Skip to content

re-frame-pair-retro2

Turns a re-frame-pair2 session into a product retrospective. Surfaces friction, classifies root causes, proposes 2–5 concrete improvements, and (only on explicit approval) drafts or files beads against the right repo.

What it does

The re-frame-pair-retro2 skill is a meta-skill for re-frame-pair2. It reads the current or just-finished pair-programming session and turns it into a focused retrospective: what was the user actually trying to do; where did the workflow drag, confuse, or frustrate; which problems were one-off environment issues vs recurring product gaps; and 2–5 concrete improvement ideas, prioritized by leverage, including 1–2 bolder ideas when reshaping the workflow would materially improve it.

The skill is diagnosis first, contribution second. It presents friction points before root causes, lets the user steer which ones to dig into, and never files a bead or edits another repo without explicit approval. Improvements are routed to the right layer:

  • re-frame-pair2 — friction inside the pair tool itself (SKILL.md, scripts, recipes, structured results, attach/discovery brittleness, cross-platform handling).
  • re-frame2 — friction caused by the framework's Tool-Pair contract (missing trace events, gaps in epoch-history or restore-epoch failure modes, missing registrar query surfaces, source-coord annotation gaps, schema-reflection shortcomings).

Working style: prefer evidence over vibes (cite concrete moments — retries, clarifications, stale outputs, manual workarounds); separate symptom from cause; notice both direct friction (the user said something was frustrating) and indirect (repeated commands, fallbacks to lower-level tools); be creatively ambitious after the diagnosis is clear, labelling speculative ideas plainly. Time-travel and trace-stream consumption stay on re-frame2's own surfaces — no proposals route through re-frame-10x.

When to reach for it

Load this skill when:

  • The user asks how re-frame-pair2 could better support their workflow.
  • The user wants a retrospective on a debugging or pairing session that just happened.
  • The user wants concrete improvement ideas or bead drafts for re-frame-pair2.

Do not use this skill for:

Kickoff

The skill auto-triggers on retrospective-shaped questions ("how could pair2 do this better?", "what could be improved here?"). To force-load:

/skill re-frame-pair-retro2

The skill's analysis workflow runs in six steps: reconstruct the session goal, build a short timeline of stalls / restarts / detours, extract a numbered friction list (and ask the user which to dig into), classify root causes through ten lenses (skill structure / skill gap / misleading docs / missing structured op / unreliable op / default or fallback / platform bug / validation gap / upstream limitation / context-window issue), generate improvements at the right layer, and prioritize down to 2–5.

Output is a compact retrospective with sections — Goal, Observed friction, Likely root causes, Improvement ideas, optional Bolder ideas, optional Bead candidates. The skill drafts bead bodies on request, but never files without explicit approval.

Where the skill lives