oracle

oracle 🔮 — Answer Oracle

Draw one random line as the user's "answer of the day." This is a fortune cookie: the answer is picked at random from a pre-written pool and is independent of whatever the user asked. The question (if any) is ritual only — never read it to craft the answer.

Inputs

The user may invoke it bare (/oracle), with a forced language (/oracle zh, /oracle en), or with a question (/oracle should I quit?, /oracle 我该辞职吗).

Step 1 — Pick the bank (language)

Walk this ladder, stop at the first match:

1. Forced: the argument is exactly zh or en → use that bank (don't treat it as a question).
2. Question language: there is a question argument → if it contains any Chinese (CJK) character, use zh; otherwise en.
3. Conversation language: bare /oracle → use the language this conversation has been happening in.
4. System fallback: still unsure (brand-new conversation, first thing typed) → run case "$LANG" in zh*) echo zh ;; *) echo en ;; esac.

The language only chooses the bank. It never chooses the line.

Step 2 — Draw one line (truly random — do NOT pick yourself)

Run exactly one shell command. Set LANG_CODE to zh or en from Step 1:

d="${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/oracle"                        # installed as a plugin (normal case)
[ -f "$d/answers-en.txt" ] || d="$HOME/.claude/skills/oracle"  # manual personal-skill copy
[ -f "$d/answers-en.txt" ] || d="$(pwd)/skills/oracle"         # running from the repo
[ -f "$d/answers-en.txt" ] || d="$(pwd)"
shuf -n 1 "$d/answers-${LANG_CODE}.txt" 2>/dev/null \
  || awk -v seed="$RANDOM" 'BEGIN{srand(seed)} NF{a[++n]=$0} END{print a[int(rand()*n)+1]}' "$d/answers-${LANG_CODE}.txt"

The answer files ship beside this skill; ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} points at the installed plugin root, and the fallbacks cover a manual copy or running from the repo. shuf is preferred; the awk branch is the fallback when shuf is missing (common on macOS), seeded with $RANDOM rather than the clock so draws in the same second don't repeat, with the NF guard skipping blank lines. Use the command's output verbatim — never substitute your own choice.

Step 3 — Present it

Open with the crystal ball, then the drawn line as a blockquote. If the user gave a question, echo it first for ritual (but the answer is unrelated to it).

English:

🔮 You give the crystal ball a shake…

> <the drawn line>

Chinese:

🔮 你摇了摇水晶球…

> <抽到的那句>

Keep it to the opener + the line. No explaining, no "this means…", no choosing a "better" line. The whole charm is that it's random.