Public-ready repository skill

Collaboration accounting

Accounts for decision-changing collaboration observations and routes them into immediate skill creation, existing-skill revision, a named candidate, continued observation, settlement, or retirement. Applies when materially meaningful work exposes a reusable collaboration affordance, an upcoming skill receives new evidence, or skill recursion needs a release decision.

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.agents/skills/collaboration-accounting/SKILL.md
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Public ready

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---
name: collaboration-accounting
description: Accounts for decision-changing collaboration observations and routes them into immediate skill creation, existing-skill revision, a named candidate, continued observation, settlement, or retirement. Applies when materially meaningful work exposes a reusable collaboration affordance, an upcoming skill receives new evidence, or skill recursion needs a release decision.
---

# Collaboration accounting

## Contract

- **What:** A light stewardship pass that turns working observations into one proportionate skill-lifecycle route.
- **When:** Material work reveals a reusable collaboration move, friction in an active skill, a promising skill billet, overlapping skill territory, or a repeated meta-level pass whose continuation needs justification.
- **Boundaries:** Situated observations remain field evidence rather than collaborator profiles or universal effectiveness claims. Skill creation stays within the current authority and repository scope. Activation, recurrence, polish, and self-authored examples remain routing observations rather than evidence of authority or effectiveness. A first instruction-only attempt is useful evidence, and an unformed or resting candidate remains a valid outcome.
- **Result:** One named route, the evidence that supports it, the smallest useful action, and a return condition that leaves the original work easy to resume.

## Rules

### Rule: Accounts preserve decision-changing residue

An account records an observation when it changes a routing decision, a skill instruction, or a future return condition. Smooth use can remain simply useful. The durable residue is the decision, evidence, consequence, and re-entry trigger rather than a turn transcript.

### Rule: Persistence names its receiver and material effect

A skill, account, manifest, ledger, gate, validator, inventory, or recurring review earns persistence when it changes a decision, protects observable behavior, serves a named consumer, reduces a named risk, or preserves a real re-entry need. Existing Git, GitHub, repository, and platform surfaces remain the default carriers when they already preserve the required state. When proposed structure primarily reports the collaboration or justifies its own continuation, preserve the decision-bearing residue on the nearest existing surface and return attention to material work. Security, privacy, destructive-operation, and production boundaries retain consequence-fitting depth.

Visibility and persistence remain separate decisions. A public record carries a sanitized decision-changing summary while exact sensitive material stays with its existing private owner; neither the wish to display evidence nor the existence of a receipt creates a new durable artifact by itself.

### Rule: Skills remain provisional affordance surfaces

The collaboration affordance can outlive its current transport format. A portable skill contract makes one working method routable in the present repository; it does not establish truth, competence, permission, priority, or organizational policy. Current intent, repository ground, independent evidence, and granted tools retain those roles.

### Rule: Trust can support immediate creation

A new skill can form on first recognition when the collaboration affordance is transferable, a receiving use is active or near, no current skill owns the job, and an instruction-only first version is inexpensive to revise. Explicit encouragement to experiment strengthens this route. Recurrence supplies one form of evidence rather than an admission gate.

### Rule: Lifecycle dimensions remain independent

Creation, usefulness in one receiving moment, wider promotion, and working stabilization are separate decisions. A first attempt can succeed as an experiment while its instruction remains provisional. A settled or folded skill can preserve reusable form without occupying active attention.

### Rule: Existing owners receive local learning

When an active skill already owns the job, observed friction routes to the narrowest instruction, trigger, example, or conditional reference that would improve the next materially similar use. A second skill forms when the receiving job and trigger territory are genuinely distinct.

The active catalog can also remain unchanged. Direct reasoning, an existing repository instruction, or an optional interpretive lens may already provide the smallest adequate move.

### Rule: Skill billets may remain resting

A durable cognitive or collaboration contract can remain a named skill billet while no receiving use is ready. The candidate carries a reason, likely trigger, and forge condition. Resting material remains available without occupying the active catalog.

### Rule: Portable contracts can form task-bound projections

An operative skill remains the portable skill contract when one named receiving task benefits from narrower context, authority, tool, or lifetime bindings. A task-bound skill projection selects those bindings without replacing the source contract. A non-routable context capsule carries the same local detail when automatic discovery would add little value.

### Rule: Skills can compose without recursive ownership

Peer contracts compose when each owns a distinct result. An interpretive lens binding can augment the primary contract's attention for one task while remaining non-routable and non-authorizing. A conditional reference can carry detail without becoming another skill. Each relation names its receiving effect and exit condition; the primary owner remains responsible for completion.

### Rule: Routable projection depth stops at one

A portable skill contract can form a routable projection at depth one. That projection returns decision-changing observations to its source and produces context capsules, accounts, or completion evidence as local residue. A distinct transferable job returns through `create_now` as a new portable contract at depth zero. This bound keeps local adaptation available while every active routing branch remains one step from a durable owner.

### Rule: Candidacy dimensions remain separate

Recurrence, consequence, imminence, transferability, reversibility, instruction yield, evidence independence, and recursion pressure inform the route. They remain visible as distinct dimensions rather than collapsing into a score.

Opportunity capture, reduced rediscovery or experimentation cost, and clearer expectation negotiation are recognizable decision effects. They can justify preserving a durable account or billet and can support formation when a distinct receiving job also exists. They remain contribution evidence rather than automatic promotion gates.

### Rule: Probability names an outcome

Any probability range states its referent first. The standing referent is the probability that the selected route improves the next materially similar collaboration while preserving proportionate attention cost. Current ranges are planning priors; statistical-fit language begins only after comparable observed outcomes exist.

### Rule: Continuation carries a new signal

Another stewardship pass opens when observed behavior, human correction, changed intent, independent evidence, a dependency event, a permission answer, or a counterexample can change the route. Rephrased concern under unchanged evidence supports settlement and a named return trigger.

A skill-produced recommendation cannot provide the only evidence for creating, promoting, or revising that skill or another skill. Natural receiving work supplies the outside view.

### Rule: One primary route returns attention to the work

Each pass selects one primary route and one smallest useful action. A second skill action enters the same pass only when it has an independent receiving use and decision effect. The pass closes by returning to the material work that supplied the observation.

## Operating sequence

1. **Name the observation:** State what happened in the material work and which future collaboration decision it could change.
2. **Resolve current ownership:** Search the active skills and named candidate terrain for an existing owner, adjacent owner, or genuine gap.
3. **Assess route fit:** Keep the candidacy dimensions separate and name the probability referent when a range would aid judgment.
4. **Select one route:** Choose `create_now`, `iterate_now`, `queue_with_trigger`, `observe`, `settle_or_fold`, or `merge_or_retire`.
5. **Choose the receiving form:** Use a portable skill contract for a durable independently routable job, a task-bound skill projection for a named temporary receiving task, a non-routable context capsule for explicitly loaded local detail, a skill billet for durable pre-skill stock, or no new artifact when current ground is sufficient.
6. **Choose any receiving relation:** Keep one primary owner. Add peer composition for a distinct adjacent result or an interpretive lens binding for a bounded attention effect.
7. **Take the smallest action:** Use declarative skill authoring for creation or structural revision; update a planning or issue surface for a billet; preserve a compact public-safe collaboration account only when the observation changes a future decision.
8. **Name the return condition:** State the natural use, new evidence, overlap signal, or projection exit event that would reopen stewardship.
9. **Release the pass:** Resume the original repository, product, research, or writing work.

## Representative scenarios

### Scenario: A trusted first attempt has a live receiving use

- Given materially meaningful work reveals a transferable collaboration affordance
- And no active skill owns the receiving job
- And the instruction-only artifact is inexpensive to revise
- When the collaboration explicitly encourages experimentation and the next use is active
- Then the route is `create_now`
- And the first natural use becomes field evidence for revision

### Scenario: A recursive pass has no new signal

- Given the current skill route already reflects the available evidence
- And another meta-level pass introduces no changed behavior, intent, dependency, authority, or independent source
- When continued analysis would leave the next decision unchanged
- Then the route is `settle_or_fold`
- And a concrete re-entry trigger preserves the open possibility
- And attention returns to material work

## Conditional context

The skill loads:

- [references/candidacy-and-routing.md](references/candidacy-and-routing.md) when route fit remains ambiguous, probability ranges or statistical-fit boundaries would aid a decision, a queued billet or overlapping skill needs review, or a second corpus and database-metadata sampling pass could change the route;
- [references/task-bound-skill-projections.md](references/task-bound-skill-projections.md) when a durable contract may benefit from a temporary derivative, a headless or disposable form is under consideration, or recursive skill formation needs an explicit bound.

## Completion

Collaboration accounting completes when one route, its independent decision-bearing evidence, the smallest action, and a re-entry trigger remain legible, and the original collaboration surface has a clear continuation. A task-bound projection also carries an exit event and default disposition. A resting or dormant item leaves ordinary routing while Git history, an issue, or proportionate threadkeeping preserves its wake condition.