simmer-setup_skill

Overview

This skill prepares the refinement run for Simmer by identifying the artifact to improve, eliciting 2–3 clear quality criteria from the user, and producing a concise setup brief. It is designed to be called by the Simmer orchestrator and returns a structured brief that drives all subsequent generation and judging steps.

How this skill works

The skill inspects the conversation context for a file path, pasted text, or a description to generate a seed. If the artifact is ambiguous, it prompts once to choose file/paste/seedless. It then proposes seed criteria based on the artifact type, captures 2–3 chosen criteria with concrete 10/10 descriptions, checks for any user-specified iteration override, and emits the required brief format.

When to use it

• When you need a precise, reproducible setup for an iterative refinement loop
• When you have a seed artifact (file or pasted text) or want to generate one from a description
• When you want to constrain improvements to 2–3 measurable quality dimensions
• When you want the orchestrator to receive a standardized brief for generation and judging

Best practices

• Limit criteria to a maximum of three to keep judge signals strong
• Provide specific 10/10 descriptions for each criterion; use seed descriptions if unsure
• Accept or tweak suggested seed criteria instead of inventing from scratch to reduce friction
• Only specify a custom iteration count if you really need more/less than the default 3
• If using a file, provide a full path; if pasting, include the full content in the initial message

Example use cases

• Refining a blog draft: detect pasted draft, suggest criteria like argument clarity and engagement, and produce the brief
• Polishing API design: point to a spec file path, use criteria like contract completeness and ergonomics
• Improving a prompt: paste the prompt, use instruction precision and output predictability as criteria
• Generating a seed from scratch: choose seedless mode and provide a short description to create the first draft