Classifying actions

Skill PanQiWei/board-superpowers/skills/classifying-actions

Use when a board-superpowers SKILL is about to perform a mutating action — changing card status, editing card body, pushing a claim branch, opening or merging a PR, writing project config, writing host-local credentials, deleting a worktree, deleting a branch — and needs to know whether the action proceeds automatically or waits for architect approval. Apply at every mutating-action decision point inside any board-superpowers skill (briefing-daily / intaking-requirement / reviewing-pr-queue / triaging-board / consuming-card / bootstrapping-repo). Apply even when the action looks obviously safe; the decision table is the source of truth, not intuition. Do NOT use for read-only actions or for queries that surface information without changing state. Do NOT invoke for the audit-row write step that follows the decision — that is `board-superpowers:auditing-actions`.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add PanQiWei/board-superpowers --skill classifying-actions

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One thing to look at

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SKILL.md

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classifying-actions

This skill is the decision-table authority for every mutating action a board-superpowers SKILL performs. It answers "does this action proceed automatically or wait for architect approval?" using:

A 14-row Producer matrix + 14-row Consumer catalog (see references/matrix.md + references/action-id-catalog.md).
A 5-step short-circuit triage rule that escalates Auto-class actions to Reserved-class when they touch architect-reserved powers, source of truth, in-flight work, or cross-card structure (see references/triage-rule.md).
A two-layer override system — user-level ~/.board-superpowers/overrides.yml and project-level <repo>/.board-superpowers/config.local.yml — where project layer wins on conflict (see references/override-parsing.md).

Decision tree at a glance

flowchart TD
    Start["Caller: action_id + repo_root"] --> M["Look up default class\nin references/matrix.md"]
    M --> D["Default class: A, R, or N"]
    D --> T{"5-step triage:\nany short-circuit\nmatches?"}
    T -- "yes, default was A" --> Esc["Escalate to R"]
    T -- "yes, default was R" --> KeepR["Already R; no change"]
    T -- no --> Keep["Use matrix default"]
    Esc --> O["bsp_resolve_autonomy_class:\nmerge user + project\nautonomyoverrides\n(project layer wins)"]
    KeepR --> O
    Keep --> O
    O --> Final(["Return final A, R, or N"])

How to apply this skill

Caller passes an action_id (an integer from the catalog) and the repo root. Caller receives back one of:

A — Auto. Caller acts immediately, then writes one audit row.
R — Reserved. Caller drafts a proposal, surfaces to the architect, waits for ack, then acts and writes the resolve audit row.
N — No-go. Caller refuses; surfaces the block reason. (No matrix row currently maps to N; the value exists for autonomy_overrides: users who want to disable specific actions outright.)

The decision algorithm:

Look up the action's default class in references/matrix.md.
Apply the 5-step triage rule from references/triage-rule.md — if any step matches and the matrix says A, escalate to R.
Invoke bsp_resolve_autonomy_class <action_id> <repo_root> (in scripts/lib/common.sh) to merge in any layered overrides.
Return the final class.

The helper handles yaml parsing of the override files via venv-managed PyYAML; if venv is unavailable, the helper falls back to the matrix default (this is conservative — overrides cannot promote R to A without a working venv).

Quick reference

What you have	What you need
an action description	look up its `action_id` in `references/action-id-catalog.md`
an `action_id`	look up its default class in `references/matrix.md`
an Auto-class default	check `references/triage-rule.md` for escalation triggers
an override system question	read `references/override-parsing.md`

What this skill does NOT cover

Writing the audit row — that's board-superpowers:auditing-actions. This skill decides; the other records.
Surfacing the proposal to the architect — that's the molecular caller's UX responsibility (the four Producer routines / consuming-card / bootstrapping-repo).
Tracking proposal acks across architect prompts — that's the caller's session-state responsibility.

This skill defines what class an action is. The caller decides when and how to act on it.