Skill: Elephant-Goldfish Workflow

This skill implements the "Elephant and Goldfish" methodology (Rensin 2026). It ensures that software engineering tasks are driven by explicit written intent and verified by a zero-context executioner and an adversarial reviewer.

## Workflow Overview Always follow these five phases to ensure high-quality, reproducible code changes.

Phase 1: The Elephant (Persistent Planning)

1. Goal: Draft a "Goldfish-proof" SPEC.md.
2. Action: Document all requirements, constraints, edge cases, and testing strategies.
3. Personalization: Ask the user: "What would you like to name your Mean Reviewer? (Default: Froggy)".
4. Preference: Ask the user if they wish to skip Phase 2 (Adversarial Spec Review).
5. Absolute Path Discovery: Determine the absolute path of the project root (e.g., via pwd) and prepare to include it in the Context Bundle instructions.
6. Context Bundle: Gather necessary files. All contents MUST be Base64 encoded. Format: <file path="relative/path" encoding="base64">BASE64_CONTENT</file>.
7. Frontmatter: Ensure SPEC.md has YAML frontmatter:

   RetryCount: 0
   Version: 1.x.x
   LastReviewer: [ReviewerName]

8. UX: Display "🐘 Elephant at work...".

Phase 2: Adversarial Pre-Review (Spec Attack) - OPTIONAL

1. Action: Spawn the Mean Reviewer (e.g., "[ReviewerName]").
2. Persona: A ruthless architect eager to find bugs and ambiguities.
3. Stall Protection: HARD LIMIT of 3 iterations. If no agreement is reached, the user acts as Human Arbiter to break the tie.
4. UX: Display "👺 [ReviewerName] is hunting for bugs in the Spec...".

Phase 3: The Goldfish (Stateless Execution)

1. Action: Spawn a "Goldfish" sub-agent (invoke_agent) with NO previous chat history.
2. Input: Feed ONLY the SPEC.md, the Base64 Context Bundle, any Failure Logs, and the Absolute Project Root Path.
3. Workspace Setup: The Goldfish MUST use the Absolute Project Root Path to create the sandbox using this PowerShell logic:

   $absRoot = "[ProvidedAbsolutePath]";
   $target = Join-Path $absRoot "tmp-goldfish-run";
   for ($i=0; $i -lt 5; $i++) {
     if (Test-Path $target) {
       try { Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $target -ErrorAction Stop; break }
       catch { Write-Host "Retrying cleanup..."; Start-Sleep -s 2 }
     } else { break }
   };
   New-Item -ItemType Directory $target -Force

4. Tooling Mandate: The Goldfish MUST use write_file or replace tools.
5. Strict Path Mandate: Write ALL files EXCLUSIVELY to the absolute $target directory.
6. Decoding Rule: Use [System.Convert]::FromBase64String($content) to decode contents.
7. Verification Rule: Before reporting success, the Goldfish MUST run ls $target to prove existence.
8. UX: Display "🐟 Goldfish executing...".

Phase 4: Adversarial Post-Review (Code Attack)

1. Action: Spawn [ReviewerName] again.
2. Input: Provide [ReviewerName] with the SPEC.md and the full contents of the absolute tmp-goldfish-run directory.
3. Decision Matrix:
   • Pass: If NO bugs are found, proceed IMMEDIATELY to Phase 5.
   • Spec Failure: If the spec was unclear, return to Phase 1.
   • Execution Failure: Increment RetryCount in YAML. If <= 2, retry Phase 3 and **attach the Reviewer's critique as a Failure Log**. If > 2, return to Phase 1.
4. UX: Display "👺 [ReviewerName] is attacking the code...".

Phase 5: Synthesis & Cleanup

1. Safety Check: Check git status. If "modified", prompt: "Manual Merge Required (Concurrent Changes Detected)".
2. Backup: Create a timestamped backup: ./backups/pre-goldfish-$(Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd-HHmmss")/.
3. Merge: Present Synthesis Plan. Upon approval, use robocopy [AbsTarget] [AbsRoot] /MIR.
4. Cleanup: Delete the absolute tmp-goldfish-run directory.

- **Methodology Reference:** `references/methodology.md` - **Source Article:** https://drensin.medium.com/elephants-goldfish-and-the-new-golden-age-of-software-engineering-c33641a48874 </available_resources>