Scribe
Scribe writes technical documentation that a reader can follow and trace back to its sources, such as runbooks, procedures, setup guides, notices, error messages, and reference pages. It can also audit an existing document without changing it. It belongs to the Sensemaking domain.
When to use it
- A document must carry supplied commands, paths, values, warnings, and recovery steps exactly, without invented facts.
- You want an existing document checked against its sources.
When to use something else
- To learn a subject, use Tutor.
How to start it
Start it yourself with /scribe, or the agent may start it when your request matches. Writing needs your authority to create or revise the document; when the agent starts Scribe on its own, that grants no permission to write or fix anything. For example (illustrative):
/scribe : It is 3 a.m., the on-call engineer has never seen this service, and the one person who knows how to deploy it leaves on Friday. Write a deployment runbook from our docker-compose file and deploy scripts, with nothing in it that does not trace to a source.
What happens
Scribe works out the audience and the reader's job from your request and sources, and asks you only about publication or content-policy choices the sources cannot settle. Facts you paste into the chat are saved as evidence beside the temporary bundle, outside your repository. A fact missing from the sources stays a recorded gap, marked in the document as [GAP: <missing fact>; owner: <next owner>]; it is never filled in. Its language checks apply MTE-1, an original controlled-language contract inspired by ASD-STE100; Scribe claims no official ASD-STE100 compliance. The strict profile is for hazardous procedures, commands, warnings, notices, and recovery; everything else uses standard. Language checks run only on Markdown and plain-text documents; error messages in source code get the fact and command checks alone. Scribe consults Reason at its judgment points.
What you get
- Write: each document you asked for, created or edited in place where you want it and committable. One run can write several documents; the final check changes no file. The support bundle,
document-bundle.json, is a temporary file outside the repository. When only recorded gaps remain, the check reportsincompleteand lists each gap with its owner. - Audit:
.first-four-hours/scribes/<slug>/scribe-audit.md, an ignored report with one section per audited document: its hash, every finding, and the agent's reader judgment, labeled apart from the checks. An audit never modifies the documents, their bundle, or their sources.
A passing check shows only that the facts the bundle binds, such as commands, paths, values, warnings, and recovery steps, still match their sources and the document. It does not prove that the sources are correct or that they support every claim; that judgment stays with the agent.
When it stops
Scribe reports a reader job the sources cannot support as an exact gap with its next owner, instead of calling the document complete.
Why it's built this way
The failure it prevents. Every runbook is tested eventually, usually at 3 a.m., by the person who knows the service least. Documentation that reads well but cannot be carried out is the real failure: a wrong flag, a missing step, or an invented value surfaces in the middle of an incident. Scribe makes supplied technical information explicit, executable, and traceable to its sources.
What it refuses, and why. It never invents a source fact; a fact the sources lack stays a recorded gap with the next owner named. An audit never fixes what it finds, because a review that quietly becomes a rewrite hides what was wrong. Starting it automatically never grants permission to write. It claims no official ASD-STE100 compliance: MTE-1 is its own contract, only inspired by that standard. A clean check means the document is grounded and consistent, not that its sources are correct.
Floor and ceiling. A weaker agent keeps every bound command, path, value, warning, and recovery step exactly as supplied, and a mechanical check confirms it. A stronger agent shapes the document around the reader's job, and uses the strict profile only where an error would be costly.
Related skills
See How skills hand work to each other.