---
name: whatsnext
description: What we do next, for the whole project — read the inbox and propose what to make of each item, rank the next list under the focus the person gives, draw the top work into the agent's hand under its limit and return what no longer fits, and write the log entry. Use as `/research:whatsnext`, optionally with a focus (`/research:whatsnext let's focus on the research tasks`), at a session's start, when the person asks what is on the table or what is next, or when the ranked list is empty. Runs the `flow` skill's commands and decides nothing the person has not.
license: Apache-2.0
compatibility: The `flow` skill beside this one, whose script it runs; git for the commit.
metadata:
  version: "0.3.0"
  requires: flow
---

# What is next

The ranked records are the schedule a session works from the top of, and this is how they are filled or refreshed: at a session's start, when the person asks, or when the list is empty; never on a cadence, never as a per-landing triage.
The question is: what do we do next, for the whole project?
`flow …` below is the `flow` skill's `scripts/flow.py`, run by its path from the project root as that skill says.
A focus the person gives with the command, "let's focus on the research tasks", biases the ranking as a direction does and never orders it.

1. **Read the inbox.**
   `flow state` prints it first, then the ranked list, the hands and the log's top State paragraph.
   For each item the person left, propose what it becomes: an idea captured, a question framed, a task minted, a direction for the person to write, an act done in the turn, or nothing, with the reason.
   Make the records the person agrees to, name each item in the log entry, and remove it from the inbox; an item the person has not answered stays.
   A directive a freeze left for this session is the first move, unless the person says otherwise.
2. **Inventory from the CURRENT records, through the CLI.**
   `flow find --type task --state ready`, `flow find --type question --state open`, `flow find --parked`, `flow find --blocked`, `flow find --held`; `flow show ID` for one record with its links and back-references; the directions file.
   Never glob or read a record directory.
   Before ranking a record, open what it points at — the document section, the module, the artifact — since records age.
   A block on a record that has closed is cleared or re-aimed (`flow unblock ID --note "…"`, `flow block ID --on X --reason "…"`).
3. **Rank.**
   With no goal and no direction, the cards are worked as the person says; with directions, the moves lean toward them without being bound, since a new direction may come; with a goal, reaching it is the main direction and the moves go there as fast as they can.
   Never so biased toward a direction or a goal that the rest is not seen: then whole-project value, then a fresh landing's cheap follow-on.
   Nothing is ranked down, parked or left off for lacking a route: a record with no known route is ranked with a first move of "none yet", and finding the route is its first round's job.
   A parked or blocked record keeps its rank, and the list shows the wait; a question whose landing waits on the person's decision says so in its first move and is ranked anyway.
   Where the project pairs documents with a machine-checked library, the `method` skill's rules under "With a prover" order ties among its formal targets.
4. **Write the ranks.**
   For each item `flow rank ID N --why "…" --first-move "…" [--direction "…"]` — a pointer by ID, never a restatement; why now, one clause; the first move, or "none yet".
   A rank another record holds is refused; `--insert` takes it, moving that record and the ones below it down by one: `flow rank ID 1 --insert --why "…" --first-move "…"`.
   `flow rank --set ID …` fixes the whole order at once: it clears every other rank and refreshes the ranked questions' checked dates; every record it names already carries its why-now and first move.
   Draft long why-now or first-move text in a scratch file and pass it through the project's text gates before writing it.
5. **Intake.**
   Park or unpark only for a reason the record carries with a date — `flow park ID --reason "…" --revival "…"`, `flow unpark ID` — never "no route"; a task waiting on the person's decision is parked with a reason naming the decision.
   Mint newly seen residues: `flow capture` for an idea, `flow frame IDEA… --summary "…" --criterion "…"` for a question, or `flow frame FINDING …` from the finding that exposed it — a question of its own, never a line added to the question it came from.
   Refresh each touched question's checked date with `flow checked ID …`.
   Directions are the person's: propose in the log entry, change nothing in the directions file.
6. **Draw.**
   Draw the top work into the agent's hand under its limit, `flow draw ID --owner agent`, a task or an idea; a parked or blocked one is refused, and is unparked or unblocked first only with a reason.
   Return, with a note, what the agent's hand holds that the new order no longer puts first: `flow return ID --note "…"`; a task handed to a prover session stays, since its handoff's landing closes it.
   The person's hand is the person's: propose, never draw into it or return from it.
7. **Prune.**
   An item whose work landed was closed by its own transition, which cleared its rank; an item that stalled is parked with a dated reason.

**On a wall**, in the round an item commissions: change whatever reaches the goal — the statement, the definition, the object or the currency — under the `method` skill's "Changing the target honestly" invariants, the statement before and after written in the round's resolution, the question's body and the log entry; a result about the changed statement is never registered as settling the original.

**Output.** The inbox items with what each became, the refreshed ranks, the hands, `flow check` green, a log entry (`flow log add FILE`), the project's offline gates by exit code, a commit.