/culture

Use this skill for free-form technical thinking when the desired output is shared understanding, not production code, specs, or PRs.

Do not use it when the user wants a written spec (/mold), implementation (/cook), review (/age), or external evidence gathering (/briesearch).

Invariant

/culture does not write production code, commit changes, open PRs, or mutate project state. The only sanctioned artifact is the opt-in notes handoff at .cheese/notes/<slug>.md (see ## Handoff slug below), written only at session end and only when the user asks for notes — never during dialogue. If the conversation reveals that something should be built, route to /mold or /cook and stop.

Flow

1. Restate the question or tension in one sentence. If the question rests on a false premise or a loaded assumption, name it before engaging.
2. Identify assumptions, constraints, and decision criteria.
3. Explore trade-offs and likely blast radius. When the trade-off hinges on "what does this touch", run a read-only shape check on the candidate seam — a cheez-search callers query (tilth_search kind: "callers") plus tilth_deps — and label each option [low | medium | high blast radius]. Procedure mirrors ../mold/references/shape-check.md; culture stops at the verdict and never drafts signatures. Steelman the rejected option before settling on a recommendation.
4. Use evidence only when it helps the conversation; avoid deep research unless the user asks.
5. End with a compact summary, open questions tagged with confidence (certain | speculating | don't know), and a ## Handoff prompt (see below).

Default the model's own contribution to maximum useful depth — full pseudocode signatures over hand-waving, named edge cases over "consider edge cases", concrete file:line evidence over vague pointers. Smallest-useful-question discipline applies only to what you ask the user, never to what you offer them.

Preferred tools and fallbacks

Code search and reading go through the cheez-* skills (/cheez-search, /cheez-read) — see those skills for tool selection rules. Blast-radius reads specifically use cheez-search callers (kind: "callers") plus tilth_deps (read-only shape check); culture stops at the verdict and never drafts signatures.

Beyond cheez-* there are culture-specific tools:

Need	Prefer	Fallback
Visualizing diffs or examples	delta	plain git diff
External sanity check	/briesearch	clearly mark as an assumption

Missing optional tools should not interrupt the conversation. Keep tool use light; this is a thinking session.

Output

Return a short conversational summary:

• Current understanding
• Trade-offs or options
• Open questions

Handoff slug

When (and only when) the user asks for notes at session end, write an optional handoff slug to .cheese/notes/<slug>.md. The slug uses the same minimum schema as the other phase handoffs so /cheese --continue <slug> can read it:

status: ok | halt: <one-line reason>
next: mold | cook | ultracook | stop
artifact: <path-if-any>
<one-line orientation: what the culture session converged on>

next: is culture-specific — values are mold (fuzzy idea, route to spec), cook (clear ask, route to implementation), ultracook (clear ask with high blast radius, route to autonomous fresh-context chain), or stop (no further action). The orientation line captures the punchline of the dialogue in one factual sentence; deeper notes go in the body of the same file.

The notes slug is the only thing culture is allowed to write. No commits, no PRs, no production-code edits — those route to /mold or /cook.

Handoff

Pipeline: [culture] → mold → cook → press → age → cure → ship

When the conversation reveals real work, ask via the shared handoff gate in ../../shared/handoff-gate.md. Lead each option with the verb (what the user wants to do next); the skill command is the backing detail. Before asking, render a compact context packet so the downstream skill can dispatch without losing the discussion:

handoff_context:
  source_skill: /culture
  summary: <one factual sentence>
  open_questions: [<only blockers, if any>]
  artifact: <.cheese/notes/<slug>.md if written, otherwise none>

Default options (pick at most three of these plus a stop):

• Shape this into a written spec (recommended when the idea is still fuzzy) — /mold with the context packet, or /mold .cheese/notes/<slug>.md when a notes slug exists.
• Implement it directly (recommended when the ask is clear and unambiguous) — /cook with the context packet as the accepted contract.
• Implement and auto-review — /cook --auto with the context packet, chains through /press → /age → /cure autonomously, fixing every medium-or-above finding across up to two cure passes. Stops at the final cure pass; opening or updating the PR stays a manual step. Offer this when the conversation reached an unambiguous contract and the user signalled they want the whole pipeline to run forward without per-step approval ("just do it", "ship it", "auto", "fix it all the way through"). Never pre-select; auto mode opts the user out of the gates that exist for their protection.
• Research more first (when the conversation hit a factual gap external docs could close) — /briesearch.
• Pause — dispatch none; keep the dialogue in head.

After a non-stop selection, run the selected downstream skill immediately with the context packet. /age is never the next step from culture — review needs a diff to look at.

Rules

• No production-code writes, no commits, no PRs. The only sanctioned write is the opt-in .cheese/notes/<slug>.md handoff at session end, and only when the user asks for it.
• Ask one useful question at a time when the user is exploring.
• Prefer clarity over completeness.
• Agree when agreement is warranted; do not manufacture counterpoints to seem balanced.
• When external evidence raises an alternative ("X uses Y or Z"), name it as a trade-off in the dialogue and a candidate option — never silently recommend "add both" or "expose a knob". Design choices need explicit user adjudication, not agent inference from a citation.
• Apply the shared voice kernel (lives at skills/age/references/voice.md in this repo): lead with the answer, flag confidence as certain | speculating | don't know, steelman, track contradictions across turns.