/dev:quick — Quick Ad-Hoc Task Execution

You are running the quick skill. Your job is to execute a small, self-contained task outside the normal plan/build/review cycle. Quick tasks get their own tracking, atomic commits, and state integration, but skip the overhead of full planning.

This skill spawns a single Task(subagent_type: "dev:towline-executor") for execution.

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Context Budget

Reference: skills/shared/context-budget.md for the universal orchestrator rules.

Additionally for this skill:

• Never implement the task yourself — you are a router, not a builder. ALL code changes go through a spawned Task(subagent_type: "dev:towline-executor")
• Never skip creating .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/ and writing PLAN.md — even trivial tasks need tracking artifacts
• Minimize reading executor output into main context — read only SUMMARY.md frontmatter

Core Principle

Quick tasks are for small, well-defined work. If the user describes something that would take more than 3-5 tasks or touches multiple subsystems, suggest using the full plan/build cycle instead.

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Flow

Step 1: Check Project Context

1. Check if .planning/ directory exists

   • If yes: read config.json for settings
   • If no: warn "No Towline project found. This will create a standalone quick task. Consider running /dev:begin first for full project tracking."

2. Write .planning/.active-skill with the content quick (single word, no newline). This registers you with the workflow enforcement hook — it will block source code writes until PLAN.md exists.

3. Check if ROADMAP.md exists

   • If yes: note the current phase context (quick tasks may relate to the active phase)
   • If no: proceed without phase context

Step 2: Get Task Description

If $ARGUMENTS is provided and non-empty:

• Use $ARGUMENTS as the task description

If $ARGUMENTS is empty:

• Ask the user: "What do you need done? Describe the task in a sentence or two." This is a freeform text prompt — do NOT use AskUserQuestion here. Task descriptions require arbitrary text input, not option selection.

Step 3: Validate Scope

Analyze the task description. If it appears to involve:

• More than ~5 files
• Multiple independent subsystems
• Significant architectural decisions
• Complex multi-step workflows

Then use the scope-confirm pattern (see skills/shared/gate-prompts.md):

Use AskUserQuestion: question: "This task looks complex. Quick tasks work best for bug fixes, small features, config changes, and single-module refactors. How would you like to proceed?" header: "Scope" options: - label: "Quick task" description: "Execute as lightweight task" - label: "Full plan" description: "Switch to /dev:plan for proper planning" - label: "Revise" description: "Let me rewrite the task description" multiSelect: false

If user selects "Quick task": continue to Step 4. If user selects "Full plan": respond "Use /dev:plan to create a full planning cycle for this task." and stop. If user selects "Revise": go back to Step 2 to get a new task description. If user types something else (freeform): interpret their response and proceed accordingly.

Step 4: Generate Slug and Task Number

Generate slug:

• Take the first 4-5 meaningful words from the description
• Lowercase, hyphen-separated
• Remove articles (a, an, the) and prepositions
• Example: "Fix auth bug in login flow" -> "fix-auth-bug-login"

Find next task number:

1. Scan .planning/quick/ directory for existing quick task directories
2. Extract the NNN prefix from directory names (pattern: {NNN}-{slug}/)
3. Next number = highest existing NNN + 1
4. If no existing tasks: start at 001
5. Zero-pad to 3 digits

Step 5: Create Quick Task Directory

Create: .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/

Step 6: Create Minimal PLAN.md

Write .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/PLAN.md:

Read references/plan-format.md for the plan file format. Fill in all {variable} placeholders with actual task data from the user's description and project context.

Plan generation rules:

• Break the task into 1-3 tasks maximum (prefer fewer)
• Each task should be atomic (one commit per task)
• Infer file paths from the description and project context
• Include concrete verification commands
• If verification is unclear, use echo "Manual verification needed" and add a note

For multi-task quick tasks, add sequential tasks:

<task name="{task 1}" type="auto">
...
</task>

<task name="{task 2}" type="auto">
...
</task>

PLANNING GATE — verify before spawning executor:

Before proceeding to Step 7, confirm these exist on disk:

1. .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/ directory exists
2. .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/PLAN.md exists, is non-empty, and contains at least one <task> block

If either check fails, you have skipped steps. Go back and complete Steps 4-6. Do NOT proceed to spawning an executor.

Step 7: Spawn Executor

Pre-spawn check — Verify .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/PLAN.md exists and contains at least one <task> block. If missing, STOP and complete Steps 4-6 first.

Display to the user: ◐ Spawning executor...

Spawn a Task(subagent_type: "dev:towline-executor") with the following prompt:

You are towline-executor. Execute the following quick task plan.

Plan file: .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/PLAN.md
Phase: quick
Plan ID: {NNN}

Read the plan file and execute all tasks sequentially. Follow all executor protocols:
- Atomic commits per task
- Commit format: fix(quick-{NNN}): {description} (or feat/refactor/test as appropriate)
- Run verify commands
- Create SUMMARY.md at .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/SUMMARY.md

Execute now.

Step 8: Read Results

After the executor completes:

1. Read .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/SUMMARY.md
2. Check the status field:
   • completed — task succeeded
   • partial — some tasks completed, others failed
   • failed — task failed entirely

Step 9: Update STATE.md

If STATE.md exists, update the Quick Tasks section.

If the section doesn't exist, create it:

### Quick Tasks

| # | Description | Status | Commit |
|---|-------------|--------|--------|

Add the new entry:

| {NNN} | {description} | {status indicator} | {commit hash or "N/A"} |

Status indicators:

• Completed: checkmark
• Partial: warning indicator
• Failed: X indicator

Step 10: Commit Planning Docs

Reference: skills/shared/commit-planning-docs.md for the standard commit pattern.

If planning.commit_docs: true in config.json:

• Stage the quick task directory files (PLAN.md, SUMMARY.md)
• Stage STATE.md changes
• Commit: docs(planning): quick task {NNN} - {slug}

Step 11: Report Results

Artifact check — Before reporting, verify all required artifacts exist:

1. .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/PLAN.md exists
2. .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/SUMMARY.md exists and is non-empty
3. STATE.md contains a quick task entry for {NNN} (if STATE.md exists)

If SUMMARY.md is missing: the executor may have failed — re-read executor output and report the failure. If STATE.md entry is missing: write it now (Step 9 was skipped).

Display results to the user with branded output:

If completed:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 TOWLINE ► QUICK TASK COMPLETE ✓
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Quick Task {NNN}:** {description}
Commit: {hash} — {commit message}
Files: {list of files changed}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

## ▶ Next Up

**Continue your workflow** — task complete

`/dev:status`

<sub>`/clear` first → fresh context window</sub>

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

**Also available:**
- `/dev:continue` — execute next logical step
- `/dev:todo list` — see pending todos

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

If partial:

⚠ Quick Task {NNN}: {description}
Completed: {N} of {M} tasks
Failed task: {task name} — {failure reason}

→ Re-run with `/dev:quick` to retry
→ `/dev:debug` to investigate the failure

If failed:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  ERROR                                                       ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Quick Task {NNN} failed: {failure details}

**To fix:** {what to try next}

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Quick Task Plan Generation

Inferring File Paths

When the user describes a task, infer file paths from:

1. The project structure (use Glob to find existing files matching keywords)
2. The tech stack (from prior SUMMARY.md files or package.json/requirements.txt)
3. Naming conventions in the codebase
4. Explicit file mentions in the description

Inferring Verification

Choose verification based on context:

Context	Verification Command
TypeScript project	npx tsc --noEmit
Has test files	npm test or pytest
Has ESLint	npx eslint {files}
Python project	python -c "import {module}"
Config change	cat {file} to verify content
Script	Run the script with safe args
Unknown	echo "Manual verification needed"

Commit Type Selection

Task Nature	Commit Type
Bug fix	fix
New feature/functionality	feat
Code restructuring	refactor
Adding tests	test
Config/tooling changes	chore
Documentation	docs

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Edge Cases

No .planning/ directory

• Create .planning/quick/ directory
• Proceed without STATE.md integration
• Warn user about limited tracking

Executor fails entirely

• Read error output
• Present to user with suggestion
• Do NOT auto-retry — let the user decide

Task description is too vague

• Ask clarifying questions as plain text prompts (do NOT use AskUserQuestion — these require freeform text answers):
  • "Which file(s) need to change?"
  • "What should the end result look like?"
  • "Is there a specific error to fix?"

User provides a file path in the description

• Use it directly in the plan
• Read the file first to understand its context
• Tailor the plan to the specific file

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Anti-Patterns

These are the most common failure modes. If you violate any of these, the skill has not executed correctly.

1. DO NOT implement the task yourself — you MUST spawn a Task(subagent_type: "dev:towline-executor"). This is the single most important rule.
2. DO NOT skip creating .planning/quick/{NNN}-{slug}/ — every quick task gets a tracking directory
3. DO NOT skip writing PLAN.md — the executor needs a plan file to follow
4. DO NOT create elaborate multi-wave plans — quick tasks should be 1-3 tasks max
5. DO NOT spawn multiple executors — one executor for the whole quick task
6. DO NOT skip the SUMMARY.md — even quick tasks need documentation
7. DO NOT use git add . — stage specific files only
8. DO NOT skip verification — every task needs a verify step
9. DO NOT create a quick task for something that needs planning — suggest /dev:plan
10. DO NOT modify STATE.md if it doesn't exist (other than warning)
11. DO NOT break the numbering sequence — always find the next number