Promote the Incidental Counts Rule and the Count-First Overview Reader to Main

.agents/skills/agent-conduct/SKILL.md

@@ -16,14 +16,14 @@ description: >-
   Where a sibling skill owns the moment, it wins: git-commit-conventions for committing,
   pr-review-conduct for review and merge claims, local-strict-review for the passes a push owes,
   comment-and-doc-style for prose. The GOVERNANCE.md sections it surfaces keep the full rules,
-  three of them carried here whole as generated includes.
+  several of them carried here whole as generated includes.
 ---
 
 # Agent Conduct
 
 ## Why This Exists
 
-The fleet's conduct rules (verification before claiming done, asking instead of assuming, recording lessons, accounting at handoff for what was parked rather than asked, recording a blocker that lives in another repository) lived only in doc sections nothing surfaced at the moment of violation, so they were honored by whoever happened to have read them recently. This skill is the decision-moment surface. The full rules stay in `GOVERNANCE.md` ("Verification Discipline", "Communicating with the User", "Durable Knowledge and Self-Improvement"), which keeps authority, and each of those three sections is carried here whole, as a generated include that `scripts/build_dist.py` fills from the section and holds to it, so the text that surfaces at the moment is the rule's own rather than a shorter list of it. The carried `AGENTS.md` "Context and Delegation Discipline" section is the always-on layer and is not carried here. A defect in included text is fixed in `GOVERNANCE.md` and regenerated, never edited in this file, per the `skill-lifecycle` Skill.
+The fleet's conduct rules (verification before claiming done, asking instead of assuming, recording lessons, accounting at handoff for what was parked rather than asked, recording a blocker that lives in another repository) lived only in doc sections nothing surfaced at the moment of violation, so they were honored by whoever happened to have read them recently. This skill is the decision-moment surface. The full rules stay in `GOVERNANCE.md` ("Verification Discipline", "Communicating with the User", "Durable Knowledge and Self-Improvement"), which keeps authority, and each of those sections is carried here whole, as a generated include that `scripts/build_dist.py` fills from the section and holds to it, so the text that surfaces at the moment is the rule's own rather than a shorter list of it. The carried `AGENTS.md` "Context and Delegation Discipline" section is the always-on layer and is not carried here. A defect in included text is fixed in `GOVERNANCE.md` and regenerated, never edited in this file, per the `skill-lifecycle` Skill.
 
 ## Before Designing a Change
 
@@ -102,18 +102,18 @@ Where a lesson lands, when it earns a mechanical hook, and where work blocked on
 - **A blocker filed in another repository is recorded in the repository whose work it blocks.** The binding moment is the one where the upstream issue is filed or, where it already exists, found, because that session is the one that knows what stopped and why. It owes a second issue in the repository that is waiting rather than only the first, and where the upstream issue already exists the local issue names that one and no second upstream issue is filed. The local issue states what this repository cannot do and why, in its own terms rather than as a pointer to read elsewhere, since a reader who has to open the upstream issue to learn whether it affects them opens every one of them. The local issue names the upstream one as its blocker, carries the `blocked` label, and carries whatever labels its own work would carry anyway. A comment on the upstream issue then names the local one in return, a comment rather than an edit to the body because a second repository may join the same blocker later and because the body is often not this session's to rewrite. That order, the upstream issue and then the local issue and then the backlink comment, leaves a partial failure as a record naming its blocker rather than as a blocker naming a record nobody wrote. **A handoff does not do this job.** It carries the blockers a round met, and it belongs to one track and closes with its successor, where the wait outlives every session that met it and belongs in the backlog the whole repository reads.
 - **The blocker record is written under the ordinary write rules, and the label on it is taken off deliberately.** Filing an issue and commenting on another are state-changing calls, so "Repository Boundaries and Write Safety" binds each of them exactly as it binds any other write, which keeps the upstream issue inside this owner and makes a blocker under a different owner a matter of explicit permission rather than of this rule. The `blocked` label is what every reader of this record selects on, so a repository not carrying it cannot host one until the fleet label set is applied there, which is a change to that repository's configuration rather than anything this rule writes, and a session that finds it missing reports that. The label comes off when the blocker clears, and the session closing the upstream issue is best placed to take it off, since the backlink comments naming every waiting repository are on the issue it is closing, while any later session that finds it cleared takes it off instead. A fix can land well before either of those, so the label lags the fix rather than tracking it, which is why a session meeting a `blocked` issue reads the state of the issue that issue's body names rather than the label. The local issue stays open when the label comes off, because the work it records still has to be done and is ordinary backlog from that moment on.
 - **A handoff parked on a maintainer decision carries the `blocked` label too.** Its blocker is a `decision` issue in this same repository rather than an issue elsewhere, and the parking comment on the handoff names it. A reader reads the named issue rather than the label, and the blocker clears when that issue loses its `decision` label. Unlike a cross-repository blocker, a session finding it cleared does not take the label off. It comes off only when a session hands the link back to be worked, so a loop running meanwhile never takes a link a present maintainer is still working.
-- **A durable rule earns a mechanical hook only where a hook can actually decide it, otherwise it stays prose.** Three conditions together, not any one alone. The failure recurs even after the governing prose was demonstrably read and understood, so it is not a discovery or loading problem a structural fix (getting the rule into context at all) would already solve. The triggering shape is decidable from the tool call's own text, arguments, and working directory alone, with no semantic or contextual judgment required. And the failure is destructive or hard to reverse rather than a quality miss. A worktree-isolation lapse met all three (it recurred under prose the agent had already read, "is this command's target a primary checkout" is a plain directory comparison, and the harm is another task's swept or reverted work), so it was promoted to a `gh-write-guard` hook rule. A skill's own trigger going unread by the session at all, by contrast, is a loading problem, fixed by getting the rule into context (the `CLAUDE.md` importing `AGENTS.md`), not by a hook. And "was this review finding actually evidence-backed" fails the second condition outright: a hook sees only the command text, never the judgment call itself, so it can only ever nag, not decide, and that class of rule stays prose and a chained Skill trigger. Those three conditions gate promotion to a **host** hook, the involuntary layer that fires in every session under the maintainer's own credentials and that only the maintainer can grant an exemption from, which is why the bar there is destructive harm. A **committed** hook in the repository's own tree is a third layer between prose and that one, and it is earned on weaker grounds: it is opt-in per clone, visible in the tree, bypassable by design, and it therefore fits a rule whose harm is a quality miss rather than a destruction. The second condition still binds it, since a hook that cannot decide its own trigger is a hook that nags, so what earns the layer is finding the decidable half of a rule whose other half is judgment. The local-review rule under `GOVERNANCE.md` "Verification Discipline" is the worked example: whether a review's findings were rightly disposed of is judgment no hook can decide and stays prose, while whether a review pass ran over exactly the content being pushed is a receipt comparison, which the hub's own `.husky/pre-push` decides.
+- **A durable rule earns a mechanical hook only where a hook can actually decide it, otherwise it stays prose.** The conditions below must hold together, not any one alone. The failure recurs even after the governing prose was demonstrably read and understood, so it is not a discovery or loading problem a structural fix (getting the rule into context at all) would already solve. The triggering shape is decidable from the tool call's own text, arguments, and working directory alone, with no semantic or contextual judgment required. And the failure is destructive or hard to reverse rather than a quality miss. A worktree-isolation lapse met all of them (it recurred under prose the agent had already read, "is this command's target a primary checkout" is a plain directory comparison, and the harm is another task's swept or reverted work), so it was promoted to a `gh-write-guard` hook rule. A skill's own trigger going unread by the session at all, by contrast, is a loading problem, fixed by getting the rule into context (the `CLAUDE.md` importing `AGENTS.md`), not by a hook. And "was this review finding actually evidence-backed" fails the second condition outright: a hook sees only the command text, never the judgment call itself, so it can only ever nag, not decide, and that class of rule stays prose and a chained Skill trigger. Those conditions gate promotion to a **host** hook, the involuntary layer that fires in every session under the maintainer's own credentials and that only the maintainer can grant an exemption from, which is why the bar there is destructive harm. A **committed** hook in the repository's own tree is a third layer between prose and that one, and it is earned on weaker grounds: it is opt-in per clone, visible in the tree, bypassable by design, and it therefore fits a rule whose harm is a quality miss rather than a destruction. The second condition still binds it, since a hook that cannot decide its own trigger is a hook that nags, so what earns the layer is finding the decidable half of a rule whose other half is judgment. The local-review rule under `GOVERNANCE.md` "Verification Discipline" is the worked example: whether a review's findings were rightly disposed of is judgment no hook can decide and stays prose, while whether a review pass ran over exactly the content being pushed is a receipt comparison, which the hub's own `.husky/pre-push` decides.
 
 `GOVERNANCE.md` "Durable Knowledge and Self-Improvement" keeps the full rules, and the `agent-conduct` Skill at `.agents/skills/agent-conduct/SKILL.md` in the hub, not a repo-relative link since that path is hub-local and not carried into every fleet repo, carries it whole as a generated include and surfaces it at its decision moments.
 
 <!-- /include -->
 
-Two rules that bind at this moment have their homes elsewhere. A review flags an instance, so a fix covers the class, bounded to what the change touched or broke, stated under "Before Claiming Done" above. And a rule that keeps needing to be restated is a stale or missing skills install before it is a missing rule, per `AGENTS.md` "Where the Rules Live", with the `check-this-repo` Skill as the check.
+Some rules that bind at this moment have their homes elsewhere. A review flags an instance, so a fix covers the class, bounded to what the change touched or broke, stated under "Before Claiming Done" above. And a rule that keeps needing to be restated is a stale or missing skills install before it is a missing rule, per `AGENTS.md` "Where the Rules Live", with the `check-this-repo` Skill as the check.
 
 ## When Work Stops on Another Repository
 
-The rules for this moment are two bullets in the `GOVERNANCE.md` "Durable Knowledge and Self-Improvement" include under "When a Failure Surfaces a Lesson" above. The first, opening "A blocker filed in another repository is recorded in the repository whose work it blocks", states what the two issues are, what the local one says, the `blocked` label it carries, and the backlink the upstream issue takes in return. The second, opening "The blocker record is written under the ordinary write rules", states which write rules bind those writes, what a repository not carrying the `blocked` label owes before it can host the record, and when the label comes off. Read both there, since a restatement here would be a second copy and nothing would hold it to the first.
+The rules for this moment are bullets in the `GOVERNANCE.md` "Durable Knowledge and Self-Improvement" include under "When a Failure Surfaces a Lesson" above. The first, opening "A blocker filed in another repository is recorded in the repository whose work it blocks", states what the two issues are, what the local one says, the `blocked` label it carries, and the backlink the upstream issue takes in return. The second, opening "The blocker record is written under the ordinary write rules", states which write rules bind those writes, what a repository not carrying the `blocked` label owes before it can host the record, and when the label comes off. Read both there, since a restatement here would be a second copy and nothing would hold it to the first.
 
 ## Delegation, in One Paragraph
 
-The always-on rules live in `AGENTS.md` "Context and Delegation Discipline", loaded in every session, and are not restated here. The two that bind at a conduct moment are its rule on briefing a subagent and its rule on never tiering down the seat holding the judgment.
+The always-on rules live in `AGENTS.md` "Context and Delegation Discipline", loaded in every session, and are not restated here. Those that bind at a conduct moment are its rule on briefing a subagent and its rule on never tiering down the seat holding the judgment.

.agents/skills/audit-a-repo/SKILL.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ description: >-
 
 ## Why This Exists
 
-The audit is the fleet's measurement procedure, and the two failure shapes it guards against are both silent: a repo judged conformant with no committed evidence, and an audit that quietly edits what it was supposed to measure. `AUDIT.md` in the hub is the procedure and keeps authority. This skill carries the rules that get skipped in practice and says which section owns each step.
+The audit is the fleet's measurement procedure, and the failure shapes it guards against are all silent: a repo judged conformant with no committed evidence, and an audit that quietly edits what it was supposed to measure. `AUDIT.md` in the hub is the procedure and keeps authority. This skill carries the rules that get skipped in practice and says which section owns each step.
 
 ## Before Measuring Anything
 

.agents/skills/backlog-burndown/SKILL.md

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ description: >-
 ## Why This Exists
 
 Asking for one issue to be fixed is `drive-pr`'s job and needs no skill above it. Asking for a
-whole backlog to be worked down is a different problem, and three things about it are not obvious.
+whole backlog to be worked down is a different problem, and several things about it are not obvious.
 Parallelism is bounded by file overlap rather than by agent count, so the grouping decides the
 throughput. The backlog is not a fixed list, since every review round files deferral issues that
 belong in the next round's ranking, so a plan made once is stale by its second round. And a
@@ -330,7 +330,7 @@ what it leaves to judgment here. The tier is chosen per group rather than defaul
 stronger tier produces better work and takes fewer review rounds to land it. That often
 costs less than a cheaper worker looping. The tier is `frontier` or `standard`, never `bulk`, since
 every worker judges its pull request's review findings. It is `highest` only where the maintainer
-named it for this run. Three kinds of group are never tiered
+named it for this run. Groups of these kinds are never tiered
 below `frontier`:
 
 - One touching **carried canonical content**, as `GOVERNANCE.md` "Verification Discipline" bounds
@@ -520,7 +520,7 @@ restores a line another session's write dropped.
 
 ## Ending the Run
 
-The run ends at either of two points, and they are different endings.
+The run ends at one of the points below, and they are different endings.
 
 - **The backlog is worked out**, meaning a full re-rank finds no open issue this skill can act on.
   That is not the same as zero open issues, since a backlog of nothing but maintainer questions and

.agents/skills/branching-and-release-model/references/branch-protection-and-promotion.md

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ explicitly for a repository outside the registry.
 
 ## Executing a `develop -> main` promotion safely
 
-Two traps, both learned the hard way:
+These traps were learned the hard way:
 
 - **Never delete `develop`.** A promotion PR's head *is* `develop`, so `gh pr merge --delete-branch`
   (and a repository's "Automatically delete head branches" toggle, which the fleet keeps off for