Atomic Skills Fragments
Atomic Skills Fragments
Atomic skills are the smallest reusable operating contracts in the harness. They tell an agent how to perform one bounded move.
Phase wrappers coordinate a lifecycle. Atomic skills perform a specific move inside or beside that lifecycle: research, handoff, review, writing fragments, writing beats, writing shape, type-quality review, or runtime debugging.
parallel-research has real weight because analysis and research are often split-friendly. It says when to fan out, how to split questions, what evidence to ask for, how to avoid duplicated work, and how to synthesize before acting.
parallel-research also says when to stay local. It is for readonly work. It avoids code writing, tight debugging loops, rebases, commits, and small questions that are faster to answer directly.
handoff has real weight because context decays. It gives the agent a clean restart mechanism for a new long phase while preserving objective, evidence, artifacts, and suggested skills.
handoff should happen between phases or before a fresh long run. It should not interrupt the same active phase, where working memory is still useful.
Atomic skill pages should teach judgment. The reference table proves the skill exists. A concept page explains when the skill should be activated, when it should stay out, and what output shape the operator should expect.