seeds-from-idea

Purpose

Cut one idea into 根回し Nemawashi seeds. The idea arrives as a brief — the words of whoever asked, quoted with where they were said, and the evidence beside them, each checkable (templates/brief.md). What leaves is a set of seed files a PM can pick and walk without ever meeting the idea.

This file is the orchestrator. It owns the posture gate, the brief and who writes it, the method this cut applies, and the moves that are an idea-seed's alone. Everything a cut does around the cut — where the run works, the folder and the file name each seed gets, the trace-back line every seed carries, what a run may move in a seedbed, the commit, and the shape of a close and of a stop — is <CORE>/prompts/principal_pm_cut_seeds_run.md, shared with every other cutter and not restated here.

The method is prompts/rich.md — the one body this file points at. Read it in full at Step 2 and apply it. That lens extends <CORE>/prompts/principal_pm_cut_seeds.md, which holds everything about what to cut and whether to cut: its § What an idea is, and what it is not, § Ground every claim before you cut, § Sweep the seedbeds before you write one, § One idea becomes 1 to N seeds, § Every seed gets an owning project, § The Michi is checked on every seed, and a seed says which Way it serves, § When a routing seed is earned, § You do not interview and § When you stop. Read it too, as the lens directs. The lens tightens three of those for an idea cut — how many seeds, when a routing seed is planted, and which inputs may ground a seed — and holds the output to seeds-from-product-docs's bar: the ask quoted, four kinds of seed, its ordering, the security flag, a close that accounts for the whole ask, and a stop on an unsettled input. Where the two disagree, the lens governs. None of either is repeated here, and where a step below needs a judgment it names the section that makes it.

A seed's shape is the template <CORE>/templates/journey-templates/nemawashi_template.md, which fixes its sections, its checklist and how terse it has to be. The base prompt points at it too. Neither this file nor either prompt restates it.

Posture

Principal PM only. Run in a principal-pm: session or as the principal-pm subagent. Invoked from anywhere else, halt at once, say the posture is wrong, and name the way in. The seat's contract is <CORE>/roles/loaders/principal_pm_global.md, and the gate is what makes this skill that seat's (§ Skills toolbox (reminder) there names it).

The gate is about the seat, not about the session's liveness. A live session invoking this skill is the ordinary way in; the base prompt's § You do not interview draws that line and it is not redrawn here.

The run's shape

<CORE>/prompts/principal_pm_cut_seeds_run.md is the run's shape. Read it; this file adds only what is below.

Writing the brief in a session

The session drafts the brief and the owner confirms it — the owner's call, 2026-10-24. Write it from templates/brief.md, by the rules in <CORE>/templates/brief_template.md's DRAFTING ONE IN A SESSION block, which ad-hoc-plan drafts by too. The base prompt's § You do not interview binds from the confirmation on.

nemawashi-refine writes its brief itself, inside its own run, and nobody confirms it: its ## The ask quotes the recommendation it is answering, at its lines, which the quote check holds it to.

The cut's report

This cut writes one file the shared file's § Where a seed lands, and under what name otherwise forbids ("no report file"), and its § Close, or stop reports a stop "in the run's closing message rather than in a new file"; this cut reports a stop in both. The file is <the brief's stem, with _brief replaced by _report>.md, beside the brief, in the shape of templates/report.md. The owner's call, 2026-10-24. The reason is the unattended path: a cut started inside nemawashi-refine has no one reading its closing message, and refine reads this file instead to record what the cut did. It is written on every run, a stop included, and committed with the brief — except on a Step 1 stop, where nothing is committed: the brief is wrong and is fixed first, and the report is left beside it for the caller to read. The closing message still says what it says; the file is what lasts.

What this run may move that a cut in general may not

The shared file grants a cutter no move on its own input. This one has two, because its input is itself a seed and the instance seedbed is this seat's alone.

The idea-seed the run is cutting. The sweep finds it, and that is not the duplicate stop — the base prompt's § Sweep the seedbeds before you write one says so and passes the move here. Both directions are open on it: an un-pick, root → unpicked/, and a pick, unpicked/ → root — one file and nothing else either way, per <CORE>/docs/journey_move.md § The pick and the un-pick. A root holds one active idea at a time, so a pick into an occupied root un-picks that occupant first. The run may pick the idea-seed — the owner's call, 2026-08-30 — because the instance seedbed is this seat's alone and no PM can reach it. At instance level every one of these moves is this seat's own hand, since the project-level pick and un-pick skills do not serve that seedbed.

Both of those moves now land immediately, since this run has no branch to hold them (§ Where the run works in the shared file). The 2026-08-30 permission was granted when a move sat on a branch the owner had still to land, so it cost nothing to make and nothing to undo. It costs both now. Make the move where the cut leaves the seed's position plainly false, and where it does not, leave the seed alone and say in the report which move you did not make.

Retiring the idea-seed is not the run's. It waits on the cut being approved — not on the run, and not on the merge — the owner's call, 2026-08-30. The default is to leave the seed where it is, and to move it only where the cut has made its position false.

Where it goes when that day comes is trail/, moved by hand — an instance idea-seed's moves are a hand's (<CORE>/docs/journey_move.md § The two levels, and what exists at each). A cut idea-seed ripened into work, which is what trail/ records — <CORE>/templates/nemawashi_template.md states the criterion and <CORE>/docs/michi_agari.md § Quick reference keeps it apart from drop/. It is not a drop: a dropped idea was ruled out, and this one produced the seeds. Say so to whoever is owed the move; the run itself still does not make it.

Workflow

Step 1 — Gate, then resolve the idea

Check the posture (§ Posture) and halt there rather than proceeding. Open no worktree and cut no branch: this run works in the instance it was started in, per the shared file's § Where the run works.

The idea arrives as a brief — one file in the shape of templates/brief.md, beside this file, at system/projects/<project>/docs/seeds-from-idea/<YYYY-MM-DD>_<slug>_brief.md, or at docs/seeds-from-idea/ in the instance root when the owning project is the instance or is left to the cut. The brief is the cut's whole input: what it does not say, the cut does not know. Where the invocation hands you a path, read that file. Where it hands you none, § Writing the brief in a session says who writes it.

Check its quotes before anything else is read:

python3 <CORE>/tools/check_brief_quotes.py <brief> --root "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"

It prints one line per citation whose quote is not at its lines, and ends with a count on stderr of the citations it checked and the ones it skipped as unresolvable. Any line it prints stops the run, and so does a skipped citation naming a file in this instance — the root was wrong, and nothing was checked. Only a citation into another repository, such as an external product, may stay skipped. A brief whose ## The ask is empty or none stops the run the same way — there is nothing to cut. On such a stop, commit nothing and report it as § The cut's report says.

Resolve the brief's sources to what the seeds will cite, in the form the base prompt's § Every seed traces back to the idea it came from gives for each kind of source — a journey artifact, any other file, or conversation. Resolve them against that instance, for the reason the shared file gives. The brief itself is cited too, by its path, so the seed's walker can open the input the cut read.

The moves this cut has on its input seed land immediately, since there is no branch holding them back. The shared file's § What the run may move, and what it does not is what that costs, and its rule — move only where you are certain, otherwise write the seed and report the move you did not make — binds the two moves in § What this run may move that a cut in general may not above.

Step 2 — Read the method, then cut

Read prompts/rich.md in full, then <CORE>/prompts/principal_pm_cut_seeds.md in full as the lens directs, then <CORE>/templates/journey-templates/nemawashi_template.md. Apply them. Every judgment the cut makes — does a claim survive contact with the repository, how many seeds there are and where the lines between them fall, who owns each one, is a routing seed earned, can the cut be made at all — is made there, and where the lens and the base disagree, the lens governs.

Step 3 — Write the seeds

One file per seed, at the path and under the name the shared file fixes, in the shape the template fixes, each carrying its trace-back line.

Step 4 — Make the moves, if any

Only the ones the shared file allows, plus the two § What this run may move that a cut in general may not adds.

Step 5 — Commit

As the shared file directs, with --skill seeds-from-idea and --prompt seeds-from-idea/rich as this run's producing pair. The brief and the report go in the commit of the scope the brief sits under — a project's when it is in that project's docs/, the instance's when it is at the root — so the input is on record beside what it became. Where the seeds span scopes, every other scope's commit names the brief by its path in its body. The owner's call, 2026-10-24.

Step 6 — Close, or stop

As the shared file directs, and also in the report file § The cut's report names. One thing is this cut's own on a clean close: retiring the idea-seed waits on the cut being approved (§ What this run may move that a cut in general may not), so the report says nothing about having retired it.