ground-first

What problem does it solve?

This Skill solves the common issue of proposing code changes or fixes without first fully understanding the existing code's behavior, which often leads to incorrect edits, regressions, and wasted debugging time.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Triggers automatically when you request fixes, changes, or investigations on non-trivial code without confirming you understand current behavior, or can be run directly via the /ground-first slash command.
• Uses Read, Grep, and Glob tools to locate and review all relevant code, producing a structured analysis with precise file and line citations for every claim.
• Explicitly lists unconfirmed unknowns instead of making unsubstantiated assertions, and halts all edit proposals until you validate the analysis matches reality.
• Use case: If you are investigating a bug where an ingest job retries forever, run this skill first to map out the relevant retry logic, entry points, and unknowns before proposing a fix.

Quick Start

Ask the AI to run the ground-first skill to analyze the auth token refresh race condition in your authentication service before proposing any fixes.