WhaleKit

WhaleKit is an agentic skills framework for DeepSeek Harness (DSH). It is a collection of composable, DSH-native SKILL.md skills plus an entry skill that ensures agents use them — built for full autonomy from upstream roadmaps and hardened against hallucination with an adversarial review mechanism.

Together with install.sh, it replaces binary skill invocation (Superpowers' weakness) with a five-tier routing ceremony: process depth is chosen per task, from none at L1 up to full ceremony at L5. Git is the traceability layer; every authoritative document is amendable but every amendment is a commit.

Quick Start

1. Install

From the repository root, run the installer:

./install.sh                 # install into ~/.dsh/skills (DSH_HOME overrides the root)
./install.sh --project       # install into <project>/.dsh/skills instead
./install.sh --uninstall     # remove every WhaleKit skill symlink (works with --project too)

• Default: symlinks all 22 skills into $DSH_HOME/skills (defaults to ~/.dsh/skills).
• --project: symlinks into <projectRoot>/.dsh/skills, which DSH ranks above the home root.
• --uninstall: removes every WhaleKit symlink and the emptied target directory.
• Options are order-independent (install.sh --uninstall --project behaves identically).

DSH discovers skills from <projectRoot>/.dsh/skills (rank 100) before ~/.dsh/skills (rank 400), so a project-local install takes precedence over a global one.

2. First session

using-whalekit is the entry skill: it must be invoked at the start of any conversation. After using-whalekit, invoke whalekit-conventions (mandatory) — the canonical global-conventions skill that binds every agent, including subagents, before any task work begins. When you begin a task, WhaleKit will classify it (trivial vs non-trivial), run targeted-exploration if needed, recommend a routing tier, and present 2–3 tier options for you to choose. The user's decision is the highest authority below the system prompt — the agent never picks the tier alone.

The Five Tiers

WhaleKit replaces binary skill invocation with a graduated routing menu. Process depth is chosen per task, from none at L1 up to full ceremony at L5. Core flow:

Session start → using-whalekit (mandatory entry)
  → Task assessment: is exploration needed?
      ├─ Trivial task (one-line fix) → artifact chain at Q1
      └─ Non-trivial task → targeted-exploration (target = task core or whole project)
           → Exploration report: findings + evidence + risks + scope estimate
  → Main agent applies routing: asks the artifact chain one question at a time
     (Q1 memo? → Q2 spec? → Q3 plan? → Q4 dual?)
  → User answers each question (gold standard)
  → Skills gated by reached tier → execution

Tier	Process	Trigger signals (from exploration report)
L1 Immediate implementation	No process	Purely mechanical change, minimal risk
L2 Memo only	Memo persisted to disk	Small feature, single file
L3 Memo → Spec	+ specification	Medium feature, touches interfaces
L4 Memo → Spec → Plan	+ implementation plan	Large feature, multiple files/modules
L5 Full	+ dual records	New project, architecture-level, directional decisions

The tier is reached one question at a time via the artifact chain — the tier = how far the chain went (memo → spec → plan → dual records, one question at a time): a "no" at Q1 stops at L1, memo-only at L2, memo + spec at L3, memo + spec + plan at L4, and dual records at L5.

Iron rules of routing:

1. User is the gold standard. Any tier recommendation must present 2–3 options; the user chooses. The agent never decides the tier alone.
2. One-way ratchet. Hidden complexity discovered mid-task upgrades the tier — stop, say so, step up. Nothing downgrades mid-task.
3. Exploration before recommendation. Tier recommendations for non-trivial tasks must be based on a targeted-exploration report, never on impression.

Skill Inventory

22 skills (9 original + 13 adapted). Adapted skills retain their Adapted from obra/superpowers (MIT) header; see individual SKILL.md headers for attribution.

Skill	Source
using-whalekit	original — entry skill, routing startup
whalekit-conventions	original — canonical global conventions binding all agents
targeted-exploration	original — subagent-driven anti-divergence exploration feeding routing
routing	original — five tiers, gating, one-way ratchet
adversarial-review	original — red/blue/black meta-skill (decision + review modes)
dual-records	original — DEVELOPMENT.md + README.md (amendable truth)
commit	original — commit strategy gate + logical commit procedure
clarification-questioner	original — question-asking methodology: generate → curate → ask one at a time → converge answers into a verified conclusion sheet (clarity/quality checked) before design
decision-approval	original — waived decisions become a draft sheet (proposal/rationale/alternatives/confidence) the user approves or edits before they take effect
socratic-brainstorming	adapted (heavy) — from obra/superpowers brainstorming
test-driven-development	adapted — from obra/superpowers
systematic-debugging	adapted — from obra/superpowers
verification-before-completion	adapted — from obra/superpowers
requesting-code-review	adapted — from obra/superpowers
receiving-code-review	adapted — from obra/superpowers
using-git-worktrees	adapted — from obra/superpowers
finishing-a-development-branch	adapted — from obra/superpowers
writing-plans	adapted — from obra/superpowers
executing-plans	adapted — from obra/superpowers
subagent-driven-development	adapted — from obra/superpowers
writing-skills	adapted — from obra/superpowers (skill TDD)
dispatching-agents	adapted — from obra/superpowers (generic delegation protocol; re-scoped 2026-08-14 from the parked parallel clone)

Design Philosophy

• User is the gold standard. The user's decision is the highest authority below the system prompt. Every major decision presents 2–3 options; the agent never decides alone.
• Ceremony scales with task. Process depth is graduated (5 tiers) and chosen per task; small tasks get small process. The direct answer to Superpowers' binary-invocation problem.
• Fight hallucination with adversarial review. Big decisions and architecture-level bugs go through red/blue/black subagent loops (decision mode) and review-mode red-finds/blue-fixes loops, not single-agent judgment.
• Amendable truth. Review baselines (README.md in dual records) are authoritative but explicitly amendable, with every amendment traced in git.

All documents form a golden-standard chain — Dual → Plan → Spec → Memo → User requirement — where the user requirement is the highest authority and live user decisions outrank the chain. Process artifacts enter git by consent: every artifact write is preceded by a commit-policy check.

Installation

A single install.sh symlinks the skills into the DSH root, with --project (project-local .dsh/skills) and --uninstall modes. See Quick Start.

Testing

Skill TDD via pressure scenarios in tests/pressure/<skill>/ — each skill has ≥2 scenarios (one skip-temptation, one misleading-execution) plus pass-criteria.md. Run the harness:

tests/run.sh <skill>          # print the scenario prompt and pass criteria
tests/run.sh <skill> --dispatch  # print a ready-to-use subagent dispatch prompt
tests/run.sh <skill> --live      # print a manual live-session verification checklist

--live exists for entry-sensitive skills (whose ceremony a dispatched subagent is correctly exempted from by a <SUBAGENT-STOP> block) and any skill requiring live user interaction.

Roadmap

• v0.1 (current): DSH-only, coding domain, 22 skills, five-tier routing.
• v0.2 (planned — 2026-08-14 decision): multi-runtime planning. DSH-only is a concentration risk (SuperPowers ports to many harnesses); evaluate adapting the skill set to other harnesses to reduce single-runtime exposure. Scope and timeline TBD by a spec-level decision.

License

MIT. Portions adapted from obra/superpowers (MIT); see individual SKILL.md headers for attribution.