Start Best Practice

Entry point into grimoire. Routes any user input to the matching grimoire workflow listed in README.md. Exits silently if grimoire is not installed or no workflow applies — invisible when not needed.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: Toyota's poka-yoke principle (Shingo, 1986) is the foundation of error prevention in manufacturing — checking conditions before an action begins, not after defects appear. This principle is applied across aviation (pre-flight checklists), surgery (WHO Surgical Safety Checklist), and software (pre-commit hooks, CI gates). Impact: The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist reduced surgical complications by 36% and deaths by 47% — not by changing technique, but by systematically intercepting the moment before each critical step (Haynes et al., 2009, NEJM). Pre-commit hooks catch an estimated 30–40% of common defects before they enter the codebase (GitHub internal data). Why best: Reactive systems wait for the user to ask. Proactive interception closes the "I didn't know a best practice existed" gap — the most common reason practices aren't applied. The cost is minimal (a silent route check); the benefit is consistent practice application without requiring the user to know what to ask.

Sources: Shingo (1986) "Zero Quality Control: Source Inspection and the Poka-Yoke System"; Haynes et al. (2009) NEJM; GitHub Engineering blog

Steps

Step 0: Route to grimoire workflow (silent)

Silently match the input to a grimoire workflow. No scoring, no output. If no row matches, exit immediately and proceed with the original request unmodified.

Intent signal	Route
Describes a problem, goal, or situation without specifying an approach — including vague or unclear problems	invoke suggest-best-practice
Has a solution, plan, or design — wants gap analysis	invoke review-best-practice-fit
Needs 2+ practices coordinated in sequence — across one domain or many — and sub-problems are identifiable upfront	invoke plan-best-practice-solution
Complex problem where sub-problems are opaque and emerge through execution, not upfront	invoke apply-best-practice-tree
Mentions a domain or asks what skills/practices exist — without a specific problem to solve	invoke discover-best-practices
Wants to understand what a skill does, why it exists, or how to use it	invoke explain-best-practice
Wants to learn or teach a practice through structured explanation or walkthrough	invoke teach-best-practice
Wants to install, upgrade, or health-check grimoire	invoke install-grimoire
Wants to view, change, or validate grimoire settings or preferences	invoke configure-grimoire
Wants to activate a named paradigm or methodology (OOP, TDD, clean-architecture, etc.)	invoke apply-best-practice-profile
Wants to systematically align a project to stated practice preferences	invoke apply-best-practice-driven-development
Wants a compliance check of an artifact against pinned preferences	invoke check-best-practice-compliance
Has a specific finding from a compliance report to fix	invoke fix-best-practice-finding
Two practices exist — wants side-by-side comparison before deciding	invoke compare-best-practices
Two practices conflict — wants to reason through which fits better	invoke resolve-best-practice-conflict
Resolved a conflict — wants to save the decision for future sessions	invoke pin-best-practice-preference
None of the above	exit silently — grimoire not installed or not applicable

Note: analyze-best-practice-problem has no direct routing row — vague or unclear problems are routed to suggest-best-practice (via "Describes a problem... including vague or unclear problems"), which internally invokes analyze-best-practice-problem via its clarity check. This keeps the routing table's problem-description row as the single entry point for all problem inputs.

Transparent passthrough (exit silently — grimoire not applicable):

• Primary verb is explanatory: explain, describe, what is, how does, tell me about, define — exception: "give me best practices for X" signals discovery, route to discover-best-practices
• Conversational acknowledgment: "ok", "thanks", "looks good", "got it", "continue"
• Explicit /skill-name invocations — user already knows what they want (see Rules)
• Follow-up message in an ongoing execution (not a new intent)
• User signals they know what they want: "just [verb]", "quickly [verb]", "I know how to…", "skip guidance", "no best practices"

If ambiguous: prefer the more specific workflow row. Only exit silently when no row matches.

When a workflow matches:

• Route to suggest-best-practice → invoke silently, no announcement
• Route to any other skill → announce first, then invoke:

  This looks like [matched situation]. Routing to [skill-name]...
  

Then stop — the routed skill handles everything from that point.

Rules

• Never announce when no workflow matches — proceed silently
• No clarifying questions — route on what's available, or pass through silently
• If user explicitly invoked a skill by name, don't intercept — they already know what they want
• No scoring, no confidence thresholds — routing only

Key Differences from suggest-best-practice

	suggest-best-practice	start-best-practice
Invocation	User invokes directly	Runs automatically before every request
Unrelated inputs	N/A — user invokes directly	Exit silently (grimoire not installed)
Low confidence	Asks clarifying question	Exits silently
Scoring	Yes — scores all installed skills	No — routes only
Browse mode	Supported	Not supported
Dispatch role	No	Yes — entry point into grimoire

Common Mistakes

Announcing a failed match: if no row matches, say nothing and proceed. Interrupting the user for uncertain matches destroys trust.

Intercepting explicit skill invocations: if the user said /write-unit-test, they already know what they want. Don't re-intercept.

Routing then not stopping: after invoking a workflow skill, stop. The routed skill handles everything from that point.

Treating task-starts as a special case: "implement X", "write Y", "fix Z" all match "Describes a problem, goal, or situation" → route to suggest-best-practice. No separate domain scoring needed here.