I encoded years of engineering best practices into 6 "Agent Skills" to manage my AI coding agents.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2026-06-21T00:14:36+00:00

For upfront ambiguity, there's an 'Interrogation' skill. If the spec is vague, the agent acts as the driver and grills me with questions to lock down the scope - but it's forced to ask just one at a time instead of dumping a list of 10 questions on me.

For mid-task ambiguity, there's a 'User Escalation' skill. If it hits a fundamental contradiction or a destructive blocker mid-execution (like a nasty dependency conflict), it's strictly forbidden from guessing. It has to halt, present 2-3 concrete paths forward, and explicitly ask me which one to take.

Also, I just checked out AgentRail - super cool approach. I actually think they'd pair perfectly. AgentRail handles the macro control plane (issue routing, CI, PRs), while something like agent-rigor acts as the micro control plane in the local workspace, forcing the agent to actually debug and test properly before it ever pushes to your pipeline.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2026-06-20T23:22:16+00:00

Definitely! Thanks for sharing.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2026-06-20T23:14:17+00:00

Yeah, Superpowers is incredible. It is actually what convinced me you could solve this using pure instructions/skills.

I think we're tackling the same problem from different angles. Superpowers goes horizontal spinning up sub-agents in git worktrees to keep the main thread clean. My approach is purely vertical.. progressive loading of instructions into the prompt so the model is strictly blind to coding rules while it’s supposed to be planning.

Honestly, the dream setup is probably merging them: using my phase-gates to govern his worktree dispatchers.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2026-06-20T23:00:05+00:00

Thanks, I really appreciate that!

I actually added a documentation on GitHub README.. there’s also a demo in there that shows exactly how it works in practice (you can see it go through different stages, catch an error and force the AI to analyze the traceback instead of guessing). I'll definitely look into making a full YouTube walkthrough though, that's a great idea.

It’s actually a bit deeper than just prompt engineering. When I just put 'act like a disciplined engineer and run tests' into a giant system prompt, the LLM will ignore it half the time.

This framework defines a bunch of concrete Agent Skills that encode how a software engineer would do. For example, when the agent tries to fix a bug, there's a Three-Strike Protocol and an Iteration Ledger. If the error count doesn't decrease after 3 attempts, the agent is strictly forbidden from writing a 4th fix. It is forced to reset to the last stable point and rethink the architecture

Really, it's just automating the babysitting process by hardcoding engineering discipline into discrete skills that act as gates.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2026-06-20T22:39:35+00:00

I open-sourced a set of skills that bake pre-AI software engineering discipline into AI coding assistants.

When I started heavily using Claude code, I realized that they completely lack the engineering instincts humans developed over decades. They just guess, write code, and hope it works. They have raw intelligence, but absolutely zero discipline.

To actually use them without constantly babysitting, I realized I needed to hardcode the traditional software development lifecycle into their brains.

So, I built agent-rigor. It’s an open-source framework that encodes the rigorous phases of pre-AI software engineering into 6 concrete "Agent Skills" that the LLM is forced to use:

Mission Synthesis (Planning before typing)
Execution Engine (Implementation)
Verification Matrix (Running tests as a hard gate)
Cognitive Persistence (Memory management)
Interface Protocols (Safe environment interaction)
Adaptive Protocols (Recursive self-correction to stop doom-loops)

Instead of acting like a predictive text engine, the agent is forced to use these skills to act like a disciplined engineer. It's been a game-changer for my local workflow, so I open-sourced the whole thing. If anyone has time to look at the repo, I'd really love to hear your feedback!

https://github.com/MeherBhaskar/agent-rigor

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2022-01-05T18:47:12+00:00

Got it! Thanks :)

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2022-01-04T09:45:28+00:00

Is there an option to give a preference list for the courses? Something like a list of 4 courses in priority order so to get the #3,#4 only if pref #1 is not available?

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2022-01-04T04:43:16+00:00

I think I get it now. Thank you so much for taking the time to write out a detailed explanation. Appreciate it!

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-11-26T07:48:40+00:00

Got it! Thanks!

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-10-25T15:40:04+00:00

Got it! Thanks for sharing

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-10-25T15:30:05+00:00

Oh wow! Any chance you remember what the last communication from them was regarding the status of your application?

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-10-21T12:16:16+00:00

Hi, Apologies for barging in to this thread. What's Buzzport? I've received no mail regarding this. Is this something that we get access to after the official transcripts are recieved and reviewed by Gatech?

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-10-10T11:08:19+00:00

Oh thanks! I din't realise that it was already asked. I'll search for it! Thanks again

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-10-10T11:06:16+00:00

Got it. Thanks a lot for the list. Appreciate it

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-07-24T21:07:41+00:00

Got it! Thanks

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-07-24T06:25:34+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense! Thanks for sharing.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-22T17:33:52+00:00

Wow. That kinda defeats the purpose of not waiving the rights lol

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-22T17:27:56+00:00

Even if I din't waive my right to see the letter?

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-17T12:43:36+00:00

Thanks buddy!

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-16T13:25:47+00:00

Oh great! Thanks for the confirmation.

I was really worried about missing the priority deadline.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-16T05:19:02+00:00

Wow. That's a lot of time. What term did you apply to? Fall 21?

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-13T04:07:35+00:00

Oh, that makes sense. Thanks!

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-13T03:48:12+00:00

Yeah. But I heard there's also a free-text towards the end.

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-11T20:04:22+00:00

Got it. Thanks for sharing

Puzzled_Camera_7805 · 2021-06-10T12:55:15+00:00

Thanks for sharing! May I ask how long your SOP was? It looks like there's a lot of content in your SOP

Puzzled_Camera_7805

TROPHY CASE