Compound Engineering — Prompts
Verbatim Excerpt 1: ce-plan SKILL.md (Planning Role Separation)
---
name: ce-plan
description: "Create structured plans for multi-step tasks -- software features, research workflows, events, study plans, or any goal that benefits from breakdown..."
---
# Create Technical Plan
**Note: The current year is 2026.** Use this when dating plans and searching for recent documentation.
`ce-brainstorm` defines **WHAT** to build. `ce-plan` defines **HOW** to build it. `ce-work` executes the plan. A prior brainstorm is useful context but never required — `ce-plan` works from any input: a requirements doc, a bug report, a feature idea, or a rough description.
**When directly invoked, always plan.** Never classify a direct invocation as "not a planning task" and abandon the workflow. If the input is unclear, ask clarifying questions or use the planning bootstrap (Phase 0.4) to establish enough context — but always stay in the planning workflow.
This workflow produces a durable implementation plan. It does **not** implement code, run tests, or learn from execution-time results. If the answer depends on changing code and seeing what happens, that belongs in `ce-work`, not here.
Prompting technique: Strict role separation with explicit prohibition against scope bleed. Uses "when to trigger" heuristics + "when NOT to trigger" anti-pattern enforcement. Phase naming (Phase 0.4) creates a structured decomposition tree.
Verbatim Excerpt 2: ce-code-review SKILL.md (Multi-Mode Orchestration)
---
name: ce-code-review
description: "Structured code review using tiered persona agents, confidence-gated findings, and a merge/dedup pipeline..."
---
## Severity Scale
## Mode Detection
| Mode | When | Behavior |
|------|------|----------|
| **Interactive** (default) | No mode token present | Review, apply safe_auto fixes automatically, present findings, ask for policy decisions on gated/manual findings... |
| **Autofix** | `mode:autofix` in arguments | No user interaction. Review, apply only policy-allowed `safe_auto` fixes, re-review in bounded rounds... |
| **Report-only** | `mode:report-only` in arguments | Strictly read-only. Review and report only, then stop with no edits... |
| **Headless** | `mode:headless` in arguments | Programmatic mode for skill-to-skill invocation. Apply `safe_auto` fixes silently (single pass), return all other findings as structured text output... |
Prompting technique: Argument-token parsing pattern (mode:autofix, mode:headless) for programmatic caller detection. Headless mode explicitly designed for skill-to-skill orchestration — the output is structured text, not prose. Confidence-gated finding classification (safe_auto, gated_auto, manual, human, release) creates a tiered action routing protocol.
Verbatim Excerpt 3: ce-work SKILL.md (Plan-to-Execution Handoff)
## Phase 1: Quick Start
1. **Read Plan and Clarify** _(skip if arriving from Phase 0 with a bare prompt)_
- Read the work document completely
- Treat the plan as a decision artifact, not an execution script
- Check for a `Scope Boundaries` section — these are explicit non-goals. Refer back to them if implementation starts pulling you toward adjacent work
- **Do not edit the plan body during execution.** The plan is a decision artifact; progress lives in git commits...
- The only plan mutation during ce-work is the final `status: active → completed` flip at shipping...
Prompting technique: "Decision artifact not execution script" framing locks the plan from mutation during execution. Scope Boundaries as an explicit named section prevents scope creep. The status: active → completed state machine is the plan's only mutable field during work.