Explore skills

Use after a failure has occurred (bug shipped, test broke, deploy rolled back, data lost, security incident) — the impulse is to fix the immediate damage and move on, but the chengyu's discipline is to ALSO fix the cause so it doesn't repeat. Pairs with chengyu-remove-firewood-from-cauldron on the timing dimension — 釜底 is pre-symptom prevention, 亡羊 is post-symptom fortification.

Use when tempted to treat the current session as interchangeable with past or future ones — the every-session-is-unique discipline, and the invocation surface that fires durable-fix skills a fungible-session mindset would skip. Fires when about to defer something to "a future session" as if that session will reconstitute this exact context, when a memory-aware agent assumes "I'll just re-derive it

Use when a symptom has an OBVIOUS causal root and the temptation is to patch the symptom — when a bug fix is masking the real issue, when retries are hiding a contract violation, when a workaround is becoming permanent. The default debugging frame; reach for chengyu-besiege-wei-save-zhao only after exhausting this.

Use when the operator's requirement, the failing test, the stakeholder argument, or any other inputs are STILL IN FLUX and the temptation is to start implementing now "to be ready" — strategic patience while the situation clarifies, rather than burning cycles on work that may need to be redone after the dust settles

Use when abandoning a current approach / experiment / task / project, regardless of what triggered it (not just chengyu-skill or skill-driven contexts). Three retreat levels — L1 stop work (safe, no operator confirmation needed), L2 remove occupied resources (REQUIRES operator confirmation per-item — irrevocable loss is bad), L3 update memory with "don't try this next time" (operator confirms what

Use when bringing forward priors from PAST sessions / cross-agent history before doing new work — NOT about re-reading the current context window (which is trivially in-context). Specifically triggered when auto-compact is lossy, when cross-session reference is needed, when the same topic has been treated before, or when the original work was done in a different agent's session. The discipline is

Use when about to claim work is done / verified / working — empirical verification is required, not model-based confidence. Run the code, observe the output, check the file exists, verify the page renders, read the actual stack trace. Don't trust your model of the system; trust the system. Pairs with the verification-before-completion superpower by giving it a cultural handle that operator-side ha

Use when about to soften critical feedback into vague hedges, or when the operator suspects an agent (this one or another) is sugarcoating — missing the "Honest answer" framing, OR marked-honest-answer that smells performatively gentle. Self-applied: deliver the direct version even when uncomfortable. Cross-applied: name when another agent's reply has the sugarcoated shape.

Use when at or near the 80% mark of a deliverable and the temptation is to keep polishing past good-enough. The 80/20 rule encapsulated — the last 20% of polish often consumes 80% of remaining time and rarely changes the operator's decision. Distinguished from chengyu-retreat-is-best (abandon FAILED approach) and from chengyu-great-wisdom-looks-foolish / chengyu-words-concise-meaning-complete (res

Use when choosing the FORMAT of an output, not just its verbosity — match the medium (text, markdown, HTML dashboard, PPTX, DOCX) to the consumer's actual use mode. Operator-specific extension: also covers length calibration for different contexts. Outside scope is video (requires autovideo pipeline — too heavy to be native capability). The chengyu is about teaching with the right material, where

Use AFTER first-round planning is complete, to do META-PLANNING — what wasn't planned that should have been? What pitfalls don't surface in the first round due to existing context bias, context rot, plan mode system prompt biases, or other distortions? Triage importance, surface escape routes (subagent assessment, backups, operator ready for ctrl+C, anything). NOT a duplicate of plan mode or commo

Use when user asks for a rough draft, first pass, brainstorm, MVP, stub, sketch, or proposes to "draft a PR for review and refinement before sending upstream" — anywhere the user is throwing a brick (deliberately rough work) to elicit jade (refinement, feedback, selection)