mp-wayfinder

---
name: mp-wayfinder
description: Use when planning a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of investigation tickets on your issue tracker, resolved one at a time until the route is clear.
source: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/wayfinder/SKILL.md
generated: 2026-07-08T18:58:15.424Z
category: pm
audience: engineers
---

## When to use

- A loose idea is too big for one agent session and the path to the goal isn't visible yet
- You need to plan a large effort as investigation tickets on an issue tracker
- You want to chart the way to a destination rather than charge at it
- Work must be handed off across sessions with shared, durable state

## Key concepts

### Chart the way, not the destination

Wayfinding finds the route through fog to a named destination, not the deliverable itself. Naming the destination is the first act of charting — it shapes every ticket.

### Plan, don't do

By default each ticket resolves a decision; the map is done when nothing's left to decide before someone goes and does the thing. The pull to just do the work signals you've reached the edge of the map — time to hand off. An effort can override this in its Notes.

### The Map

A single issue labelled `wayfinder:map` is the canonical artifact; its tickets are child issues. The map is an index, not a store — it gists each closed ticket and links to it; the detail lives in exactly one place, the ticket.

### Refer by name

Every map and ticket is an issue with a title. In everything the human reads, refer to it by name, never a bare id or number — a wall of `#42, #43` is illegible. The id/URL rides inside the name's link.

### Fog of war

The map body carries 'Not yet specified' (in-scope fog you can't ticket yet, which graduates as the frontier advances) and 'Out of scope' (work ruled beyond the destination — closed, never graduates).

## Gotchas

- Produce decisions, not deliverables — unless the effort's Notes explicitly carry execution into the map
- Never refer to tickets by bare id/number in anything the human reads; always by name
- The map only gists and links — never restate a decision that lives in a ticket
- Needs an issue tracker configured (run setup-matt-pocock-skills); defaults to a local-markdown tracker if none is provided

---
Generated by SkillMake from https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/wayfinder/SKILL.md on 2026-07-08T18:58:15.424Z.
Verify against source before relying on details.

File: ~/.claude/skills/mp-wayfinder/SKILL.md