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Management skill

At a glance

condash renders items but does not create them. The shipped /conception-items Claude Code skill covers the creation + update + close lifecycle by editing files directly. It has no knowledge of the condash CLI or HTTP server — the two tools meet at the filesystem and nowhere else.

For the learn-by-doing walkthrough, see tutorials/first-project. For the extension patterns, see guides/skill-extensions.

Actions

Every action is a natural-language verb that the skill parses and translates into a small set of file operations.

Action What it writes Typical arguments
create New projects/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD-slug/README.md with header + goal + empty ## Steps + seeded ## Timeline title, Kind, Status, optional Apps, optional Branch
list — (read-only) filter: Kind, Status, Apps, or a keyword
add-note New projects/<...>/notes/<slug>.md (creates notes/ if missing); optionally appends a link to the README's ## Notes section parent item, note slug
update Line-level edits to README.md: step text, step marker, **Status**:, appending to ## Timeline item slug, update kind
close Sets **Status**: done, appends a closing line to ## Timeline item slug

The skill deliberately does not delete items, does not rename directories, and does not move files between months. Those are manual operations — reviewable in git diff.

Install

The skill file ships in the repo at examples/skills/conception-items/SKILL.md. Copy it to one of the Claude Code skill locations:

# Global — available in every session
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/conception-items
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vcoeur/condash/main/examples/skills/conception-items/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/conception-items/SKILL.md

# Project-local — auto-loaded inside a specific repo
mkdir -p <repo>/.claude/skills/conception-items
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vcoeur/condash/main/examples/skills/conception-items/SKILL.md \
  -o <repo>/.claude/skills/conception-items/SKILL.md

Reload skills (or start a new session) and /conception-items becomes available.

Set the CONCEPTION_PATH environment variable so the skill knows which tree to operate on:

export CONCEPTION_PATH=~/conception

(condash itself does not read CONCEPTION_PATH — only the skill does. See env vars.)

Files written per action

Action File Operation
create projects/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD-slug/README.md Write (whole file, from template)
create projects/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD-slug/notes/ mkdir (empty directory)
list — none
add-note projects/<...>/notes/<slug>.md Write
add-note projects/<...>/README.md Edit (appends to ## Notes if present; no-op otherwise)
update (step toggle) projects/<...>/README.md Edit (rewrites one - [<marker>] <text> line)
update (status) projects/<...>/README.md Edit (rewrites **Status**: line)
update (timeline) projects/<...>/README.md Edit (appends a dated line to ## Timeline)
close projects/<...>/README.md Edit × 2 — status to done, append ## Timeline entry

Every operation uses Claude Code's Write / Edit tools — no shell, no CLI, no direct git. The user reviews changes in git diff before committing.

Slug generation

create derives the slug from the title:

  1. Lowercase.
  2. Replace spaces with dashes.
  3. Strip everything outside [a-z0-9-].
  4. Prepend today's date: YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.
  5. Place under projects/YYYY-MM/ using today's month.

If the resulting path collides with an existing item, the skill appends -2, -3, … until it's unique.

Header emitted by create

# <Title>

**Date**: <today>
**Kind**: <project | incident | document>
**Status**: <status>
**Apps**: <apps, if provided>
**Branch**: <branch, if provided>

## Goal

<prompt the user for one paragraph>

## Scope

## Steps

## Timeline

- <today> — Project created

## Notes is not seeded by default — it's added by the first add-note call when appending the index link.

What the skill does not do

Not included Why
Generate PDFs Deliverable generation is out of scope — use the deliverables guide or a dedicated skill.
Run condash-level CLI commands The two tools are orthogonal; the skill has no dependency on condash being installed.
Move or archive items Items live at projects/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD-slug/ for life. Status flips, directories don't.
Create a git branch Branch isolation is the user's call. Add that as an extension — see guides/skill-extensions.
Edit the config Use the dashboard's gear modal, or edit <conception_path>/config/*.yml with your editor.

Extending the shipped skill

The shipped version is intentionally minimal. Typical extensions:

  • Per-kind templates. Replace the body builder with per-Kind variants (richer for documents, flatter for incidents).
  • Branch + worktree provisioning. For projects with **Branch**, set up a git worktree under worktrees_path so the code lives apart from the main checkout.
  • Deliverable generation. A generate-deliverable verb for documents — render Markdown to PDF, update ## Deliverables to link it.
  • Notes auto-index. Keep the ## Notes section in sync with the contents of the notes/ subdirectory.

Each is a ten-minute extension on top of the base skill. See guides/skill-extensions for worked examples.