bootstrap-repo-harnesslisted
Install: claude install-skill WangChangxin0809/cc-repo-harness
# Bootstrap a repository harness
Governs: shared/scripts/scaffold.py, shared/scripts/probe_repo.py, shared/scripts/assess
A harness is the machinery that puts the right knowledge in front of an agent at
the moment it acts, and stops the actions that are cheaper to prevent than to
review. Most repositories have none: they have a `CLAUDE.md` full of rules that
are read once, paid every turn, and followed unevenly.
**Everything this skill installs must work without it.** The test is literal:
1. Install, then uninstall the plugin.
2. Hand a fresh agent a real task.
3. The repository still teaches it how to work.
Anything that only works while the plugin is present belongs somewhere else.
That is independence, not disposal. A harness decays — the standing cost creeps
up, a guard stops matching, a document falls behind the code it claims — and a
repository cannot notice that about itself. Step 1 is worth re-running months
later for exactly that, which is why the assessment is never copied into the
tree: it reports on the repository rather than being part of it.
## Two rules everything else follows from
**Knowledge lives in the repository, not in agent memory.** Memory is
per-machine, invisible to review, and cannot be corrected by a teammate. A fact
worth keeping is worth a file with a path someone can cite in a pull request.
**What cannot tolerate a miss never goes through retrieval.** Retrieval is
best-effort by construction. Rules whose violation is irreversible or sile