SKILL.md
ax Extract Workflow
Overview
Use this skill to reconstruct the workflow behind a past coding-agent artifact:
a shipped feature, PR, demo, refactor, report, or other concrete result. It uses
the local ax graph to connect commits, sessions, turns, skills, and tool traces
into a short "how this got made" narrative.
ax must be installed, available on PATH, and able to reach its local database.
If ax cannot connect to its DB, report the connection failure and stop instead of
guessing from memory.
When to Use This Skill
- Use when the user asks "how did we build X?", "what made X work?", or "extract the workflow behind this artifact."
- Use when the anchor is a commit SHA, date, feature name, PR, session, or repo-local artifact.
- Use when the user wants the sequence of agent skills, prompts, commands, decisions, and checks that led to a result.
- Do not use for a generic activity summary; use normal session listing instead.
How It Works
Step 1: Resolve the Anchor
Identify the best anchor from the user's request:
- Commit SHA: use it directly.
- Date or date range: inspect sessions around the date.
- Topic, feature, or artifact name: search recall for related turns, commits, and skills.
- "This repo recently": list recent sessions for the current repo.
ax recall "live ingest dashboard" --sources=turn,commit,skill --scope=here
ax sessions near abc1234 --json
ax sessions around 2026-06-15 --days=3 --json
ax sessions here --days=14
These commands are read-only inspection commands.
Step 2: Pick Relevant Sessions
Choose the few sessions most likely to explain the artifact. Prefer sessions that mention the artifact, touch related files, include relevant commits, or have skills and tool calls that match the work.
If several candidates are plausible, show the user the candidates and ask which one to inspect.
Step 3: Inspect the Session Trail
Open each selected session and look for:
- skills used and their order
- user steering points and clarified constraints
- files, tests, and commands that changed the direction of the work
