, per <artifact path>"` - **→ ADR** — `Next: /hex-architect <artifact path>` - **→ spec** — emit the plan command above plus a line stating that the spec is reached by `/hex-review`'s Fold-Back on the converged plan. This skill **never writes a spec and never invokes a fold**, so [`archive.md`](../hex-core/references/archive.md#safety-envelope)'s envelope stays the only fold path. - **→ loop** — `Next: /hex-loop <artifact path>`. The drain sets `State: handed-off → loop` and writes `Ratified: <date> → loop`. The artifact is **always kept** — it is `/hex-loop`'s source, so this target **never drains inline**: a discussion that would otherwise drain inline keeps its artifact instead. - **→ project context** — a durable convention the discussion surfaced is recorded post-gate as a promotion candidate in `hex.md › Memory` ([Constraints](#constraints)), where the next `/hex-init` re-audit picks it up and proposes it against the matching audit item, with consent ([`audit.md`](../hex-init/references/audit.md)) — the drain sets `State: handed-off → context`, writes `Ratified: <date> → context`, and states that re-audit as its next step, `Next: /hex-init`. Not [`protocol.md` § Upkeep step](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#upkeep-step)'s mechanism, which routes a *preference* to `hex.md › Preferences`; a project convention belongs in project context, written only by `/hex-init`. This skill **never writes CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md**. No downstream command carries a tier: this skill has none of its own, so the receiving orchestrator's classifier resolves it, and a tier appears only when the user named one at the restate. The exception is the → ADR target, whose fast path refuses the two lowest tiers on arrival — the restate states the `high` floor instead of emitting a dead-end command. Terminal states: `parked`, or `handed-off → plan | architect | loop | context | dropped` — a `State:` vocabulary whose single home is the template `hex-init/assets/templates/discussion.md`, which defines it while this file only consumes it. **`dropped` is a valid success** — a discussion concluding the thing should not be built is reported as a successful outcome with the reasoning preserved, never as an abort, and carries **no `Next:` line**: nothing runs next. Every drain closes on: ```markdown ## Discussion Complete: <topic> - State: `handed-off → plan | architect | loop | context | dropped`, or `parked` - Written: <discussion artifact>, <research artifacts>, `hex.md` Memory and Pointers rows — every path this run touched - Next: `/hex-plan "<title>, per <path>"` · `/hex-architect <path>` · `/hex-loop <path>` · `/hex-init` (→ context); no `Next:` line for `dropped` or `parked` ``` ## Announce form This skill prints **no announce block**. The contract is a shape, not a whitelist: every disclosure the shared contracts mandate renders as **one line, never a block**, and none is repeated. Nothing mandatory is dropped — only the block is, and a later mandated disclosure adds a line, never a block. The currently known set, explicitly not closed: 1. A research aside when a result lands: `— checked that: <one-line finding> [<source>]` 2. `— discussion notes: <path> · recon: N dispatched`, printed once at entry, the stub write and the wave's dispatch count combined on one line, never two: writes no file and spawns no worker silently. 3. A lane expansion's batch split, with the cap's source ([`protocol.md` § Worker coordination](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#worker-coordination)). 4. `Degraded: inline workers — no subagent spawning` — research runs inline, one spawn at a time instead of concurrently, and the mode loses its differentiator. Printed once at the first degraded spawn — this mode's only gate is the drain, too late for a spend disclosure — so it lands where rule 1's model line does. 5. The resolved literal model at the first spawn of a role — the disclosure [`models.md`](../hex-core/references/models.md#rules) rule 1 mandates, carried under this quiet form, and where a `models.overrides` escalation becomes visible. 6. A `Limits:` line, printed once, when a `hex.md › Preferences` limit is in force. 7. The second degraded axis when it composes: `Degraded: single session model — no per-spawn override; matrix advisory`, as its own line, per `protocol.md`'s one-line-per-degraded-axis rule. 8. The transport note for a researcher that failed to return, surfaced once. **No phase announcements, no thread-board recital, no resolved-config table** — unless the user asks, which is always honored. ## Constraints The write surface is four destinations — the discussion artifact, research artifacts, `hex.md › Memory`, and `hex.md › Pointers` — across five writes, and *when* is as binding as *what*. Pre-gate, only: - the discussion artifact itself; - research artifacts in the convention-resolved research home; - re-pointing a `hex.md › Pointers` row found drifted on consumption — [`memory.md` § Staleness](../hex-core/references/memory.md#staleness) maintenance, made in the same run and never deferred, and named at the restate alongside the rest of what has already been written. Post-gate, at the drain alongside the handoff: - the drain's own header update — `State:` to its terminal value, plus the `Ratified:` line and, where the provenance exists, the optional `Confidence:` line ([the restate-gate](#the-restate-gate)); - `hex.md › Memory` — the discussion hand-off record, the artifact index, and promotion candidates from [Handoff](#handoff); - `hex.md › Pointers` — creating the discussions-home row. These are ordinary upkeep writes deferred past the gate: nothing outside the discussion's footprint exists before consent. This skill writes **no code, config, plan, ADR, or spec, and never `hex.md › Preferences`**, which is user-owned. Undoing an abandoned pre-gate discussion means deleting the discussion file and the research artifacts it lists under `## Research`; the research home is shared with every other hex skill and is **never removed wholesale**. The two `hex.md` rows exist only after the gate and revert by deleting two lines. Federation: this skill sits outside the satellite halt's scope ([`memory.md`](../hex-core/references/memory.md#federation-satellites)) — it resolves no plan and writes no plan or federation state. The rule is a hardening, never a precondition: `hex-discuss` must be complete and correct with the rule absent, and the rule-less run is this skill's own degraded mode, reached automatically. A client hosting no ownable rule file loses persistence convenience, never capability — everything above is skill-body behavior. After a lapse, recovery is re-reading the discussion artifact — whose header carries the state, not the stance — plus this file and, where the rule landed, its `hex-state` line; or a fresh session, and **never re-invoking this skill**, which returns "already loaded" rather than a fresh copy. **No hex file may make a rule's presence a condition of any other behavior.** Client portability: [references/reach.md](references/reach.md) (C-721). Research lanes and the researcher spawn contract: [references/research-lanes.md](references/research-lanes.md) (C-701 second split). $ARGUMENTS

--- name: hex-discuss description: Use when the user says "let's just discuss this, don't edit anything yet", wants to think a fuzzy problem out loud, or asks to talk something through before a plan or ADR starts. Pre-plan discussion mode — answers first, then fires an automatic entry recon wave, elaborates the ask in dependency-batched questions, pushes back with a structured grill, and captures what was settled in a discussion artifact. license: Apache-2.0 metadata: keywords: discuss,discussion,clarify,elicit,interview,pre-plan,grill,research repository: https://github.com/michael-herwig/arcana summary: Pre-plan discussion mode — talk a problem through before deciding --- # hex-discuss — Pre-Plan Discussion Mode `hex-discuss` talks a problem through before anything is decided: it elaborates the ask, argues with the answers, checks disputed facts in the background while the conversation keeps going, and keeps what was settled in a discussion artifact. It builds nothing and writes no plan, ADR, or spec — the run ends at a **drain**, the explicit handoff that closes the discussion and names the command to run next. It is a hex skill, not a fifth orchestrator: no `classify.md`, no `overlays.md`, no `tier-*.md`, and no tier vocabulary of its own. The dispatcher/tier-file split is vacuous here, not deviated from — there are no tier files to dispatch to. Shared contracts: [`protocol.md`](../hex-core/references/protocol.md) · [`workers.md`](../hex-core/references/workers.md) · [`models.md`](../hex-core/references/models.md) · [`memory.md`](../hex-core/references/memory.md). If `hex-core` is not installed: `grim add ghcr.io/michael-herwig/arcana/hex-core:latest`. ## Argument syntax `/hex-discuss `. Free text becomes intake slot 1 and is **never re-asked**; a path into the resolved discussions home, or the slug of an existing artifact, resumes that artifact ([The discussion artifact](#the-discussion-artifact)). ## Entry and exit Entered only by explicit user invocation or by this skill's own description match on a user's discuss request — **never self-triggered from another hex skill's flow** (the `hex-init` precedent). The frontmatter leaves `claude.disable-model-invocation` unset: the description match is the entry path. Entry then resolves the discussion's home and either opens the existing artifact or writes the stub ([The discussion artifact](#the-discussion-artifact)). Exit is only an explicit drain ([Handoff](#handoff)) or an explicit user abort. There is no third exit: no turn budget, no idle timeout, no "this looks finished" self-exit. An abort leaves `State: parked`, re-enterable later under the same slug. ## Conversation ### Intake The opening turn asks once, as one composite ask with three slots: (1) the problem in the user's own words, not a restatement or a guess; (2) a source-material inventory — "dump anything": tickets, example apps, references, code; (3) the outcome shape — plan, ADR, spec, a goal loop, or just clarity. Any subset is answerable: the run proceeds with what it has and never re-asks a skipped slot. Slot 3 pre-sets the drain target ([Handoff](#handoff)); slot 2 seeds the artifact's `## Related` section and grounds every researcher prompt. **A second composite intake ask is a contract violation.** A gap an unanswered slot leaves resurfaces later as a single design question with an attached recommendation under the cadence below — never as a re-ask of the form. ### Entry wave The opening turn is **answer-first**: substance — engagement with intake slot 1 — is composed and emitted before anything dispatches; the shared contract reads that inform the reply gate the dispatch, never the reply itself. With slot 1 present, the wave — codebase recon plus a prior-art web scan, seeded from that text — fires this same turn, right after the substance, inside the default 3-concurrent gear, one slot free (degraded: inline per § Worker coordination); without it (bare invocation or a vague description-match entry) the intake ask itself is the opening turn's substance, and the wave defers, firing once when slot 1 lands, seeded from it — slot 1 is never re-asked. Only an already-dispatched wave is non-repeatable: a resume never re-fires it, but one parked before slot 1 landed still gets it when slot 1 does; lanes stay available on demand. Automatic spend never exceeds the default gear and is always announced, anything above it user-initiated; rule (d)'s blindness binds it. `references/research-lanes.md` is the lane catalog's normative home. The mandated one-liners follow as independent lines, never a block, then one drain-affordance sentence, never repeated — said once at entry: this skill never offers to end the discussion. ### Question cadence Inventory questions — facts the user simply has, like which service or which branch — batch into one composite ask. Design questions — anything whose answer is a choice — ship in **dependency-batched sets of ≤3**, each option still carrying its own attached recommendation. **Never a numbered list outside that batch shape.** More than 3 pending → the 3 highest-priority ship, the rest carry to the next batch. Never spend a question on what the artifact or the repo already answers. A design question ships as **chips** — selectable options plus a free-text escape, rendered through the client's native structured-choice prompt where one exists and a numbered list otherwise, a capability and never a named harness tool. An open prose question is the exception and justifies itself — used only where an option set would prejudge the answer. ``` Where should the session cache live? 1. Redis — recommended: the ops runbook covers it, TTL eviction is free. 2. A Postgres table — one less service to run, but you own the sweeper. 3. Something else (say what). — checked that: Redis TTL eviction is amortized O(1) [redis.io/docs/expire] ``` ### Grill ruleset Four rules, all four normative — not a menu. - **(a) Rebuttal gate.** Categorize every pushback before answering it. *New evidence* — a benchmark, a constraint, a fact not previously on the table — updates the position, and the update states what changed. *Repeated opinion* — the same argument again — holds, and restates the evidence the position rests on. **Never concede on repetition alone**: only a later message adding something new moves the position. - **(b) Anti-theater.** **Never manufacture an objection** to look rigorous. On agreement about a decision-relevant point, name the strongest remaining counter-argument once and move on — neither a second invented objection nor a later re-raise of the same one. - **(c) Scoped elicitation.** Pick at most two fitting techniques per thread from premortem, inversion, first-principles, and force-rank, and apply them inline. **Never present the catalog.** A third technique on the same thread is a contract violation. Force-rank rather than a red-team/blue-team debate. - **(d) Researcher blindness.** A research prompt states the question neutrally — the evidence for and against each option on the named axis — and **never reveals which side the user or this skill favors**, including when the user has already stated a preference. Binds every research prompt this skill sends, the automatic entry wave's two lanes included. ### Research Research runs in the background — no conversational turn waits on it. Spawns are one of three classes — **(a) entry recon spawn** (automatic, [Entry wave](#entry-wave)), **(b) opt-in lane spawn** (user-selected, below), **(c) disputed-fact spawn** (skill-initiated) — of which (a) and (c) fire **never on an opinion**, and never on a question the repo answers, which is read instead; (b) alone may target a judgment question, user-opted and spend-confirmed. Default gear: at most 3 concurrent `researcher` spawns ([`workers.md`](../hex-core/references/workers.md#role-index)), `fast-balanced` at every tier in [`models.md`](../hex-core/references/models.md#the-matrix) — no self-escalation, disclosed like any other ([`models.md`](../hex-core/references/models.md#rules) rule 1) — bound by [`protocol.md` § Worker coordination](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#worker-coordination) — concurrency cap, batching, degraded lines, no exemption. **Lane multi-select** replaces the old two-gear offer — no retired vocabulary survives. Once, immediately after the entry wave dispatches, the turn offers a multi-select over research lanes, seeded with the default lanes (`references/research-lanes.md` catalogs them); spawns run within § Worker coordination's effective concurrency cap, running spend total in the chip text, hard cap 12 researchers per expansion — demand above 12 truncates to 12, announced once. **Skip → no re-offer** until the user asks again — a landed `leads:` entry only widens the offerable lane set; chips never re-surface unprompted. A landed result surfaces at the next turn boundary as a one-line aside, flagged as new, never spliced mid-turn; a result that changes a live thread feeds the next question; its `leads:` entries join the offerable lane set, deduplicated first-seen-wins. A researcher returning nothing useful folds in with no aside; one failing to return is surfaced once as a one-line transport note — **a dead worker is never normalized into "no result found."** Findings longer than a paragraph persist per lane as research artifacts, each written against the header contract in [`hex-init/assets/templates/research.md`](../hex-init/assets/templates/research.md). ### Stop rule The interview ends when the [restate](#the-restate-gate) can be filled without a gap — **never at a question count, and never at a turn budget**. A question answered in a few turns drains inline, deleting the entry stub — never to [→ loop](#handoff), which always keeps its artifact — so the run nets **zero discussion files** — the entry wave may already have landed research artifacts before that inline drain fires, and those persist in the shared research home, listed in the terminal report. **An inline drain is still gated** — it passes the restate-gate like every other drain. ## The discussion artifact Home: the project's documented convention if it names one, else `.agents/discussions/.md` — the resolution order every hex artifact class uses ([`memory.md`](../hex-core/references/memory.md#location-and-resolution)). Creating that row in `hex.md › Pointers` is post-gate ([Constraints](#constraints)); one file per discussion, its slug derived from the topic and stable for the discussion's life. Every write this skill makes — the artifact to the discussions home above, each per-lane research artifact to its own research home — holds to the path conditions of [`archive.md` § Containment](../hex-core/references/archive.md#containment-the-resolved-path-never-leaves-the-spec-home-c-418): inside its own resolved home, no `..` segment, never absolute. **No silent clobber:** entry with a slug already present at `State: active` or `State: parked` resumes that artifact and **never overwrites it**; a slug colliding with a drained (`handed-off`) artifact takes a date suffix instead. Lazy materialization has one declared exception: entry on a new slug writes a header-only stub — `State: active` plus `Updated:`, nothing else — disclosed once as the combined `— discussion notes: · recon: N dispatched` line ([Announce form](#announce-form)). Entry that resumes an existing `active` or `parked` artifact opens it and **never re-stubs**, but does refresh the header: a fresh `Updated:` always, plus `State:` back to `active` when resuming from `parked`. That refresh is a header update, not a re-stub, and it re-arms the `hex-state` rule's no-code-or-config-edits stance for the resumed conversation; an abort later returns the artifact to `parked`. Everything below the header stays lazy: a section appears on its first content — a research result landing, a captured requirement, or the user saying "capture" — so `## Research` appears when the first result lands, and **an empty section is never scaffolded**. Section order is fixed, presence is not, and a small discussion draining inline deletes its own stub. The section menu is documented in exactly one place, the template [`../hex-init/assets/templates/discussion.md`](../hex-init/assets/templates/discussion.md); this file **never restates the menu**. Fallback where `/hex-init` never ran and no template exists: the header contract alone — `State:` and `Updated:` on one line, an optional participants line, nothing else required. **No `C-`/`S-` IDs in a discussion artifact** — a hard prohibition, not a style note. Requirements stay provisional prose: [`protocol.md` § Traceability IDs](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#traceability-ids) makes IDs originate in the spec, and a second origin would collide with the fold-back join key [`archive.md`](../hex-core/references/archive.md#delta-grammar) depends on. A consuming orchestrator assigns IDs; it never inherits them. Drain-readiness bar, checked at the [restate-gate](#the-restate-gate). The artifact must be self-contained (a fresh session needs no access to the source conversation), name the files and interfaces it touches, state what is out of scope, carry unresolved points under `## Open questions`, and end with a `## Verification` section naming how the eventual work is checked. Every path it names is repo-root-relative (`.agents/adrs/…`, `hex/hex-core/…`). An artifact failing the bar is **not drained with a warning**: the gate names the gap and returns to the conversation until it is closed. `## Open questions` are carried, not blocking: they become the receiving orchestrator's docket, and one left unanswered there is a review finding, not a discuss defect. Each entry may carry the house marker pair — `[NEEDS CLARIFICATION: ]` with a `Recommended: — ` line beneath it, the shape `hex-init`'s plan and spec templates already define — a live question is answered in the room, a marker handed forward to a gate its asker will not attend. ## The restate-gate The single approval gate, sitting at the exit before any drain: at entry nothing is yet committed, and the irreversible act is handing a downstream orchestrator a mandate. The lane-expansion offer is a spend confirmation, not a second approval gate — there is **exactly one approval gate per run**, and **every drain passes it, inline drains included**. Before any drain, emit a six-part structured restate — Outcome (what will be built or decided) · User (who it is for) · Why now (the trigger) · Success (how it is judged) · Constraint (what bounds it) · Out of scope (what it deliberately is not). Name in the same message what has already been written — the discussion artifact and every research artifact, by path, plus any `hex.md › Pointers` re-point made this run — and what the drain will touch: the proposed-artifact list, the artifact's own header update, the two `hex.md` rows from [Constraints](#constraints), and, for an inline drain, the stub deletion. A resumed artifact whose `Updated:` predates this session also gets a one-line staleness note: recorded decisions may have drifted since, and the receiving claim diff is the real check. The restate scales: a short inline drain collapses each part to a clause on one line — no part dropped — but the separate explicit yes is never skipped. Then ask for a separate, explicit yes. **Answering a clarifying question is never consent**, and **a soft confirmation is not consent**: on "sounds good" or "yeah ok", do not drain — ask for the explicit yes, and name that you are asking for it. The wording is hex's own and varies naturally between discussions; **never recite a script**. A pattern of instant unqualified yeses may be gently flagged once — never repeated, never a block. A "no" returns to the conversation with the disputed part named, not a re-ask of the whole restate. Whenever an artifact survives the drain, the drain appends a `Ratified:` line — date and drain target — to the header, the durable record of the consent event, and fills the optional `Confidence:` line where the provenance exists: who ratified, and which research vintages back the decisions. An inline drain leaves no artifact and no `Ratified:` line, so its outcome can never be fast-path input to `/hex-architect`. ## Handoff The [handoff contract](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#handoff-contract) applies in substance: every drain ends with the terminal-state report and, where a next command exists, the `Next:` line. Its orchestrator-only fields — classification, tier, overlays — do not apply. Five drain targets, adding zero new write paths. After the yes: - **→ plan** — `Next: /hex-plan ", per <artifact path>"` - **→ ADR** — `Next: /hex-architect <artifact path>` - **→ spec** — emit the plan command above plus a line stating that the spec is reached by `/hex-review`'s Fold-Back on the converged plan. This skill **never writes a spec and never invokes a fold**, so [`archive.md`](../hex-core/references/archive.md#safety-envelope)'s envelope stays the only fold path. - **→ loop** — `Next: /hex-loop <artifact path>`. The drain sets `State: handed-off → loop` and writes `Ratified: <date> → loop`. The artifact is **always kept** — it is `/hex-loop`'s source, so this target **never drains inline**: a discussion that would otherwise drain inline keeps its artifact instead. - **→ project context** — a durable convention the discussion surfaced is recorded post-gate as a promotion candidate in `hex.md › Memory` ([Constraints](#constraints)), where the next `/hex-init` re-audit picks it up and proposes it against the matching audit item, with consent ([`audit.md`](../hex-init/references/audit.md)) — the drain sets `State: handed-off → context`, writes `Ratified: <date> → context`, and states that re-audit as its next step, `Next: /hex-init`. Not [`protocol.md` § Upkeep step](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#upkeep-step)'s mechanism, which routes a *preference* to `hex.md › Preferences`; a project convention belongs in project context, written only by `/hex-init`. This skill **never writes CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md**. No downstream command carries a tier: this skill has none of its own, so the receiving orchestrator's classifier resolves it, and a tier appears only when the user named one at the restate. The exception is the → ADR target, whose fast path refuses the two lowest tiers on arrival — the restate states the `high` floor instead of emitting a dead-end command. Terminal states: `parked`, or `handed-off → plan | architect | loop | context | dropped` — a `State:` vocabulary whose single home is the template `hex-init/assets/templates/discussion.md`, which defines it while this file only consumes it. **`dropped` is a valid success** — a discussion concluding the thing should not be built is reported as a successful outcome with the reasoning preserved, never as an abort, and carries **no `Next:` line**: nothing runs next. Every drain closes on: ```markdown ## Discussion Complete: <topic> - State: `handed-off → plan | architect | loop | context | dropped`, or `parked` - Written: <discussion artifact>, <research artifacts>, `hex.md` Memory and Pointers rows — every path this run touched - Next: `/hex-plan "<title>, per <path>"` · `/hex-architect <path>` · `/hex-loop <path>` · `/hex-init` (→ context); no `Next:` line for `dropped` or `parked` ``` ## Announce form This skill prints **no announce block**. The contract is a shape, not a whitelist: every disclosure the shared contracts mandate renders as **one line, never a block**, and none is repeated. Nothing mandatory is dropped — only the block is, and a later mandated disclosure adds a line, never a block. The currently known set, explicitly not closed: 1. A research aside when a result lands: `— checked that: <one-line finding> [<source>]` 2. `— discussion notes: <path> · recon: N dispatched`, printed once at entry, the stub write and the wave's dispatch count combined on one line, never two: writes no file and spawns no worker silently. 3. A lane expansion's batch split, with the cap's source ([`protocol.md` § Worker coordination](../hex-core/references/protocol.md#worker-coordination)). 4. `Degraded: inline workers — no subagent spawning` — research runs inline, one spawn at a time instead of concurrently, and the mode loses its differentiator. Printed once at the first degraded spawn — this mode's only gate is the drain, too late for a spend disclosure — so it lands where rule 1's model line does. 5. The resolved literal model at the first spawn of a role — the disclosure [`models.md`](../hex-core/references/models.md#rules) rule 1 mandates, carried under this quiet form, and where a `models.overrides` escalation becomes visible. 6. A `Limits:` line, printed once, when a `hex.md › Preferences` limit is in force. 7. The second degraded axis when it composes: `Degraded: single session model — no per-spawn override; matrix advisory`, as its own line, per `protocol.md`'s one-line-per-degraded-axis rule. 8. The transport note for a researcher that failed to return, surfaced once. **No phase announcements, no thread-board recital, no resolved-config table** — unless the user asks, which is always honored. ## Constraints The write surface is four destinations — the discussion artifact, research artifacts, `hex.md › Memory`, and `hex.md › Pointers` — across five writes, and *when* is as binding as *what*. Pre-gate, only: - the discussion artifact itself; - research artifacts in the convention-resolved research home; - re-pointing a `hex.md › Pointers` row found drifted on consumption — [`memory.md` § Staleness](../hex-core/references/memory.md#staleness) maintenance, made in the same run and never deferred, and named at the restate alongside the rest of what has already been written. Post-gate, at the drain alongside the handoff: - the drain's own header update — `State:` to its terminal value, plus the `Ratified:` line and, where the provenance exists, the optional `Confidence:` line ([the restate-gate](#the-restate-gate)); - `hex.md › Memory` — the discussion hand-off record, the artifact index, and promotion candidates from [Handoff](#handoff); - `hex.md › Pointers` — creating the discussions-home row. These are ordinary upkeep writes deferred past the gate: nothing outside the discussion's footprint exists before consent. This skill writes **no code, config, plan, ADR, or spec, and never `hex.md › Preferences`**, which is user-owned. Undoing an abandoned pre-gate discussion means deleting the discussion file and the research artifacts it lists under `## Research`; the research home is shared with every other hex skill and is **never removed wholesale**. The two `hex.md` rows exist only after the gate and revert by deleting two lines. Federation: this skill sits outside the satellite halt's scope ([`memory.md`](../hex-core/references/memory.md#federation-satellites)) — it resolves no plan and writes no plan or federation state. The rule is a hardening, never a precondition: `hex-discuss` must be complete and correct with the rule absent, and the rule-less run is this skill's own degraded mode, reached automatically. A client hosting no ownable rule file loses persistence convenience, never capability — everything above is skill-body behavior. After a lapse, recovery is re-reading the discussion artifact — whose header carries the state, not the stance — plus this file and, where the rule landed, its `hex-state` line; or a fresh session, and **never re-invoking this skill**, which returns "already loaded" rather than a fresh copy. **No hex file may make a rule's presence a condition of any other behavior.** Client portability: [references/reach.md](references/reach.md) (C-721). Research lanes and the researcher spawn contract: [references/research-lanes.md](references/research-lanes.md) (C-701 second split). $ARGUMENTS