skillbook
architecture.kaihacks.ai
the extension · a skillbook

Skills.

self-contained agent bundles built from the khai-arch canon

Open the skillbook → ← architecture
khai · skills · 7 skills
01 · skill skill

Director.

Problem

A play is a score, not a story: a fixed account of what happens, plus the board it casts. Met cold it cannot be experienced, and the easy mistakes are equal and opposite: narrate it into one frozen telling (authoring), or let it drift as shapeless improv (no reading). Worse, a single mind that both performs and reads a scene narrates its own intention and mistakes the echo for evidence.

Solution

In khai-director mode you run the play as a living production: a control loop over its board. You keep two stances apart (an immersed cast that embodies the scene, and you outside it reading and redirecting), so behaviour is real evidence. You name an outcome (explore plural readings, or converge to one handed-over script), set the knobs (solo or split, persistent or fresh cast, diverge or converge, keepsake or deliverable), and steer without ever authoring a line, your notes setting conditions and never instructions. A chosen run can be captured.

Outcome

Productions: plural, partial, repeatable runs, each a reading made flesh. On call, a captured run, either a keepsake or a finished script assembled from what the cast actually performed (selected, sequenced, and framed, never authored by you). Portable by design: the skill names a role, not a runtime, and carries no dependency on khai's code or file formats.

02 · skill skill

Engineer.

Problem

A khai engine is a set of element files that describe one moving part of a persona, declared by a manifest. Three things around it are easy to get wrong and hard to check: building one correctly (the manifest, the anchor, the members, their types), telling whether an existing one holds together, and fixing one that does not. The hardest fault lives in the links between files, not in any one file: authored one at a time, the files end up as a pile, each correct on its own but never referring to the others, so the engine reads as a list of variants rather than one system.

Solution

In khai-engineer mode you work an engine end to end, in three modes over one contract (the weave): one anchor element that names the engine, every member tied down from the anchor and back up to it, and siblings tied across to each other, all woven in prose. Mode A (create) builds a new engine and wires it as it goes. Mode B (audit) reviews an engine and returns findings with a verdict. Mode C (repair) fixes a flat or weak engine by adding the missing ties and lifting the content, without rewriting it.

Outcome

A create that produces a wired, well-formed engine; an audit that returns a graph score and a named verdict (full, star with no web, silent anchor, has orphans, thin) with the exact ties to add; and a repair that brings an engine to a full weave. The skill ships a self-check that reads the graph (anchor-down, member-up, sibling-across, no orphan) so the wiring can be verified, by tool or by hand, before the engine is signed off.

03 · skill skill

Impresario.

Problem

A khai play needs a house to belong to: a production it answers to, logged in its Estate. Standing that house up by hand (the four pillars, the gates, both faces of protection, the registry listing) is repetitive and easy to get subtly wrong, and a house that is not wired or not protected cannot be trusted to hold productions.

Solution

In khai-impresario mode you raise a production house for one source: a `khai-plays-<source>` repository wired to the canon and the kit, gated, protected, seeded with a fixture for a green first run, and listed in the `khai-plays` registry. The source is the only input; the rest is invariant. The house is handed back empty, ready for plays.

Outcome

An empty, wired, protected, and registered `khai-plays-<source>` house, with the branch-protection command teed up for the operator to apply after the first run. The plays come later, in khai-playwright mode.

04 · skill skill

Playwright.

Problem

A khai production has a defined structure: a play file that sets the boundary, plots that cast forces inside it, and elements the plots draw on. Building one by hand (keeping the Company closed, the Triggers chained, and every plot in lane) is easy to get wrong and hard to check without a guide.

Solution

In khai-playwright mode you become the playwright and author a khai play together with the author, in two modes. Mode A produces the play file alone: the ENACTS container with its six chapters (Estate, Name, Arc, Company, Triggers, Stakes). Mode B produces the full production: the play file plus every plot the Triggers chain, plus every process, position, piece, place, and persona those plots draw on. The skill enforces the closed-Company rule (a plot may not reference an element the Company did not name) and runs the self-check at each stage.

Outcome

Mode A: a single `play_[name].md` file. Mode B: a zip of the whole production in the world layout: one play file, one plot file per chained plot, and one element file per Company member a plot draws on.

05 · skill skill

Roadie.

Problem

khai content is produced and then experienced, but the two are not the same shape. A world has to be stocked into a repo the author can write against (the canon, the contract, the engines), and a finished world has to be composed and adapted to wherever it is going (a different instruction set per output format, a different delta per venue, a hard file limit on one host, a repo on another). Doing this by hand is repetitive and easy to get subtly wrong, and a venue only ever sees what was physically delivered to it.

Solution

In khai-roadie mode you run the two technical jobs over deterministic packages. Set up the Stage (inbound) materializes the engines a world uses into the production repo, version-stamped, so the author and any repo-source venue can read them. Take on Tour (outbound) composes a venue's deployment (the Standard for its format extended by the venue's Adaption, engines injected at Knowledge) and stages it, as a bundle to upload or a tree in a connected repo. You judge the world, the venue, and the payload; the packages compute the invariant.

Outcome

A production repo stocked with the engines it needs, and a venue deployment staged to an output directory: composed instructions plus a consolidated knowledge bundle for an interactive venue, or a rendered artifact for a publication venue, with the dual licence and attribution carried at the root and any gap surfaced as a warning.

06 · skill skill

Theatre Manager.

Problem

A production house holds plays, but someone has to run it: stage each finished play into it, keep every play in the house voice and logged to the house Estate, version the house as plays land, and hold the gates so nothing broken or off-voice is presented. Done by hand, this is easy to get subtly wrong, and a house that is off-voice, unversioned, or unconformant cannot be trusted to answer for its run.

Solution

In khai-theatre-manager mode you run one house. You stage finished plays into it (Estate resolved, in voice, conformant), version it by the house rule (a new play is a minor bump, everything else a patch), and keep its gates (the guard picks the lane; the gate is never bypassed; nothing is merged). Work that needs more than the house can change is aligned upward to the chain rather than forced from inside.

Outcome

A clean, conformant, in-voice house, presented upward to the chain: every play logged to the Estate with a resolving link, the version reflecting the play count, the gates intact, and any cross-house need raised rather than hacked in locally.

07 · skill skill

4 L's Retrospective.

Problem

Completed work disappears without review. Teams repeat the same friction, miss what built momentum, and lose the thread between one period and the next. Without a structured lens, retrospectives drift into venting or praise with nothing actionable left behind.

Solution

This skill runs the 4 L's framework (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for) in two modes. Mode A is facilitated: the AI asks each lens in turn, waits for the human's response, probes once if an answer is thin, and compiles. Mode B is self-diagnosis: the AI reads the available session context and fills all four lenses itself, with no questions asked. Mode is detected from the request. Attributed to Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener, _Discover to Deliver_ (2012).

Outcome

A compiled retrospective document with one section per lens, one bullet per item, ready to carry into planning. In Mode A: what the human said, reported not interpreted. In Mode B: what the AI observed from context, with inferred items labelled as such.