Improve workflow

Skill hackersandwizards/artificer/plugins/build-workflow/skills/improve-workflow

An artificer's kit for building minimal dark-factories on Claude Code. Compose small, gated agent steps into deterministic builds you can read end to end.

Install

npx -y skills add hackersandwizards/artificer --skill improve-workflow

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

15 stars15 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Run a dynamic workflow on a real input, observe it without flooding context, verify its assumptions (gates fire, structured returns thread and branch, parallel stages overlap), then turn what you learn into edits to the workflow, its agents and skills, and the build-workflow generator that produced it. Use after generating or changing a workflow, or to dogfood and harden any Claude Code dynamic workflow.

SKILL.md

3.0 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Work in the main context; do not fork. This loop drives the Workflow tool, a Monitor, and task notifications, which only the main loop can orchestrate (a subagent cannot spawn subagents).

Input: $ARGUMENTS is the workflow name followed by a concrete input to run it on.

1. Run

Start any precondition the workflow assumes (for example npm run dev for a stage that drives the browser) and confirm it is up before launching.
Launch the workflow with the Workflow tool, passing the concrete input as args. Keep the transcript dir and runId from the result.
If the workflow launches freshly generated agents by agentType, reload first. A mid-session agent file does not register: agent({agentType}) resolves against the registry frozen at session start.

2. Observe without flooding context

Arm a tree-change Monitor for a stage-by-stage play-by-play: poll git status --short and emit when the changed-file set changes.
Read <transcript-dir>/journal.jsonl. It maps each agentId to its started and result records and holds each stage's return value, so it is the spine of the run.
For stage detail, grep the per-stage agent-*.jsonl. Never read one whole: a subagent transcript is the full conversation and overflows context.

3. Verify the assumptions

Gates fire: grep transcripts for gate not satisfied. A passing gate is silent, so absence proves nothing. To prove a gate fires, catch a stage that stops while its gate is unsatisfied, or run a throwaway probe agent whose gate appends to a log file (always exit 0 so it cannot loop), and reload so its agentType resolves.
Structured returns thread and branch: read the verdict objects in the journal and confirm the workflow looped or broke on them as intended.
Parallel stages overlap: in the journal, two stages show started before either shows result.
The end state is real: run the check the workflow claims to enforce against the working tree.

4. Diagnose

For anything that did not progress as intended, trace it to the exact stage, agent, or workflow line, reading that one transcript with targeted greps.

5. Improve and propagate

Fix the workflow, its agents, and its skills.
Lift every general lesson into the build-workflow generator templates, so the next workflow it scaffolds embodies the fix instead of repeating the mistake.
Re-run to confirm, then discard drill artifacts unless a commit stage recorded them on purpose.