/offload-guidance

name: offload-guidance
description: "ROUTING RULE — when the question asks where something lives, how something works, what handles X, or how Y flows through a repository you have not already read into context, call the mikro microagent tool `mikro_explore-r` (namespaced `mcp__plugin_mikro_mikro__mikro_explore-r`) with the question as `prompt`, BEFORE running Grep/Glob/Read/Bash searches and BEFORE launching an Explore subagent. This rule outranks the habit of grepping first: it applies to multi-part questions even when each part looks small on its own, and the offloaded run costs this session almost none of its context, which is the entire reason to make it. Its citations are leads you then verify yourself. Read this skill for the protocol: the call shape and session resume, how to read the answer, and the three measured conditions that force escalation back to your own tools (citations that do not resolve; an errored or timed-out run; work where completeness matters more than cost). Read it also when an mikro result comes back errored, uncited, or thin. Does not apply when the answer is already in context, the question is about one known line or a diff you just made, or the work is a mutation."

Offloading exploration to mikro

The rule

**Explore-class question → call `mikro_explore-r` first. Treat its answer as a lead, not as a finding. Escalate to your own tools the moment any of the three triggers below fires.**

`explore-r` is a *first-pass* explorer. It failed its parity gate — `Round-2 gate: FAIL` (`docs/parity-explore.md:993`), agreeing with round 1's `Gate: FAIL` (`docs/parity-explore.md:595`). It ships anyway because a first pass does not have to be a verdict: it has to be cheaper than reading the tree yourself and honest about where it stops. Everything claimed below comes from that report, at the report's own scoping. Read `docs/parity-explore.md` in the mikro repository before quoting any of it; if it and this file disagree, the report wins.

When to route

Route when **all** of these hold:

• The question is about a codebase you have not already read into context.
• Answering it inline would mean opening many files — a survey, a "where is X

handled", a "how does Y flow through this repo", a "what are all the Z".

• A wrong first answer is recoverable, because you are going to check the

citations anyway.

Do **not** route when:

• You already have the file in context. Reading it is cheaper and exact.
• The question is about a specific known line, a diff you just made, or a test

you just ran.

• The answer must be complete — see escalation trigger 3.
• The work is a mutation. `explore-r` reads; it does not edit, run your build,

or touch git.

How to call it

Tool: **`mikro_explore-r`** (namespaced `mcp__plugin_mikro_mikro__mikro_explore-r` when it comes from this plugin). It explores the project directory the server was started with — the plugin passes `--dir ${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR}`, so that is your project root.

| Argument | Use | |---|---| | `prompt` | The question. Required in practice. | | `session_id` | Continue an earlier call **on this same tool**. Omit to start fresh. | | `context` | Optional path to a file or directory to preload, relative to the project root. |

Write the `prompt` as a complete, standalone question. The agent runs to completion and returns a single final report; it **cannot ask you a follow-up question mid-run**, so anything you leave implicit is simply lost. Name the concrete artifacts you want back, and ask for `path:line` citations explicitly — that is what makes the answer checkable, and checking it is the whole protocol.

The result carries a token/cost footer, and `structuredContent` repeats the whole thing as `answer` alongside the `session_id`. To ask a follow-up — "you cited three files, now show me how they call each other" — pass that `session_id` back to **the same tool**; the prior turns are replayed into the new prompt. A `session_id` is not portable between tools, and sessions are in-process and time-limited: if it has expired, omit it and start again rather than working around the error.

Prefer one resumed session over several fresh calls on the same subject. A fresh call re-explores from nothing.

The three escalation triggers

These are the campaign's **measured** failure signatures, not heuristics.

1. The answer lacks resolvable citations

If the answer carries no `path:line` citations, or its citations do not resolve in your tree, **stop using it and re-run natively.** Do not repair it and do not quote it.

This is the dominant recorded failure. In the frozen shot, two of the six answers named the anchor file for only **3 of 14** and **2 of 12** of the facts they were supposed to state (`docs/parity-explore.md:855-858`), and the report screened both out on the rule that "a fact cannot be stated by an answer that never mentions the file it is about" (`docs/parity-explore.md:862-864`).

Citations resolving is *not* the same as citations being right. In that same frozen configuration every citation resolved, and the answers still failed the quality bar. Resolution is the floor, not the bar: open the lines.

2. The run errors or times out

An `isError` result, or an error string in place of an answer, is **not a partial answer**. Re-run natively; do not retry the same call hoping for a different outcome, and do not report the error text as a finding.

The recorded signature looks like this, verbatim from a real run record (`parity/round2/optimizer/gens/gen-4/rep-2/runs/task-5.json`):

mikro mikro_explore-r failed: REPL execution timed out after 600000ms

Sixty-seven characters, zero citations, after 650 seconds of wall clock. Lost runs are a normal event in the record, not an anomaly: two matrix arms each lost a run to the same 600-second REPL wall (`docs/parity-explore.md:1041`). The cost of the lost run is already sunk; the only wrong move is to spend more on it.

3. Completeness