Next skills

/next-skills

Next Skills (NSP) answers the question a skill leaves open: what now? When a participating skill finishes, NSP reads that skill's declared successors and surfaces them — each with an activation phrase and a short reason — for the caller to choose from. The caller (a human, or another agent) picks; nothing auto-runs.

NSP is invoked two ways: automatically, when a skill carrying the NSP opt-in block completes; or directly, as /next-skills <skill> to preview a skill's declared successors.

Structured execution spec: protocol.yon. It carries the three steps and the offer-only / empty-silent / loop-safe rules as validatable records; this file is the explanation. Keep the two in sync — edit one, update the other and refresh the @STAMP date.

The protocol — three steps

1. Read. Take the just-finished skill's next-skills: front-matter list. Each entry has a skill, a phrase (its activation phrase), and a why (one line: why it might be useful next). If the list is absent or empty, stop silently — NSP surfaces nothing.
2. Surface. Present the recommendations for the caller to pick (runtime-mapped, below). Recommendations are offered, never auto-invoked.
3. Activate. On the caller's pick, activate the chosen skill(s) via their activation phrase. On no pick, end quietly.

Surface step — runtime mapping

• Claude Code → AskUserQuestion (multiSelect). One option per recommendation: the label is the skill name, the description is its why. The user may pick one, several, or none ("Other" / dismiss always declines).
• Codex, or any runtime without a structured-question tool → present a numbered prose list, each line N. <phrase> — <why>, and wait for the caller's reply.

The Read and Activate steps are runtime-agnostic.

Data contract

The next-skills: front-matter field on a participating skill is canonical:

next-skills:
  - skill: insight-assess
    phrase: "/assess"
    why: "Evaluate the options you just generated and pick one"

Any prose ## Next steps section in a skill is derived/explanatory — keep it for nuance the flat list cannot carry. Recommendations are unconditional offers: a flat list cannot encode "if verdict X". A skill whose successors are conditional (e.g. insight-assess recommends /plan-create only if the verdict is PROCEED) keeps that nuance in its prose section; the why field may hint the condition ("…if the plan is sound").

Loop safety

Recommendations are offered, never auto-invoked — the caller gates every hop. NSP therefore cannot chain A → B → A autonomously; a ping-pong would require the user to choose it each time. This is NSP's equivalent of COP's depth guard. NSP also never blocks: if a skill declares no successors, or the next-skills skill is itself unavailable, the skill completes normally.

Lifecycle position

NSP and Caller Options (COP) hook opposite ends of a skill invocation and never conflict: COP runs before execution (it routes venue/mode), NSP runs after (it recommends successors). A skill may carry both opt-in blocks; they are independent.

The opt-in block

A skill joins NSP by adding (1) the front-matter field, (2) a prose pointer in SKILL.md, and — for dual-doc skills — (3) a closing @STEP in protocol.yon. Per-skill front-matter is canonical. Unlike COP's pointer (placed near the top, since COP runs before the skill), the NSP pointer goes at the end of the skill — NSP runs on completion.

1. Front-matter field

Add a next-skills: list (see Data contract above). It is metadata — the harness does not execute it; it is read by NSP, by audit tooling, and by humans.

2. SKILL.md prose block

Paste at the end of the SKILL.md body, as the last section:

Next skills. On completion, run the Next Skills protocol (next-skills/SKILL.md): surface the next-skills recommendations from front-matter for the caller to pick. Offer only — never auto-invoke.

3. protocol.yon @STEP (dual-doc skills only)

Insert as the last @STEP, after the skill's own steps:

@STEP rid=step:nsp | n:int=99 | op=std:ai.prompt@v1 | args=[task="Run the Next Skills protocol: surface the next-skills front-matter recommendations for the caller to pick. Offer only; never auto-invoke. Skip silently if the next-skills list is empty."] | in=[] | out=[ref:nsp-offer]

Use n:int=99 (or any number after the skill's last real step) so NSP stays last. Refresh the @STAMP date when adding it.

Graceful degradation

If the next-skills skill is missing, unlinked, or unreadable, the opt-in block is a no-op — the participating skill completes normally with no recommendations surfaced. NSP never blocks a skill from finishing.

Standalone use

/next-skills <skill> reads a named skill's next-skills: field and previews its declared successors without that skill having run — useful for inspecting or smoke-testing the chain.

Boundary

Not caller-options — COP routes a single invocation's venue and mode before it runs. Not skills-help — that is the static library menu. NSP recommends successor skills after one completes.