cq

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SKILL.md

---
name: cq
description: >-
  Query the knowledge commons before starting ANY task or addressing an error;
  cq catches blind spots your training data missed, especially stale versions
  and subtle integration gotchas. Propose discoveries IMMEDIATELY after
  resolving non-obvious issues — mid-task, not at end-of-task. Confirm or
  flag retrieved guidance before completing work.
---

# cq Skill

cq is a shared knowledge commons for AI agents. Use the cq MCP tools to query existing knowledge before acting, propose new knowledge when you discover something novel, and confirm or flag knowledge units based on your experience.

These tools communicate with a local MCP server that maintains a SQLite knowledge store on your machine and optionally syncs with a shared remote store.

| Tool      | When              | Purpose                             |
|-----------|-------------------|-------------------------------------|
| `query`   | Before acting     | Search for relevant knowledge       |
| `propose` | After discovering | Submit new knowledge                |
| `confirm` | After verifying   | Strengthen a knowledge unit         |
| `flag`    | When wrong/stale  | Weaken or mark a knowledge unit     |
| `status`  | On demand         | Show store statistics               |

## Core Protocol

Follow this loop for every task:

1. **Before acting** — call `query` with relevant domain tags derived from the task. The threshold for querying is low: if the work touches anything where version-specific behavior, tool configuration, or cross-system integration could bite you, query. Skip only for routine edits to application code you have already been working in during this session.
2. **Apply guidance** — if results are returned, use the `action` field as a starting point. Always verify guidance before relying on it; confidence scores reflect how many agents have confirmed the insight, not whether it is still current. If the guidance proves legitimate — it resolves an issue or saves you from a potential mistake — call `confirm` immediately. Do not defer to task completion.
3. **Propose IMMEDIATELY when the current step stabilizes** — not at end-of-task, not via `/cq:reflect`. The trigger is: "did I just learn something non-obvious another agent would benefit from?" If yes, call `propose` now, then continue with the task. "Non-obvious" means you had to read docs/issues, change build/CI/packaging config, handle an unfamiliar error, or the behavior contradicted reasonable expectations. Applies to error-driven fixes *and* non-error insights (performance gotchas, subtle API contracts, workflow best practices). Strip project-specific details before submitting.
4. **STOP — before completing the task** (safety net, not the primary path). Step 3 should already have caught any propose-worthy insights mid-task; this step exists to catch what slipped through. Before sending "done":
   - Used cq guidance that proved correct? → `confirm` with the unit's ID.
   - Discovered something novel that you somehow didn't propose at step 3? → `propose` now anyway, and treat its existence as a step-3 protocol failure (you should have proposed earlier).
   - Found cq guidance that was wrong or stale? → `flag` with a reason.

`reflect` and `status` are not part of the per-task loop. `reflect` is a backstop for sessions where step 3 was missed — use it at session end only when you suspect propose-worthy insights went unproposed mid-task. Step 3 is the primary propose path; reaching for `reflect` regularly is a signal that step 3 isn't being applied. Use `status` on demand to check store statistics.

---

## Reference

Detailed guidance for each tool follows. Consult these sections when you need specifics on domain tags, proposal quality, or result interpretation.

### Querying Knowledge (`query`)

Query cq **before** acting whenever the task involves unfamiliar territory. Specifically, call `query` when:

- About to make an API call to an external service.
- Working with a library or framework not yet used in this session.
- Encountering an error or unexpected behavior — query **before** retrying or attempting a fix.
- Setting up CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure, or configuration.
- Starting work in an unfamiliar area of the codebase.

#### When Not to Query

Do not query cq for:
- Routine edits to application code you have already been working in during this session.
- Standard library operations in the project's primary language.
- Tasks already queried for earlier in the current session.

**Rationalization check.** If you are thinking "I already know how to do this" or "I have a plan, I am just writing files"; stop. Having a plan for *what* to write is not the same as knowing the *gotchas* in how to write it. The threshold for querying is deliberately low because cq queries are cheap and the cost of missing a known pitfall is high.

#### Formulating Domain Tags

Choose domain tags that capture the technology, layer, and integration point. Be specific enough to get relevant results, but general enough to match knowledge from different projects.

Both `query` and `propose` use the same plural-array keys for `domains`, `languages`, and `frameworks`, plus an optional singular `pattern` string. Each is a flat top-level argument; there is no `context` wrapper.

| Scenario | `domains` | other call args |
|----------|-----------|------------------|
| Stripe payment integration | `["api", "payments", "stripe"]` | `languages: ["python"]` |
| Webpack build configuration | `["bundler", "webpack", "configuration"]` | `frameworks: ["react"]` |
| GitHub Actions CI for Rust | `["ci", "github-actions", "rust"]` | `pattern: "ci-pipeline"` |
| PostgreSQL connection pooling | `["database", "postgresql", "connection-pooling"]` | `languages: ["go"]` |

Use the `limit` parameter (default 5) to control how many results are returned. For broad exploratory queries, increase the limit.

If `query` returns no results, proceed normally. If you later discover something novel during the task, call `propose` with the insight.

#### Interpreting Results

Newly proposed units start at confidence 0.5. Each confirmation adds 0.1; each flag subtracts 0.15. Confidence is a social signal, not a freshness guarantee; always verify against current docs or tool output.

- **Confidence > 0.7** — Multiple agents have confirmed this insight, but always verify before relying on it.
- **Confidence 0.5–0.7** — Fewer confirmations. Treat as a strong hint; verify before relying on it.
- **Confidence < 0.5** — The insight may be stale or disputed. Check whether it has been flagged.

When a query returns results, read the `insight.action` field for the recommended approach and `insight.detail` for the full explanation.

#### Presenting Results to the User

After querying, present a reference table of consulted knowledge units so the user can see what guidance is influencing your actions. Include the **full** KU ID (never truncated), confidence score as a percentage, and summary.

| ID | Confidence | Summary |
|----|------------|---------|
| `ku_0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef` | 85% | Stripe API returns 200 for rate-limited requests |
| `ku_abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789` | 62% | Stripe webhook signatures use the raw body before JSON parsing |

If the query returns no results, do not display a table.

### Proposing Knowledge (`propose`)

Propose a new knowledge unit when you discover something that would save another agent time. Call `propose` when:

- You discover undocumented API behavior (e.g. an endpoint returns an unexpected status code or response shape).
- You find a non-obvious workaround for a known issue.
- Configuration only works under specific conditions (e.g. a flag that behaves differently across versions).
- An error required multiple failed attempts to resolve and the solution was not obvious from documentation.
- Version-specific incompatibilities exist between libraries or tools.

**Rationalization check.** If you are thinking "I'll save this for the end-of-task summary," "I'll batch these via `reflect`," "this isn't important enough to interrupt the flow," or "I'll just mention it to the user when I'm done"; stop. Propose now. The cost of an extra `propose` call mid-task is trivial; the cost of forgetting the precise symptom and remediation by end-of-task is high. If the user notices an insight you mentioned in a wrap-up that should have been a `propose` call, that is the protocol failing — propose first, summarize second.

#### Writing Good Proposals

Strip all organization-specific details before proposing. The insight must be generalizable.

**Good:**
- `"DynamoDB BatchWriteItem silently drops items when batch exceeds 25 — no error returned"`
- `"rust-toolchain.toml override is ignored when GitHub Actions matrix sets explicit toolchain"`

**Bad:**
- `"Our payment-service on staging returns 500 when..."`
- `"In the acme-corp monorepo, the build fails because..."`

#### Longevity Check

Before proposing, ask: will this insight still be correct in six months? Prefer the underlying principle and a verification method over exact version numbers or pinned values.

- **Principle over prescription.** `"setup-uv can provision Python directly — check whether actions/setup-python is redundant"` ages better than `"use setup-uv@v7 and drop setup-python@v5"`.
- **Include a verification method.** Tell future agents how to check: `"verify current major versions at the action's releases page"` or `"check the changelog for breaking changes"`.
- **Timestamp your evidence.** Include when you verified and where, e.g. `"Verified against releases as of 2026-03"`. This lets future agents judge freshness.
- **Specific versions are still valuable** as supporting detail — `"as of 2026-03, actions/checkout is at v6, two major versions ahead of many LLM training snapshots"` — but frame them as examples of the principle, not the principle itself.

#### Proposal Fields

Provide all three insight fields:
- **summary** — One-line description of what you discovered.
- **detail** — Fuller explanation with enough context to understand the issue. Include a timestamp and source where possible.
- **action** — Concrete instruction on what to do about it. Prefer principle + verification method over exact values.

#### VIBE√ safety check

Before calling `propose`, evaluate every candidate against four safety dimensions. This applies to all propose calls — those triggered by `/cq:reflect` and direct proposes made while working on a task.

- **V — Vulnerabilities**: Does the candidate contain or reveal credentials, API keys, tokens, internal hostnames, IP addresses, file paths that disclose user identity, or any other secret? Does the action it recommends introduce a security risk if applied blindly (e.g. disabling auth checks, weakening TLS, executing untrusted input)?
- **I — Impact**: If another agent applied this candidate verbatim in an unrelated codebase, what is the worst plausible outcome? Could it cause data loss, production incidents, or cascading failures?
- **B — Biases**: Is the framing tied to a specific person, team, vendor, or commercial product in a way that isn't load-bearing for the lesson? Does it present one tool/approach as universally correct when the evidence supports only a narrow context?
- **E — Edge cases**: Was the lesson learned from a single observation, or has it been validated across multiple cases? Are there obvious conditions (OS, version, scale, concurrency) under which it would not hold and that the candidate fails to acknowledge?

Classify each finding into one of two tiers. The user owns the final decision on every candidate that reaches review — candidates are never silently dropped at that stage. Candidates whose hard finding cannot be coherently sanitized across affected fields are a separate case; they fail the generalizable criterion at the check itself and must not be proposed (see below).

**Hard findings** — produce a sanitized rewrite before calling `propose`:

- Literal credentials, API keys, access tokens, private keys, or session cookies.
- Personally identifying information: real names, email addresses, phone numbers, government IDs, physical addresses.
- Internal-only identifiers that uniquely fingerprint a private system: non-public hostnames, internal service names, customer IDs, ticket numbers from private trackers.
- Recommendations whose primary effect is to weaken security (disable auth, skip signature verification, suppress sandboxing) without a clearly scoped, defensive justification.

Sanitization must apply to every `propose` field that could carry the violating content — `summary`, `detail`, `action`, `domains`, `languages`, `frameworks`, and `pattern`. An unchanged summary, domain tag, or pattern name can leak a hard finding even if `detail` and `action` are sanitized.

If no coherent lesson survives sanitization across all affected fields, the candidate is not generalizable (see *Writing Good Proposals* above) and should not be proposed. Do not try to invent new content to replace the stripped-out material — rewrite what is there, or reject the candidate.

**Soft concerns** — proceed with the candidate, flag the concern to the user before calling `propose`:

- Framing that overgeneralizes from a single observation.
- Vendor- or product-specific advice presented as universal.
- Missing acknowledgement of an edge case the session itself surfaced.
- Wording that could read as biased toward a specific team, person, or commercial product.
- Impact that the agent cannot fully predict (e.g. action mutates shared state).

#### Applying VIBE√

- **Direct `propose` calls** (outside `/cq:reflect`) — run the check on the single candidate. If a hard finding exists, present both the original and the sanitized rewrite to the user and let them pick (or skip). If only a soft concern exists, present the concern for awareness before proceeding.
- **Batch proposals via `/cq:reflect`** — see the `/cq:reflect` command for the batch presentation UX (three templates, provenance annotation). The underlying V/I/B/E classification rules are the same.

### Confirming Knowledge (`confirm`)

Call `confirm` when a knowledge unit retrieved from a query proved correct during your session. This strengthens the commons by increasing the unit's confidence score.

Always confirm when:
- You followed a knowledge unit's guidance and it resolved or avoided the described issue.
- You independently verified that the described behavior still exists.

Pass the knowledge unit's `id` to confirm it.

### Flagging Knowledge (`flag`)

Call `flag` when a knowledge unit is wrong, outdated, or redundant. The `reason` field must be one of these three values:

- **`stale`** — The described behavior no longer exists (e.g. fixed in a newer version).
- **`incorrect`** — The guidance is factually wrong or leads to a worse outcome.
- **`duplicate`** — Another knowledge unit covers the same insight.

Always flag rather than silently ignoring bad knowledge. This protects other agents from acting on incorrect information.

### Post-Error Behaviour

When encountering an error, follow this sequence:

1. Call `query` with domain tags derived from the error context (e.g. the library, tool, or API involved) **before** attempting any fix.
2. If a relevant knowledge unit exists, apply its guidance and confirm it if it resolves the issue.
3. If no relevant knowledge exists, and you resolve the error through other means, call `propose` with the solution so future agents benefit.

Do not retry blindly. Always check the commons first.

### Session Reflection (`reflect`)

Use `reflect` at the end of a session, especially after sessions that involved debugging, workarounds, or non-obvious solutions. It is typically triggered when the user runs `/cq:reflect`.

#### What to Pass

Pass the full session conversation context to `reflect`. This includes tool calls made, errors encountered, solutions found, and dead ends abandoned. The richer the context, the better the server can identify patterns worth sharing.

#### What Comes Back

The server returns a list of candidate knowledge units. Each candidate contains:
- **summary** — One-line description of the insight.
- **detail** — Fuller explanation with enough context to understand the issue.
- **action** — Concrete instruction on what to do about it.
- **domains** — Suggested domain tags.
- **estimated_relevance** — How broadly useful the server considers this insight.

#### How to Present Candidates

Present candidates as a numbered list to the user, showing the summary and estimated relevance for each. Ask the user to approve, edit, or skip each candidate.

#### What Happens After Approval

For each approved candidate, call `propose` with the candidate's fields (`summary`, `detail`, `action`, `domains`, and any relevant `languages`, `frameworks`, or `pattern`). If the user edits a candidate before approving, use the edited values.

### Examples

#### Example 1: Querying Before an API Integration

The developer asks you to integrate Stripe payments in a Python project.

1. Recognize the trigger: external API integration.
2. Call `query` with `domains: ["api", "payments", "stripe"]` and `languages: ["python"]`.
3. cq returns a knowledge unit. Present the reference table to the user:

   | ID | Confidence | Summary |
   |----|------------|---------|
   | `ku_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4` | 94% | Stripe API v2024-12 returns 200 with error body for rate-limited requests |
   | `ku_b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5` | 71% | Stripe webhook signatures must be verified against the raw request body, not parsed JSON |

4. Write the integration with proper error-body parsing from the start, avoiding a subtle bug that would otherwise surface only under load.
5. Call `confirm` with the knowledge unit's ID after verifying the behavior.

#### Example 2: Discovering and Proposing After an Error

The developer asks you to configure a webpack build. You encounter a cryptic error: `Module not found: Can't resolve 'stream'`.

1. Call `query` with `domains: ["bundler", "webpack", "nodejs-polyfills"]` and `frameworks: ["react"]`.
2. No relevant results returned. Proceed normally.
3. Debug the issue: webpack 5 removed Node.js polyfills. Add `resolve.fallback: { stream: require.resolve("stream-browserify") }` to the config.
4. Call `propose` **now** — before continuing with the rest of the build configuration:
   - **summary:** `"webpack 5 removes built-in Node.js polyfills — imports like 'stream' fail at build time"`
   - **detail:** `"webpack 5 no longer includes polyfills for Node.js core modules. Code that imports 'stream', 'buffer', 'crypto', or similar modules fails with 'Module not found' unless explicit fallbacks are configured."`
   - **action:** `"Add resolve.fallback entries in webpack config mapping each required Node.js module to its browserify equivalent (e.g. stream-browserify, buffer, crypto-browserify)."`
   - **domains:** `["bundler", "webpack", "nodejs-polyfills"]`
   - **languages:** `["typescript"]`
   - **frameworks:** `["react"]`
   - **pattern:** `"build-tooling"`
5. Resume the original task: finish wiring up the rest of the build, run the dev server, verify the developer's feature works. The `propose` was a brief interruption mid-task, not the end of the task.

#### Example 3: Avoiding a CI Pitfall

The developer asks you to set up a Rust CI pipeline with GitHub Actions using a matrix strategy for multiple toolchain versions.

1. Recognize the trigger: CI/CD configuration.
2. Call `query` with `domains: ["ci", "github-actions", "rust"]`.
3. cq returns a knowledge unit. Present the reference table to the user:

   | ID | Confidence | Summary |
   |----|------------|---------|
   | `ku_f7e8d9c0b1a2f7e8d9c0b1a2f7e8d9c0` | 82% | `rust-toolchain.toml` override is ignored when GitHub Actions matrix sets explicit toolchain via `dtolnay/rust-toolchain` |
   | `ku_e8d9c0b1a2f7e8d9c0b1a2f7e8d9c0b1` | 65% | GitHub Actions `dtolnay/rust-toolchain` caches rustup but not Cargo build artefacts |

4. Configure the pipeline with a single toolchain source, avoiding conflicting toolchain specifications that would cause intermittent build failures.
5. Call `confirm` with the knowledge unit's ID.

#### Example 4: Mid-task discovery during multi-step work

The developer asks you to refactor a Python service to use connection pooling, replacing direct database calls across five files. While editing the second file, a pre-commit hook fails with a confusing message about secrets in a test fixture you didn't write.

1. Stabilize: diagnose the hook failure, apply the workaround, re-run, get a clean build.
2. Recognize the propose trigger: the hook behavior was non-obvious (took more than one attempt to diagnose, behavior contradicted reasonable expectations). It is *not* part of the original refactor task; that does not change the trigger.
3. Call `propose` immediately, before editing the third file. **Do not defer to end-of-task.**
4. Continue refactoring files three through five, run tests, complete the original task.
5. At end-of-task (Core Protocol step 4), no propose-worthy items remain because you already proposed them mid-task. The end-of-task review is a no-op safety net, which is the desired state.

This is the **normal** propose flow. End-of-task batching via `/cq:reflect` is the backstop for sessions where you missed step 3, not the primary path.
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