Deck

When to invoke

Invoke when the user references the deck, the methodology, or the workflow — or at session start as a reminder that every user request producing persistent work must flow through Skill(create-card) → Skill(advance-card) → Skill(finish-card). XP-style story cards on a kanban board, designed for AI-agent collaborators.

The Deck

deck/ is the project's work-tracking surface. Each subdirectory is one card: a unit of work — bug, story, epic, idea, derivation gap, doc-drift catch — with frontmatter-driven status on a kanban board.

The deck is the runtime of the human's intent, not a ceremony they opt into: rigor (machine-checkable DoDs, audit-trail commits, supersession chains) is separated from visibility (zero by default). The user sees the code, not the bookkeeping, unless they ask.

Background and rationale live in reference.md — a sibling file in this skill's directory. Read the named section only when the situation actually calls for it:

Situation	reference.md section
Why XP/Scrum/Kanban discipline is load-bearing for agent swarms	Heritage & philosophy
Why card operations stay invisible; full operating-mode prose	Game of Cards as the runtime
Why the methodology is named Game of Cards	The worldview
New evidence after a card closed	Closure is not frozenness
How status / waiting_on / human_gate compose	Status, overlay, and gate are orthogonal axes
Pre-2026-05-01 placeholder DoDs; v1 find-todo/work-todo names	Migration legacy

Three operating modes

• Session mode. A human is talking. Claude runs the card pipeline silently while answering; card operations are NEVER announced unless the user explicitly asks to see the deck.
• Autonomous mode. No human is steering. Skill(pull-card) runs on a loop or schedule, draining the human_gate: none queue; Skill(audit-deck) keeps the queue fed on a slower cadence.
• Andon-cord mode. A human is unblocking the line: pull-card parked a card behind a raised gate; Skill(scan-deck) surfaces parked cards, Skill(decide-card) records the answer and lowers the gate, the next pull resumes the work.

Multiple sessions work cards in parallel. status: active is the soft lock; git's merge handles the rare simultaneous-claim race (whichever commits first wins).

What this looks like in practice

Session mode (silent runtime). When the user asks for persistent work — "rename the button to Export", "add a CSV export", "fix the auth bug" — run the GoC pipeline silently:

1. Check the deck — does a card already cover this? (goc --tag <topic>)
2. If not, file a card: goc new <kebab-title> and edit the body.
3. Claim it: goc status <title> active.
4. Implement.
5. Close: goc done <title>, then commit the work and closure.

Card operations are NEVER announced — the user sees the code, not the bookkeeping. No-card exceptions (zero work, no card): exploration ("explain X", "why is Y this way?"), one-shot tooling ("git status", "rebase this"), course-corrections inside an active card.

Autonomous mode. Before recommending or claiming new work, agents check goc --status active and treat listed cards as already-claimed soft locks. The pull principle is what makes this safe: work isn't pushed at agents on a timer; agents pull on their own terms, filtered to gate=none. The human steers by curating WHAT'S in the queue and at what gate.

Andon-cord path. When a human asks "what's up?" / "where do you need me?", surface parked cards (oldest-first, with ## Decision required body section preview). Decision recorded → gate lowered with goc decide <title> --decision "..." --because "..." → next pull-card claims and implements per the recorded decision.

Daily CLI verbs

Verb	What it does
goc	Show the open queue (value-sorted).
goc --board	Multi-column kanban view. A ⏳ after an open card's [contribution] marker flags any of three signals: human_gate != none (parked for a human — not pullable), an active impediment overlay (waiting_on / future waiting_until — not pullable), or an advisory derived dependency-block (a non-terminal advanced_by prereq — still pullable, just flagged as "has an open upstream"). Only the first two hide a card from pull-card / next-card / goc --ready; a dependency-block does not. So ⏳ ⇏ unpullable — check the cause.
goc --closed-since 7d	Recently closed cards (any terminal status).
goc new <title>	Scaffold a new card under .game-of-cards/deck/<title>/.
goc status <title> <state>	Flip status (open/active/disproved/superseded).
goc wait <title> --reason <r> [--until <date>]	Set the impediment overlay for exogenous waits; --clear to drop it.
goc done <title>	Close + DoD enforcement (no auto-commit).
goc decide <title> --decision X --because Y	Lower gate from decision/session → none.
goc validate	Validate every card's frontmatter (pre-commit-friendly).

Run goc --help for the full verb list. Schema and enum constraints surface in goc validate error messages. Project-local tag extensions live in .game-of-cards/canonical-tags.md.

The deck layout

deck/
  SCHEMA.md                 # canonical schema (frontmatter IS the schema)
  README.md                 # navigation + conventions
  deck.py                   # CLI; computes filtered views from frontmatter
  <title>/                   # one dir per card; never moves on state change
    README.md               # frontmatter + dashboard body — latest knowledge + current state
    log.md                  # append-only journal — history, details, decisions, flow
    reproduce.py            # OPTIONAL — declared in DoD when present
    [other validation scripts]

One title, one directory, forever. Status changes mutate frontmatter, not paths.

Two files, two edit disciplines: the README is the dashboard (rewritten in place as understanding evolves so a cold reader sees only what is true now); log.md is the append-only journal (history, details, decisions, and flow preserved verbatim, never rewritten). See Skill(card-schema)'s "What goes where" subsection for the routing rule.

Lifecycle

   open ──→ active ──→ done (terminal, DoD-100% required)
    │
    ├──→ disproved (terminal; body documents rebuttal)
    └──→ superseded (terminal; typed `superseded_by` → successor,
                     rationale appended to log.md)

open is the queue. active claims the work. done, disproved, and superseded are all terminal — none deletes the directory; the forensic record stays.

A card that is temporarily not workable does not move to a separate status; the three-axis model expresses it as either derived dependency-readiness (an advances prereq is still open and shows as "awaiting" in the queue, advisory only) or the stored impediment overlay (waiting_on + optional waiting_until, set via goc wait, hides the card from the ready queue until cleared or the date elapses). See Skill(card-schema) "Three-axis 'stuck' model" for the full contract. Closed cards stay amendable, and the three axes are orthogonal — reference.md § Closure is not frozenness and § Status, overlay, and gate are orthogonal axes.

The action skills

One skill per job; compose, don't bundle.

• Skill(scan-deck) — browse the deck. Triage default surfaces parked cards (gate ≠ none); also filtered queues, kanban board, JSON dump, and the "decisions to make" Q&A flow. Read-only by default; the Q&A mode calls Skill(decide-card) per answer.
• Skill(next-card) — auto-pick the highest-leverage open gate=none card to work on next. Read-only; does NOT flip status.
• Skill(create-card) — file a new card with proper frontmatter and a DoD scaffold (reproduce.py is authored by hand for bug-class cards, not scaffolded by the tool).
• Skill(advance-card) — flip status (open→active, *→open, *→disproved, *→superseded) and manage the waiting_on impediment overlay (goc wait). Wraps goc status and goc wait. Status + overlay only — human_gate is decide-card's responsibility.
• Skill(decide-card) — the human's Andon-cord lowering action. Records <decision> + <because> on a parked card and flips gate decision/session → none. Status stays open so the next pull-card claims and implements per the recorded decision.
• Skill(finish-card) — close a card: tick DoD, append closure log, run goc done <title>, then run any project-specific post-close or commit handoff defined by the consuming repo's hook.
• Skill(card-schema) — schema reference (read-only): required fields, enums, canonical tags with predicates, DoD detection, relationship invariants.
• Skill(refine-deck) — hygiene pass: retag stale cards, prune unverified parks, surface cards citing defunct file:lines, propose new canonical tags.
• Skill(audit-deck) — discovery: hunt for one previously-undocumented defect / derivation gap / doc drift / missing test. Files via Skill(create-card).
• Skill(standup) — daily read: active + impeded cards (those carrying a waiting_on overlay), closures since yesterday, cards waiting on a human decision gate.
• Skill(retrospective) — backwards analysis of the last N closed cards: cluster by tag, surface recurring failure modes, propose generalization candidates.