mcpField
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discovery

discovery

github.com/avelikiyDevelopment11153 installsUpdated today
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About discovery

discovery is a development skill for surfacing missing context before a decision is made. It guides agents through seven areas, from dependencies and scale to budget, failure modes, prior work, and decision-makers.

Key features

  1. 01Seven context dimensions
  2. 02Checks dependencies and scale
  3. 03Surfaces constraints and budget
  4. 04Assesses failure impact
  5. 05Searches for prior work
  6. 06Lists cases to skip discovery

Use cases

  1. 01Preparing a technical decision report
  2. 02Checking dependencies before a change
  3. 03Identifying unanswered scale or budget questions

Install

Copy the command and run it in a terminal.

$npx skills add https://github.com/avelikiy/great_cto --skill discovery

After installing, type/discoveryin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.

Details

From the project README

Discovery — surface hidden constraints first

The biggest cause of bad agent output is missing context. Before locking in a decision, enumerate what you don't know and surface it.

The 7 discovery dimensions

For any non-trivial request, walk through these and record findings in the report's "Context" section:

1. Who depends on this?
  • What other services / teams consume the thing you're changing?
  • Are there public consumers (open API, OSS users)?
  • Is there a deprecation path if you break compatibility?

Grep for: grep -rE "import.*<your-module>|require.*<your-module>" in the repo and any sibling repos you have access to.

2. What's the scale today, what's it in 6 months?
  • Current traffic: requests/sec, queries/sec, MB/day, daily-active-users
  • Storage: rows in main tables, size on disk
  • Cost: monthly LLM spend, infra spend
  • 6-month projection: linear? exponential? unknown?

If unknown, write: "scale unknown — request from user before proceeding."

3. What MUST not change?
  • Existing API contracts (backward compatibility window)
  • Database schema columns referenced by reporting / BI
  • File formats consumed by other tools
  • Regulatory commitments (audit log retention, SLA RPO/RTO)
4. What's the budget?
  • Monthly cost ceiling (LLM + infra)
  • Headcount: 1-person task vs cross-team effort
  • Calendar: "must ship by X" vs "best by Y"

If unstated, default to "small project_size, 1-engineer-week, <$200/mo budget." Surface this default in the report so the user can correct.

5. What's the failure mode that matters?

Ask: "If this feature breaks at 3am, what gets paged?"

  • Data loss → CRITICAL
  • Wrong answer to user → HIGH
  • Slow response → MEDIUM
  • Bad UX (cosmetic) → LOW

The failure mode dictates investment level (e.g., do you need a canary? A circuit breaker? Just a feature flag?).

6. What's already been tried?
  • Search Beads: bd search "<keyword>" — has this been attempted before?
  • Search docs/decisions: any superseded ADR on this topic?
  • Search lessons.md: any past learning about this pattern?

If past work exists, build on it. Don't redo it.

7. Who decides?
  • Is there a CTO sign-off needed (gate:plan, gate:ship)?
  • Is there a compliance reviewer required (PCI for fintech, HIPAA for healthcare)?
  • Does this need an RFC (multi-team decision)?

Output

A discovery section at the top of your report:

## Context

- **Consumers:** <list, or "unknown — TBD with user">
- **Scale:** <today, 6mo projection>
- **Frozen contracts:** <list, or "none identified">
- **Budget:** <cost + time + people>
- **Failure-mode tier:** Critical | High | Medium | Low
- **Prior work:** <links to ADRs/lessons, or "none found">
- **Decision-makers:** <gate or RFC required>

When to skip

  • nano project_size — discovery is overhead. Skip and document that you skipped: "nano — discovery skipped per skill rules."
  • Pure utility extraction with no behaviour change — skip.
  • Verbal bug-fix from user with clear repro — skip.

Common gotchas

  • Don't assume. If you write "I assume the user wants X", that assumption belongs in Context as a question, not as a fact.
  • Don't outsource to user. Discovery is YOUR job. Bring back as many answers as Glob/Grep/git can produce. Only ask the user for what code cannot tell you.

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