project-induction

name: project-induction description: Run a guided induction interview with the operator to establish a new project's context, constraints, and success criteria. Generates a bootstrap spec, a project-level AGENTS.md, and a Plane epic with initial tasks. Use this skill when starting a new project or when the operator invokes 'walter-os new project '.

Skill: project-induction

Trigger: Invoked when walter-os new project <type> <name> is called, or directly via skills/project-induction/scripts/induction.sh.

Purpose: Runs a guided induction interview with the operator to establish a new project's context, constraints, and success criteria. Generates a bootstrap spec, a project-level AGENTS.md, and a Plane epic with initial tasks.

Inputs

Field	Source	Required
`project_name`	CLI arg or interview	yes
`project_type`	CLI arg (`webapp\|service\|solana\|hackathon\|personal`)	yes
`description`	Interview question 1	yes
`stack`	Interview question 2 (with type-specific defaults)	yes
`non_negotiable_rules`	Interview question 3 (compliance, perf, etc.)	no
`critical_integrations`	Interview question 4 (DB, APIs, 3rd party)	no
`success_kpis`	Interview question 5	no
`phi_data`	Interview question — "Does this project handle medical/health data?"	no
`financial_data`	Interview question — "Does this project handle payments?"	no

Non-interactive mode: all inputs may be supplied via a YAML file (--answers-file <path>), enabling scripted and test invocations.

Outputs

Project charter (docs/specs/<project-name>-bootstrap.md): problem statement, decisions, acceptance criteria for the bootstrap phase, non-goals. Written to --output-dir if specified, otherwise to docs/specs/.
Project AGENTS.md (written to --output-dir/AGENTS.md or ./AGENTS.md in the project root): local agent contract with rules derived from the interview. If phi_data: true, includes the medical-data-compliance skill and the PHI hard rules. If financial_data: true, includes a TODO block for a pending financial-data-compliance skill (deferred backlog) with manual PCI-DSS guidance.
Plane epic (created via plane_issue_create): main bootstrap epic with 5 tasks: Setup CI pipeline, Initial test infrastructure, First feature skeleton, Setup local dev environment, Write README + getting started guide. Skipped if --skip-plane flag is set (for offline/test use).

Interview flow (interactive mode)

The 7-9 structured questions (5 core + 2 compliance + optional type-specific):

Q1: What does this project do? (free-form, 1-3 sentences)
Q2: What stack will you use? [default based on type]
Q3: Any non-negotiable rules? (compliance, performance, legal)
Q4: Critical integrations? (external services, APIs, databases)
Q5: How will you know this project succeeded? (KPIs / goals)
Q6: Does this project handle medical or health data? (yes/no)
Q7: Does this project handle financial transactions? (yes/no)

Defaults per type:

webapp: Next.js 15 + Supabase + Vercel + Tailwind
service: Node.js/Rust + Postgres + Docker
solana: Anchor + TypeScript SDK + solana-test-validator
hackathon: Next.js 15 + Supabase (quick-start defaults)
personal: Obsidian + local scripts

Dependencies

scripts/agents/lib/plane.sh — for plane_issue_create
scripts/agents/lib/llm.sh — for generating charter/AGENTS.md content
PLANE_API_TOKEN, PLANE_API_URL, PLANE_WORKSPACE, PLANE_PROJECT env vars (not required when --skip-plane is set)

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
2	Bad arguments (invalid type, missing name)
3	Dependency missing (plane.sh not found, jq not available)
4	LLM invocation failed

Non-goals

Full project scaffolding (file generation, repo init) — that's a separate skill.
Auto-pushing to remote or creating GitHub repos — operator action.
Running the CI setup — the generated Plane tasks cover that.

docs/specs/walter-council-v2.md — Improvement 6 (T-23, T-24)
bin/walter-os — canonical entry point: bin/walter-os new project <type> <name>. bin/walter is an alias; when in doubt, use bin/walter-os.