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

---
name: eng-council
description: Convene the engineering council — an evidence-grounded review of codebase structure, consistency, layering altitude, and subtraction (what should be deleted). 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.
disable-model-invocation: false
---

# Engineering Council

The structural counterpart to `/council`. The design council guards what the user sees;
the engineering council guards the shape of the codebase — structure, consistency,
altitude, and above all **net growth**. `/alignment` reviews a diff in isolation and can't
see cross-cutting drift: parallel patterns forming, near-duplicate helpers, modules
outgrowing their responsibility. This skill exists to see that whole picture.

**Seats are evidence lenses, not personas.** The design council works because every seat
quotes a real corpus. There is no external canon for software structure, so a seat here is
defined by _what it measures and lines up_ — different seats run different queries over
the codebase. A seat that produces an opinion without evidence (file:line, tool output, or
a side-by-side of instances) has not spoken.

## The deletion rules (output format, non-negotiable)

LLMs accrete code; aspirational "prefer removal" instructions wash out. So the bias is
encoded in the report format instead:

1. **Every finding states its estimated net LOC delta** (e.g. `−120`, `+15`). The report
   ends with the total if all findings were accepted.
2. **"Remove" is a mandatory report section.** It may be empty, but emptiness must be
   argued ("knip clean, no single-implementation abstractions found"), not skipped.
3. **Any proposal that adds an abstraction must name ≥ 2 existing call sites** that would
   use it _today_. No speculative generality.
4. **A refactor that adds a new way to do something already done elsewhere is a finding,
   not progress** — even if the new way is better, until the old instances are migrated
   and the old way deleted.

## The seats

Run **sequentially, in this order, in this session** — no subagent fan-out. Later seats
consume earlier findings (Subtraction needs Consistency's verdict on which variant is
canonical before deciding which duplicate dies).

| Seat            | Question                                            | Evidence it gathers                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Structure**   | Is the dependency picture still the documented one? | `npx madge --circular --extensions ts,tsx src` (cycles); `npx madge --json src` for fan-in/fan-out outliers; grep for layer leaks (`docs/architecture/00-overview.md` defines the layers — core imports nothing from app; only infrastructure touches browser APIs). Oversized modules: files ≫ their peers' size doing > 1 job. |
| **Consistency** | How many shapes does each _kind_ of thing have?     | Line up all instances of a kind (modals, stores, services, hooks, confirm flows, persistence subscribers) side by side. Count distinct shapes; name the canonical one; list divergers. Divergence is only visible in the line-up — never judge an instance alone.                                                                |
| **Altitude**    | Is logic at the layer where it's cheapest to test?  | Testable logic stuck in components that belongs in `src/core/` or stores (the testing philosophy in `AGENTS.md` is the canon: core hardest, components lightest). Spec operations outside core. Duplicated derivations that should be a store selector.                                                                          |
| **Subtraction** | What can be deleted?                                | `npx knip` (dead exports, unused files/deps); `npx jscpd src --min-tokens 50` (duplication); grep for abstractions with a single implementation, re-implementations of an existing utility, props/options/branches no caller exercises, spec'd-then-abandoned remnants. Consumes all prior seats' findings.                      |

Tool notes: `madge`, `knip`, `jscpd` are **not** project dependencies — run via `npx`,
treat output as evidence, not verdict (knip false-positives on entry points and dynamic
imports; verify a symbol is truly dead before deleting). If a tool fails or is
unavailable, the seat still sits — grep is the fallback evidence.

## Modes

Pick the mode from what's in front of you; say which mode is running.

### Sweep — whole codebase

For: milestone boundaries, the one-off backfill, "how healthy are we?" on demand.
**Never on a schedule.** Scope: all of `src/` (+ `styles/` for the Structure seat). All
four seats. Output: the full report (format below) **plus a metrics snapshot row**
appended to `docs/codebase-metrics.md` (create on first sweep):

```
| date | src files | src LOC | core LOC | app LOC | deps | knip dead exports | jscpd dup % |
```

The trend line is the point — accretion becomes visible instead of felt.

### Refactor review

For: a landed or in-progress refactor (`git diff` / `git diff --staged`). Scope: changed
files **plus their one-hop import neighborhood** (importers and imports) — drift is only
visible relative to neighbors. Seats: Consistency and Subtraction always; Structure if
imports moved. Center question: did this refactor _reduce_ the number of shapes, or add
variant N+1? (Deletion rule 4 applies with full force.)

### New-functionality review

For: a new feature in the diff. Scope: changed files + one-hop neighborhood. Seats:
Consistency (does it follow the canonical shape for its kind?), Altitude (is the logic in
core/stores, not the component?), Subtraction (does it re-implement an existing utility?
does every prop/option/branch have a caller?), Structure if a new module or dependency
appeared (a new dependency needs the same justification `/alignment` demands).

### Consult — before writing code

The cheapest and most preventive mode; the only one that auto-fires. Before building a
new instance of a kind (a modal, store, service, hook, persistence path): line up the
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.

## Report format

For sweep and review modes:

1. **Verdict** — two or three sentences: overall shape, the one thing to act on first.
2. **Findings** — per seat, each finding: `file:line`, the evidence, the proposed fix,
   net LOC delta. Skip seats with nothing to say in one line, not zero.
3. **Remove** — the mandatory section (deletion rule 2).
4. **Net delta** — total LOC delta if all findings were accepted.
5. **Rules discovered** — recurring patterns worth making law (see Close the loop).

**Fix vs. propose:** mechanical, behavior-preserving removals (dead exports, unused files,
unreferenced props) — fix directly, keep `npm run typecheck` + `npm test` green.
Structural findings (merge two shapes, move logic across layers, kill an abstraction) —
propose with the evidence; they're the user's call. Out-of-scope observations get a
`// TODO:` breadcrumb at the code site, same rule as `/alignment`.

## Close the loop

A council that re-finds the same drift every sweep has failed. When a finding reveals a
_recurring_ rule (not a one-off): capture it into the relevant `docs/architecture/` doc
via `/doc-update`, and if it's checkable in a diff, **add it as a numbered check to
`/alignment`** so pointwise review enforces it from then on. The council discovers
systemic rules; `/alignment` keeps them honest. Sweeps should get quieter over time —
that, plus the metrics trend, is how you know it's working.