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ai-artifacts/projects/skills/037-slice-skill-wayfinder-contract-research.md
2026-08-01 14:05:09 -04:00

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status, parent, blocked-by, claimed-by, claimed-at, tags
status parent blocked-by claimed-by claimed-at tags
resolved 031-slice-skill-map
019fbb2a-dbcd-79d2-ae72-c5bcdd1d714e 2026-07-31T22:58:59-04:00
ticket/research

Slice skill Wayfinder contract research

Question

What Wayfinder artifact rules must slice follow when creating implementation task tickets?

Findings

Wayfinder normally plans rather than implements. It creates a durable map of questions whose resolutions are decisions, findings, prototypes, or completed prerequisites, and says implementing the destination usually marks the edge of the map and the handoff point. slice therefore needs an explicit contract that it creates implementation handoff tickets only when invoked, rather than silently turning unresolved planning fog into destination work. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/SKILL.md.

The user-facing reference rule is human-readable artifact titles through the destination's link style, not bare identifiers or slugs. slice should present proposed and written artifacts by wikilink title such as [[034-slice-skill-source-task]], not by an unlinked filename stem or numeric identifier alone. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/SKILL.md.

Artifact destinations are resolved before naming files. When a caller provides a destination directory, it must be used exactly. Otherwise the default is $(xdg-user-dir DOCUMENTS)/ai-artifacts/projects/<project> when the AI-artifacts vault exists, falling back to ./docs in the current project. slice must read the destination's AGENTS.md before writing artifacts. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

This vault's project artifact convention is flat and identifier-bearing. Project Markdown artifacts are named <NNN>-<scope-slug>[-<subject-slug>]-<artifact-type>.md, with identifiers allocated by incrementing the vault root .counter before artifact creation. The creating skill chooses the artifact-type slug, but Wayfinder ticket filenames use research, prototype, grill, or task, and maps should use the normal map artifact-type suffix. Sources: /home/alexion/Documents/ai-artifacts/AGENTS.md, /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

Wayfinder maps are route summaries, not stores for detailed ticket results. Only the Frontier links to tickets or other artifacts, Decisions so far contains concise plain-language decisions without links, and map status is open while live tickets or fog remain. slice should not store implementation slice bodies in the map. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

Wayfinder tickets are self-resolving artifacts with authoritative metadata. A new ticket has status: open, a singular parent wikilink, blocked-by: [], and one ticket tag. Task tickets use ticket/task/afk or ticket/task/human. slice should create one implementation slice per Wayfinder task ticket and choose AFK when an agent can complete it without live human input, or human when the task's execution or validation requires the user. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

parent and blocked-by mean different things. parent records provenance, while blocked-by records upstream artifacts that must resolve before the ticket becomes actionable. A ticket is on the Frontier when it is open, every blocker is satisfied, and it has no claim. slice should put the source artifact or map in parent, and put prerequisite slices or unresolved prerequisite artifacts in blocked-by. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

Claims are part of the execution protocol and should not be pre-created by slice. A ticket is claimed only when an agent is about to work it, by setting status: claimed, claimed-by, and claimed-at before doing work. slice should create open unclaimed task tickets, then recompute the map Frontier. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

Research and prototype tickets have called-skill completion contracts, while task tickets perform prerequisite work where possible or give the human a checklist. Because slice output is implementation work, it should not create research, prototype, or grill tickets unless slicing reveals a precise unresolved planning question instead of an implementation slice. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/SKILL.md.

The existing full map in the dotfiles project shows the artifact style in practice: a map artifact [[002-pi-subagents-map]], decision summaries in the map, task tickets such as [[026-pi-subagents-dotfiles-deployment-task]] and [[027-pi-subagents-implementation-spec-task]], and detailed task results living in those task artifacts rather than in the map. Some completed historical tickets use status: done, but the current Wayfinder artifact contract lists resolved as the resolved ticket status, so slice should follow the current contract rather than copying that older status spelling. Sources: /home/alexion/Documents/ai-artifacts/projects/dotfiles/002-pi-subagents-map.md, /home/alexion/Documents/ai-artifacts/projects/dotfiles/026-pi-subagents-dotfiles-deployment-task.md, /home/alexion/Documents/ai-artifacts/projects/dotfiles/027-pi-subagents-implementation-spec-task.md, /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

Concurrent writes require re-reading shared artifacts immediately before editing them and reconciling duplicate identifiers or filenames after parallel creation. slice should allocate artifact identifiers sequentially, create approved task artifacts, then re-read and repair the map Frontier after the files exist. Source: /home/alexion/.pi/agent/skills/wayfinder/ARTIFACTS.md.

Conclusion

slice must write open, unclaimed Wayfinder task tickets in the resolved artifact destination, using destination naming, identifier, wikilink, parent, blocker, status, claim, and Frontier rules. It should keep implementation slice detail in each task artifact, not the map, and it should treat research, prototype, and grill tickets as planning work rather than implementation slices.