Skills Reference
GoMad skills are atomic capabilities, organized by the four workflow phases — Analysis, Planning, Solutioning, and Implementation — plus a Core layer of cross-cutting utilities. Eight of the catalog entries are agent personas (full slash-command launchers); their full purpose and invocation are documented in Agents. The task skills and core skills below are invoked via the persona that owns them, not directly.
How to read this catalog
Section titled “How to read this catalog”Each phase section below is a table generated from the source SKILL.md files. The Skill column is the canonical skill name (matches the directory under src/gomad-skills/<phase>/ or src/core-skills/). The Description column comes from the SKILL.md frontmatter. The Invoked by column documents the contract — task skills and core skills are not standalone slash commands; a persona loads them as part of its workflow.
1. Analysis
Section titled “1. Analysis”| Skill | Description | Invoked by |
|---|---|---|
gm-document-project | Document brownfield projects for AI context. Use when the user says “document this project” or “generate project docs” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-domain-research | Conduct domain and industry research. Use when the user says wants to do domain research for a topic or industry | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-market-research | Conduct market research on competition and customers. Use when the user says they need market research | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-prfaq | Working Backwards PRFAQ challenge to forge product concepts. Use when the user requests to ‘create a PRFAQ’, ‘work backwards’, or ‘run the PRFAQ challenge’. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-product-brief | Create or update product briefs through guided or autonomous discovery. Use when the user requests to create or update a Product Brief. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-technical-research | Conduct technical research on technologies and architecture. Use when the user says they would like to do or produce a technical research report | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
Analysis-phase skills focus on early discovery, market research, and requirements gathering.
2. Planning
Section titled “2. Planning”| Skill | Description | Invoked by |
|---|---|---|
gm-create-prd | Create a PRD from scratch. Use when the user says “lets create a product requirements document” or “I want to create a new PRD” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-create-ux-design | Plan UX patterns and design specifications. Use when the user says “lets create UX design” or “create UX specifications” or “help me plan the UX” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-edit-prd | Edit an existing PRD. Use when the user says “edit this PRD”. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-validate-prd | Validate a PRD against standards. Use when the user says “validate this PRD” or “run PRD validation” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
Planning-phase skills produce PRDs, UX design specs, and validated planning artifacts.
3. Solutioning
Section titled “3. Solutioning”| Skill | Description | Invoked by |
|---|---|---|
gm-check-implementation-readiness | Validate PRD, UX, Architecture and Epics specs are complete. Use when the user says “check implementation readiness”. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-create-architecture | Create architecture solution design decisions for AI agent consistency. Use when the user says “lets create architecture” or “create technical architecture” or “create a solution design” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-create-epics-and-stories | Break requirements into epics and user stories. Use when the user says “create the epics and stories list” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-generate-project-context | Create project-context.md with AI rules. Use when the user says “generate project context” or “create project context” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
Solutioning-phase skills cover architecture design, epic + story decomposition, and implementation-readiness checks.
4. Implementation
Section titled “4. Implementation”| Skill | Description | Invoked by |
|---|---|---|
gm-checkpoint-preview | LLM-assisted human-in-the-loop review. Make sense of a change, focus attention where it matters, test. Use when the user says “checkpoint”, “human review”, or “walk me through this change”. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-code-review | Review code changes adversarially using parallel review layers (Blind Hunter, Edge Case Hunter, Acceptance Auditor) with structured triage into actionable categories. Use when the user says “run code review” or “review this code” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-correct-course | Manage significant changes during sprint execution. Use when the user says “correct course” or “propose sprint change” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-create-story | Creates a dedicated story file with all the context the agent will need to implement it later. Use when the user says “create the next story” or “create story [story identifier]“ | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-dev-story | Execute story implementation following a context filled story spec file. Use when the user says “dev this story [story file]” or “implement the next story in the sprint plan” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-discuss-story | Use when the user wants to crystallize gray areas for a planned story BEFORE running gm-create-story. Produces {planning_artifacts}/{{story_key}}-context.md with 5 locked sections (domain, decisions, canonical_refs, specifics, deferred) that gm-create-story auto-loads. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-domain-skill | Use when a coding agent or another skill needs to ground itself in reference material from an installed domain-knowledge-base pack. Takes {domain_slug} and optional {query}; on a strong BM25 match the skill loads the single best-matching .md file into the agent”s working context as authoritative domain guidance and returns only a one-line citation (read-as-skill, not stdout dump). With no query, returns a file listing. Supports typo fallback via Levenshtein “did you mean” suggestions. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-epic-demo-story | Create a demo/verification story for a completed epic that defines a walkthrough flow and validates it via Chrome DevTools. Use when the user says “create epic demo story”, “create demo story for epic [N]”, “create verification story for epic”, or wants to demonstrate and verify a completed epic through browser interaction. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-qa-generate-e2e-tests | Generate end to end automated tests for existing features. Use when the user says “create qa automated tests for [feature]“ | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-quick-dev | Implements any user intent, requirement, story, bug fix or change request by producing clean working code artifacts that follow the project”s existing architecture, patterns and conventions. Use when the user wants to build, fix, tweak, refactor, add or modify any code, component or feature. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-retrospective | Post-epic review to extract lessons and assess success. Use when the user says “run a retrospective” or “lets retro the epic [epic]“ | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-sprint-agent | Autonomous sprint orchestrator that drives the full story lifecycle: create story, develop, code review, summary, and commit — looping through stories automatically. Use when user says “start sprint agent”, “auto sprint”, “run Elon”, or wants hands-free story execution. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-sprint-planning | Generate sprint status tracking from epics. Use when the user says “run sprint planning” or “generate sprint plan” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-sprint-status | Summarize sprint status and surface risks. Use when the user says “check sprint status” or “show sprint status” | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
Implementation-phase skills drive sprint mechanics — story creation, dev execution, code review, retrospectives, and the new domain knowledge framework.
| Skill | Description | Invoked by |
|---|---|---|
gm-advanced-elicitation | Push the LLM to reconsider, refine, and improve its recent output. Use when user asks for deeper critique or mentions a known deeper critique method, e.g. socratic, first principles, pre-mortem, red team. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-brainstorming | Facilitate interactive brainstorming sessions using diverse creative techniques and ideation methods. Use when the user says help me brainstorm or help me ideate. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-distillator | Lossless LLM-optimized compression of source documents. Use when the user requests to ‘distill documents’ or ‘create a distillate’. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-editorial-review-prose | Clinical copy-editor that reviews text for communication issues. Use when user says review for prose or improve the prose | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-editorial-review-structure | Structural editor that proposes cuts, reorganization, and simplification while preserving comprehension. Use when user requests structural review or editorial review of structure | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-help | Analyzes current state and user query to answer GoMad questions or recommend the next skill(s) to use. Use when user asks for help, gomad help, what to do next, or what to start with in GoMad. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-index-docs | Generates or updates an index.md to reference all docs in the folder. Use if user requests to create or update an index of all files in a specific folder | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-party-mode | Orchestrates group discussions between installed GOMAD agents, enabling natural multi-agent conversations where each agent is a real subagent with independent thinking. Use when user requests party mode, wants multiple agent perspectives, group discussion, roundtable, or multi-agent conversation about their project. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-review-adversarial-general | Perform a Cynical Review and produce a findings report. Use when the user requests a critical review of something | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-review-edge-case-hunter | Walk every branching path and boundary condition in content, report only unhandled edge cases. Orthogonal to adversarial review - method-driven not attitude-driven. Use when you need exhaustive edge-case analysis of code, specs, or diffs. | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
gm-shard-doc | Splits large markdown documents into smaller, organized files based on level 2 (default) sections. Use if the user says perform shard document | Invoked by gm-agent-* or any persona via the skill loader |
Core skills are cross-cutting utilities — review helpers, brainstorming, document sharding, and elicitation primitives — usable by any persona in any phase.