/instinct-review

name: instinct-review
description: "Reviews/promotes/removes instincts from `.claude/instincts/*.md`. Triggers: instinct review, curate instincts, manage instincts, promote instinct."
effort: low
user-invocable: true
argument-hint: "[--list | --promote <id> | --remove <id> | --clear]"
allowed-tools: Bash, Read, Write, Glob

/instinct-review - Manage Learned Instincts

$ARGUMENTS

What This Does

Manages the instinct system: project-local behavioral notes that Claude loads at the start of a session.

Instincts are markdown files in `.claude/instincts/`, loaded at session start by `session-start.sh` whenever any exist (set `AI_TOOLKIT_HOOK_QUIET=1` to suppress).

Commands

List all instincts

/instinct-review --list

Shows all instincts with confidence scores and source sessions.

Review and curate

/instinct-review

Interactive review: shows each instinct and asks promote/remove/keep.

Promote instinct (always apply)

/instinct-review --promote <filename>

Remove instinct

/instinct-review --remove <filename>

Clear all instincts

/instinct-review --clear

How Instincts Work

1. **Authoring**: Instinct files are written by hand — one markdown file per pattern in `.claude/instincts/`. There is no automatic session-end extractor today (see [When NOT to Use](#when-not-to-use)). 2. **Storage**: `.claude/instincts/<pattern-name>.md`, each carrying a confidence score (see format below). 3. **Loading**: At session start, `session-start.sh` loads every instinct file into context whenever any exist. No instincts on disk means nothing is loaded; set `AI_TOOLKIT_HOOK_QUIET=1` to suppress. 4. **Curation**: Use `/instinct-review` to list, promote, remove, or clear them.

Instinct Format

# Pattern: [pattern name]
Confidence: 0.85
Sessions: 3
Last seen: 2026-03-25

[Description of the pattern or preference]

Steps

1. Run `ls .claude/instincts/ 2>/dev/null || echo "No instincts yet"` 2. For each instinct file, read it and display confidence/summary 3. Based on `$ARGUMENTS`:

• `--list`: display table of all instincts
• `--promote <id>`: set confidence to 1.0, add "pinned" tag
• `--remove <id>`: delete the file
• `--clear`: delete all files in `.claude/instincts/`
• no args: interactive review of each instinct

4. Report summary of changes made

Rules

• **MUST** list instincts with their source (session ID or date) so the user can judge provenance — anonymous instincts cannot be curated
• **MUST** confirm before `--clear` — this action is irreversible without a backup
• **NEVER** invent or edit instinct content — this skill curates existing files, it does not generate new ones
• **NEVER** promote an instinct with confidence < 0.7 without explicit user approval — low-confidence patterns are often one-off noise
• **CRITICAL**: the user owns the instinct list. Propose changes in interactive mode; apply silently only for explicit `--promote`, `--remove`, `--clear` flags.
• **MANDATORY**: after any destructive operation, print the deleted or modified filenames so the user has an audit trail

Gotchas

• Instincts live in **project-local** `.claude/instincts/`, not in `~/.softspark/ai-toolkit/`. Running this skill in a different project sees a different set — do not treat the list as global state.
• Every instinct file loads into session context by default (whenever the directory is non-empty), so each one costs startup tokens. This is why curation matters — prune aggressively and keep the set small.
• Promoted instincts (confidence = 1.0) load into every session's context, costing tokens. Too many pinned instincts bloat startup. Keep ≤10 pinned.
• Instinct files are plain markdown following the format above. If you accumulate many, a `--clear` and re-author is often cleaner than migrating stale notes after a major toolkit bump.
• The filename (`<pattern-name>.md`) is the identity used by `--promote` and `--remove`. Renaming files manually breaks those flags until the user reopens the review UI.

When NOT to Use

• To **auto-extract** instincts from a session — not implemented. No Stop hook writes instinct files; author them by hand (or via a future extraction tool). This skill curates existing files, it does not generate them.
• To search past session memory — use `/mem-search`
• To edit global toolkit memory files — those live in `~/.claude/projects/*/memory/` and are managed by the auto-memory system, not this skill
• To stop instincts from loading — delete the files with `--clear`, or set `AI_TOOLKIT_HOOK_QUIET=1` to suppress all session-start output. There is no extraction process to disable.