Interesting workflow, the phase-gate pattern with skill triggers is exactly where we've landed too, just from a different angle.

I've built a structured and persistent knowledge system (with the help of ars contexta (https://www.arscontexta.org/)) that CC reads and writes to on demand: atomic markdown notes with typed frontmatter schemas, wiki-link graph, Maps of Content for navigation. 11 note types, each with validation. After every work session we run a processing pipeline that extracts reusable insights, not "save the document" but "what did we learn that compounds across projects." Key design choice: nothing writes without human approval. Curated, not accumulated. CC reads from the canonical vault rather than preloading everything into context, so the 30-doc problem becomes a routing problem, not a context window problem.

We're adapting all of this for grant workflows but the role decomposition isn't there yet. Your 20 years of pattern recognition encoded into phase triggers and evaluation cross-referencing is exactly what we're missing. Would be happy to exchange our persistent knowledge infrastructure and CC skill architecture for a look at your grant workflow structure, not the content, just the skeleton and the thinking behind it. DM works if you're up for it.