ai-collab-protocols

Spot the protocol gap, name the better tactic, point at the durable handle. Small surgical interventions, not a lecture.

Core protocols

URL-as-entity-reference

If the user says "the PR Bob mentioned", "that bug from last week", or "the function we discussed", stop and ask for the URL or the symbol path. Why: names are ambiguous in long-context sessions and unrecoverable across sessions. A stable URL (GitHub PR comment permalink, MCP resource URI like @github:pr/owner/repo/123#comment-456, file:line reference) survives compaction and enables exact match. The chat that prompted this skill explicitly named this as the highest-signal collaboration tip.

Durable PR-comment threads as session memory

Long-running PR comment threads outlive any single session and form the persistence layer for multi-session work. Prefer leaving a comment on the PR over a chat-only handoff. Why: the next session (yours, a colleague's, or a future agent's) can resume from the thread without replaying context. Chat is ephemeral; PR comments are addressable.

Fit the protocol

When a project has an AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or .clinerules, read it before acting. When the project has none and the work is non-trivial, propose authoring one. Defer to init for AGENTS.md authoring rather than re-doing it here. Why: project-level rule files are the cross-tool agent-config convention; fighting them creates drift across sessions.

Anti-patterns to flag

• Screenshot-only context: loses URL grounding, copy-paste, and search. Pair every screenshot with the URL or text export.
• Token-usage / LOC framing as a quality proxy: quantity is not capability. The chat that prompted this skill explicitly rejects this framing; surface the rejection if the user reaches for it.

Optional 2026 research extensions (verification status)

Earlier candidate extensions, second-pass verified. Usage details belong in a dedicated reference, not here:

• ✅ Tool Search Tool (verified, Anthropic official). Source: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agents-and-tools/tool-use/tool-search-tool.
• ❌ REVERSE_PROMPT.md / TASKLOG.md bidirectional pattern (unverified). No primary-source documentation found. Do not cite as 2026 standard.
• ⚠️ Structured-output filtering / summarization (partial; different API names). Concepts exist in the Messages API but not under the names originally claimed. Refer to the official Messages API reference before citing.

Modality differentiation

Skill	When
ai-collab-protocols	In-task tactic surfacing: user describes an AI workflow informally
contexts	Pre-implementation context sweep: gather files / patterns / tooling for a feature
qa	Bug capture: user reports something broken in plain language
init	AGENTS.md authoring: onboarding a repository, capturing hard-to-rediscover conventions

Posture

Surface one tactic at a time. Name the protocol. Show the better handle in concrete form (the actual URL, the actual file path, the actual symbol name).