture/`), not linked out. - **Matter-of-fact, as rule #6 demands of comments**: docs state _what the design is_ +
-    - **Matter-of-fact, as rule #6 demands of comments**: docs state _what the design is_ +
     the standing _why_, never the build narration (`this bit us`, `we chose X over Y`,
     `resolves the former divergence`, `council resolution recorded`). A decision is recorded
-      by stating its resulting rule, not the story of reaching it.
+    by stating its resulting rule, not the story of reaching it. - **No stale-prone constructs** — three things rot the moment the code moves: - **TS code blocks that copy current implementation.** A snippet mirroring a real
-    - **No stale-prone constructs** — three things rot the moment the code moves:
-      - **TS code blocks that copy current implementation.** A snippet mirroring a real
     module goes stale on its next rename. An illustrative _shape_ sketch is fine; a copy
     of specific current code is a finding — replace it with a navigation map (`file →
-role`) or the rule it demonstrates.
+role`) or the rule it demonstrates. - **Positional sub-section cross-refs.** Cite a doc by a stable identifier — the file
-      - **Positional sub-section cross-refs.** Cite a doc by a stable identifier — the file
     (`spec §07`, `arch 02`) or a named section / quoted rule — never a positional
     sub-section number (`arch 07 §4`) that renumbers when a section is inserted above it.
-        Applies to code comments too.
+    Applies to code comments too. - **Volatile exact counts.** Test counts, file/LOC counts, and one-off timings churn
-      - **Volatile exact counts.** Test counts, file/LOC counts, and one-off timings churn
     daily and read as stale within a week. State the qualitative fact ("seconds of layout
     on a large dataset"), not the measured number. The only homes for exact figures are
     `docs/exploration/` records (frozen by definition) and `docs/codebase-metrics.md` (the

.claude/skills/eng-council/SKILL.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 name: eng-council
-description: Convene the engineering council — an evidence-grounded review of codebase structure, consistency, layering altitude, subtraction (what should be deleted), and documentation altitude. Modes - whole-codebase sweep (milestone boundary or backfill), refactor review, new-functionality review, and a pre-build consult. Auto-invoke only the consult mode - before introducing a new module/store/modal/service/hook shape, ask the council for the canonical shape and what already exists to reuse. All other modes run on demand.
+description: Convene the engineering council — an evidence-grounded review of codebase structure, consistency, layering altitude, subtraction (what should be deleted), and documentation altitude. Modes - whole-codebase sweep (milestone boundary or backfill), refactor review, new-functionality review, and a pre-build consult. Auto-invoke only the consult mode - before introducing a new module/store/modal/service/hook shape, ask the council whether it needs to exist and the laziest rung that meets the need (stdlib/native/already-shipped dep before new code), then the canonical shape and what already exists to reuse. All other modes run on demand.
 disable-model-invocation: false
 ---
 
@@ -109,10 +109,26 @@ not a move-by-move log).
 
 ### Consult — before writing code
 
-The cheapest and most preventive mode; the only one that auto-fires. Before building a
+The cheapest and most preventive mode; the only one that auto-fires. Two questions, in
-new instance of a kind (a modal, store, service, hook, persistence path): line up the
+order, before a line is written.
-existing instances, name the canonical shape, list what already exists to reuse, and flag
+
-what the new work might make deletable. Two paragraphs, no report scaffolding.
+**Does it need to exist — and at what rung?** Stop at the first rung that holds: (1) the
+need is speculative → say so and skip it (YAGNI); (2) stdlib or a language built-in does
+it; (3) a native platform feature covers it — `<input type="date">` over a picker lib, CSS
+over JS, an IndexedDB/DB constraint over app code; (4) an already-shipped dependency solves
+it — Monaco, vega/vega-lite, Zustand are already in the bundle, so never add a dependency,
+or hand-roll, for what one of them or a few lines covers (a new dependency owes the
+justification `/alignment` demands). Only past the rungs is fresh structure earned. Lazy is
+less code, not a flimsier algorithm: between two equal-size options take the one correct on
+edge cases, and never simplify away input validation at trust boundaries, error handling
+that prevents data loss, or accessibility.
+
+**If it must be built — what shape?** Line up the existing instances of the kind (modal,
+store, service, hook, persistence path), name the canonical shape, list what to reuse, and
+flag what the new work might make deletable. An abstraction is earned only by ≥ 2 call
+sites that would use it today (deletion rule 3).
+
+No report scaffolding — these two answers are the output.
 
 ## Report format