open

---

name: open description: USE WHEN the user wants to begin a work container or ceremony: "start my day", "open a milestone", "plan a sprint", "new client", or start a session/week/project/research/brief/skill/experiment/direction/goal/conversation. NOT FOR opening files/URLs/apps, git operations, or "open a PR".

/open Router

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): Route /open requests to one canonical pack under ~/.claude/skills/open/References/. This router owns route resolution, help, the bare menu, and guards; packs own ceremony content.

DECISION BUDGET: open=0 / close=0 for router work; menu navigation excluded; the [R] path has at most one non-menu user decision.

COUNTERPART: the close skill uses the same route tokens and loads the ## CLOSE section from each pack at ~/.claude/skills/open/References/<route>.md.

Terminology: NMIT = Next Most Important Thing. A run is one piece of substantive work with its own folder, ${OPEN_CLOSE_WORK_DIR:-~/work}/<YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS_slug>/ (a milestone's slug is <project>--<milestone>; a project's home is undated, ~/work/<project-slug>/, or its own repository), holding a work contract (CONTRACT.md: goal, criteria, phase, decisions, changelog). The state dir is ${OPEN_CLOSE_STATE_DIR:-~/.claude/open-close}; bridge files between a close and the next open live there.

Route Table

token	aliases	pack path	one-line semantics
day	d, today	~/.claude/skills/open/References/day.md	Start the day: agent review, energy check-in, pickup of yesterday's bridge, sprint check, dated commitments, NMIT, and an offer menu.
session	s, block, work	~/.claude/skills/open/References/session.md	Start a work block from a pre-planned next move, choose NMIT, set focus guardrails, and create a parking lot.
week	w	~/.claude/skills/open/References/week.md	Preview the week with calendar sweep, sprint alignment, glass-ball scan, and week intentions.
sprint	sp	~/.claude/skills/open/References/sprint.md	Gather backlog, select capacity-aware scope, lock Core Focus/do-NOT/dates, and write SPRINT.md.
milestone	m, ms	~/.claude/skills/open/References/milestone.md	Classify the milestone, create its run folder, and write its work contract.
project	p, proj	~/.claude/skills/open/References/project.md	Open project altitude: work-contract home, project-registry stub, goal linkage.
client	c	~/.claude/skills/open/References/client.md	Open a client container: the first open builds organisation, people and client-project surfaces; later opens use the existing frame.
deal	dl	~/.claude/skills/open/References/deal.md	Open the post-discovery sales motion: a written agreement on objectives, measures and value, a deal recap, a stakeholder map when the committee is larger than one, a deal state file, and the proposal by name.
research-project	rp, research	~/.claude/skills/open/References/research-project.md	Start research with a prior-art scan plan, a sequential strategy, and argument-graph placement.
brief	b	~/.claude/skills/open/References/brief.md	Start typed intake with an evidence manifest and a claim check before generation.
conversation	conv, chat	~/.claude/skills/open/References/conversation.md	Minimal open: recall context and capture intent.
skill	sk	~/.claude/skills/open/References/skill.md	Routing-only glue: your skill-authoring workflow's scaffold and validate, then its with-skill against baseline test.
experiment	ex, exp	~/.claude/skills/open/References/experiment.md	Stage hypothesis, prediction, and kill criteria into the argument graph.
direction	dir	~/.claude/skills/open/References/direction.md	Open the seasonal direction loop with review, direction choice, and 1-3 exploration probes.
goal	g, goals	~/.claude/skills/open/References/goal.md	Open a goal: resolve it in your goals file, census its child projects, check its done-condition and capacity, choose status and the next project.

Router Procedure

1. [agent][R] Parse /open <route|alias> [args...]; route tokens and aliases are case-insensitive, and aliases resolve before exact route tokens.
2. [agent][R] If invoked as /open help, show the Route Table and grammar, then end router work.
3. [agent][R] If invoked bare as /open, run the Bare Invocation Menu.
4. [agent][R] If the first token maps to one route, load only ~/.claude/skills/open/References/<route>.md and pass remaining args to that pack.
5. [agent][R] If the token is unknown, run Unknown Token Handling; closest-match suggestion is required and silent fallback is forbidden.
6. [agent][R] Keep this router thin: never copy pack content into the router response.

Bare Invocation Menu

1. [agent][R] Before asking, run bun ~/.claude/skills/open/Tools/context-clues.ts --direction open; it may read local time, day-of-week, <state dir>/work.json, <state dir>/SPRINT.md, and git dirty state.
2. [agent][R] If the clue script errors, is missing, bun is not installed, or it returns no useful ranking, fail open to the fixed grouped menu below, with no preselected option.
3. [USER-DECISION][R] AskUserQuestion Q1: "What kind of thing are you opening?" with single-select tier options, at most four:
   • Daily: day, session, conversation
   • Cadence: week, sprint, direction, goal
   • Engagement: deal, client, milestone, project
   • Meta/craft: research-project, skill, experiment, brief
4. [agent][R] If clues rank a route, move that route's tier to option 1 and suffix the label with "(Recommended)".
5. [USER-DECISION][R] AskUserQuestion Q2: choose the route within the selected tier, single-select only, at most four options.
6. [agent][R] If clues rank a route in the selected tier, move it to option 1 and suffix the label with "(Recommended)".
7. [agent][R] Load the chosen pack from ~/.claude/skills/open/References/<route>.md and pass any original args through unchanged.

Known Redirects

These tokens are known-but-rejected route names. They NEVER fall to fuzzy matching: state the one-line reminder, then run the covering route (or stop, for reminder-only rows).

token	behavior
content	remind "content is covered by brief for now; may become its own route later" then run brief
quarter	remind "quarter folds into the seasonal direction loop" then run direction
practice	remind "practices season-shift via direction; they never open/close (a practice has a liveness, not a done state)" then run direction
area	remind "practices season-shift via direction; they never open/close (a practice has a liveness, not a done state)" then run direction
reading, learning	reminder only, no route: "reading and learning have no open/close; they surface through NMIT"
break, rest	reminder only: "break protocol lives inside session close (park ritual, a break of about 20% of the time worked) and day tiers"

Unknown Token Handling

1. [agent][R] Check Known Redirects first; if there is no match, compare the unknown token against every route token and alias after lowercasing and punctuation cleanup.
2. [agent][R] If one closest match is dominant, show: Unknown /open route "<input>". Did you mean /open <route>? and wait for explicit confirmation before loading a pack.
3. [USER-DECISION][R] If two or more plausible matches tie, ask one AskUserQuestion with those routes; do not choose on the user's behalf.
4. [agent][R] If no plausible match exists, show /open help style route table guidance and end router work.

Guards

1. [agent][R] Altitude-cadence guard: an /open at one rung links upward for context but does not re-litigate higher-rung decisions off-rhythm; higher rungs reconcile at least 3x slower than the rung below.
2. [agent][R] External mirrors are always gated. If you mirror runs or tasks into another tool (an outliner, a task app), the router performs no live write to it; packs describe such a motion and wait for an explicit go. Files in the state dir and the run folder are the source of truth.
3. [agent][R] Lighter tiers trim ceremony scope, never standards: [R] runs fewer steps, not sloppier ones.
4. [agent][R] Open motions hydrate existing context before expanding scope.
5. [agent][R] Use offers, menus, and choice framing for the user.
6. [agent][R] One work contract per run: when an open route creates or resumes a run folder for substantive work (unsure counts as substantive), that folder's CONTRACT.md is the work contract for the rest of the work; creating a second contract for the same work is forbidden.

Cross-Reference

1. [agent][R] Use the close skill for close motions; it shares this route set and the same pack files.
2. [agent][R] If the user asks to close while in the open skill, name the closest close route rather than running an open pack.

Not For

1. [agent][R] Opening files, URLs, apps, editor tabs, browser tabs, or local paths.
2. [agent][R] Git operations, including opening pull requests.
3. [agent][R] Live writes to an external mirror, or schema edits in one.

Gotchas

1. [agent][R] The shared clue script is ~/.claude/skills/open/Tools/context-clues.ts; the close skill calls the same script with --direction close, so keep routing assumptions compatible.
2. [agent][R] Packs are owned by ~/.claude/skills/open/References/; the close skill reads those same files rather than maintaining a second pack copy.
3. [agent][R] Natural-language "open" can mean file/URL/app open; those are outside this skill and should continue through the normal tool path.
4. [agent][R] The route table is operational here; packs can name their own route but should not rebuild the whole table.
5. [agent][R] Missing required pack args are pack-level questions: ask one AskUserQuestion there and keep the router from guessing.