/self-improve

name: self-improve
description: Capture durable user feedback into the governing skill, doc or check, or propose creating a new skill when no suitable one exists, so future sessions don't repeat the mistake. Use when the user rejects, reverts, or overrides the agent's output or approach on something a skill, doc or check covers or should cover, and when manually invoked to improve or create guidance.
allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Bash
license: MIT
metadata:
  version: "1.13"

Self-improve

**Suggest** durable improvements to the skill, doc or check that should have steered the agent, so the next session gets it right without being told again — and apply them only after the user approves. The skill proposes; the user stays in control of every change. Three ways in:

• **Manual** — the user invokes `/self-improve` to deliberately improve a skill or doc.
• **Self-triggered** — the agent notices it was corrected on something a skill, doc or check

governs (or should). Don't silently correct and move on, but don't derail the task either: note the lesson, finish what the user asked for, and offer to persist it at the next natural breakpoint.

• **Driven by another skill** — a caller (or its launch command, pasted by the user) hands over

lessons already phrased as durable guidance, sometimes with all or part of a target it settled with the user (scope, form, path — possibly a new file or a merge into an existing one). Skip step 1; skip step 2 for a lesson whose target the caller settled fully, run it for the rest keeping what the caller settled — its Mechanical lesson bullet and new-doc indexing requirement always apply. Several lessons at once → first propose their placement as one table, each lesson with its doc, existing or new; then draft + apply, lessons sharing a target as one diff.

"Skill/doc" means any standing instruction: a `SKILL.md`, `AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md`, a coding-standards or convention doc, a rules file — anything that guides future agents. A "check" (lint rule, hook, CI job) enforces one mechanically and is not a skill/doc.

Hard rules

• **Confirm before applying.** The skill's job is to **suggest**, never to change text on its own.

Never edit a skill, doc or check without the user's explicit go-ahead on the concrete change — present it as a diff and apply only on approval, whether the user invoked the skill or the agent self-triggered. State plainly whether a change is not yet applied (awaiting approval) or already applied (and where), so the user never has to ask.

• **Editing any skill/doc → always route the write through one of two skills to keep it compact;

never edit it directly.** A `SKILL.md` goes through [compact-skill-creator](../compact-skill-creator/SKILL.md); any other doc (rule, `AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md`, convention doc) goes through [compact-docs-writer](../compact-docs-writer/SKILL.md). Actually invoke the skill and follow its workflow *before* drafting or applying; reading it, applying its principles by hand, or naming it after a direct edit does not count. A check is edited directly.

Recognize a persistable correction (self-trigger)

Signals the agent was corrected in a way worth persisting: the user rejects or reverts a choice ("no, do X instead"), states a standing preference ("we always…", "never…"), or redirects an action the agent took under a skill or doc.

**Only persist a *durable* lesson** — one that generalizes and will recur. Skip one-off, task-specific tweaks that won't apply next time; persisting those pollutes the docs. Whenever unsure whether it generalizes, ask the user.

Workflow

1. **Capture the lesson.** State, in one line, the general rule the feedback implies — not the surface incident ("Mock external HTTP in unit tests," not "the agent mocked the wrong call"). 2. **Locate the target.** Settle scope first: would the lesson hold in another project? No → a project doc, rule or wrapper, never a shared generic skill. Yes → the governing skill or doc, shared ones included, edited at its canonical source when the installed copy is a symlink or sync — the proposal says so. Find which skill/doc governs this action (search skills, `AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md`, convention docs); when the repo defines a doc-placement guide (e.g. `.agents/docs/README.md`), follow it for locating and creating targets. If one exists, it's the target — and if that rule already existed yet failed to steer the agent, the discoverability gap *is* the lesson, not a no-op: don't stop at "the rule exists." Diagnose why it didn't fire (buried, in a doc the agent wouldn't open for this action, scoped or worded too narrowly, or unenforced) and fix that root cause: surface it where the agent looks, tighten its scope, cross-reference it, or enforce it mechanically. If none fits, propose a new target and ask before drafting: a check for a mechanical lesson (below), a new skill for a recurring workflow, a new rule for a standing constraint, or the most fitting doc otherwise; a new doc comes with its entry-file index line and read-when hook, or nothing ever loads it. Ask whenever unsure.

• **Mechanical lesson** (a banned API, an import shape, a file location: any fixed pattern) →

propose a deterministic check over prose; the check is declined, or no tooling can host it (the proposal says so) → write the rule. Read the repo's check scripts and CI first: wire or repair an existing check rather than add one.

• **Place by context cost.** Always-loaded docs (`AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md`) hold mostly pointers;

a rule that matters only when reviewing goes in a review-time doc, not implementation context. 3. **Draft the edit.** Write the rule into the target as the least text that fully captures it: agent-agnostic ("the agent", never a vendor name), no process narration, no restating — a real durable instruction. Prefer tightening or extending an existing ru