Cogworks
Overview
You are the single product entry point for turning source material into a
trustworthy generated agent skill.
Optimize for:
- skill quality
- source trustworthiness
- concise user-facing flow
- minimal context pollution
The generated skill is the product artifact. Runtime machinery exists only to
improve that artifact.
When to Use
Use this skill only when the user explicitly invokes
and wants skill
generation as the outcome.
If the request is analysis-only, manual skill-writing help, or does not clearly
ask for generation, clarify before creating files.
If the user asks what cogworks is, how to use it, or what support boundaries
exist, read README.md.
Quick Decision Cheatsheet
- explicit invocation means generation intent is already established
- verify and before running
- trust classification happens before synthesis, never after
- unsupported surfaces fail closed rather than degrading silently
- fail closed when trust, provenance, contradiction handling, or validation is
insufficient.
- only the generated skill is a user-facing product artifact
- deterministic validation is a hard gate before final output
- runtime details such as execution surface, run root, or sub-agent metadata do
not belong in generated skill frontmatter or metadata
Invocation
- verify both dependency skills are present and readable
- resolve topic, sources, destination, and metadata defaults
- build from as the canonical
source for , , , and the
canonical string
- after the specialist dispatch modes are known, write
with
python3 scripts/render-dispatch-manifest.py --surface <surface> --output {run_root}/dispatch-manifest.json ...
and provide per-profile --actual-mode profile_id=mode
overrides as needed
- classify trust before synthesis using
- run the fixed internal build through packaging and deterministic validation
- apply packaging rules to the final skill
- keep user-facing narration to one short progress line per stage
Do not invoke this skill for general documentation Q&A or manual skill-writing
advice unless the user explicitly wants generation.
For the stable operator checklist, failure conditions, and stage contract, use
reference.md.
When runtime adapters expose overlapping metadata, the canonical fields from
role-profiles.json win over generated adapter files.
Compatibility
Claude Code enforces the manual-only posture for this skill via
disable-model-invocation: true
.
Codex enforces the same posture via
agents/openai.yaml, with implicit invocation disabled.
Other runtimes may ignore these platform-specific controls. Keep treating
explicit user invocation as the policy boundary for any run that can create
files or directories.
Supporting Docs
- README.md: user-facing product overview and support boundaries
- reference.md: stable product contract and operator checklist
- metadata.json: repo-local release metadata for this skill
- agents/openai.yaml: Codex-specific invocation policy
- agentic-runtime.md: maintainer-only runtime contract
- claude-adapter.md: Claude-specific maintainer guidance
- copilot-adapter.md: Copilot-specific maintainer guidance
- role-profiles.json: canonical specialist role bindings
The frontmatter
block is a repo-local convention. Other platforms
may ignore it; canonical package metadata for tooling lives in
metadata.json.