Conductor Skill (Orchestrator)

This skill manages a hybrid lifecycle: treat protocol/interface artifacts as spec-driven (SDD) and treat architecture, prototyping and implementation details as design-driven (DDD). It coordinates handoffs between specification, planning, and implementation tracks and enforces guardrails for interface conformance.

Lifecycle Coordination

• Phase 1: Specification (SDD): If no spec.md exists and the track is interface-critical: Redirect to specify (SDD) to produce a formal spec.md including Interface Spec and Acceptance Tests sections. For non-interface-critical tracks, design.md (DDD) is acceptable.
• Phase 1b: Design (DDD): If a design.md exists but no spec.md, redirect to design for iterative architecture and prototyping. A design.md is encouraged for all tracks.
• Phase 2: Planning: If spec.md exists but no plan.md: Redirect to plan. plan.md MUST map TDD steps to spec items for interface-critical tracks.
• Phase 3: Implementation: If required spec/design and plan.md exist and validation passes: Hand off to implement for the execution loop.

Key Responsibilities

1. Discovery: Scan specs/README.md to identify the active track and whether it is interface-critical.
2. Registry Management: Update track status in specs/README.md using scripts/manage_specs.py (use add, validate-spec, validate-design, status).
3. Guardrails: Ensure implement only starts once required validations pass (for interface-critical tracks validate-spec must pass) and the plan.md is approved and contains verifiable TDD steps.

Tooling

Always use scripts/manage_specs.py for registry updates and validation to ensure cross-platform compatibility. The script automatically extracts the Track ID from the current branch name (e.g., 123-feature or feature/123-name) to use as the track ID when adding or validating tracks. If no ID is found, it will fallback to a timestamp for personal projects.

# When on a branch with an ID or simple feature name:
python3 <path-to-conductor>/scripts/manage_specs.py add "feature-name"

# To specify an ID manually:
python3 <path-to-conductor>/scripts/manage_specs.py add "ID" "feature-name"