Starter Prompts

These are starting points, not a fixed menu. Each entry pairs a plain-language prompt with what it causes — which write verb fires and what convention gets stamped — so you can see the machinery and then adapt the wording to your own machine. Open Claude from the garden root first (see Working with Claude); the root map is what routes each request to the folder that owns it.

Phrasing isn’t magic

You don’t need these exact words. Claude routes on intent, not keywords — copy one, change the specifics, and it still lands in the right place.

Record a decision

We’ve settled on systemd-resolved for DNS instead of hand-managed resolv.conf, mainly for split-DNS on the VPN. Write that down as a decision.

• Fires log_decision → a stamped journal/decisions/decision-<slug>.md (# decision: heading + Date: header, your reasoning below), in one decision_logged commit.

Log an incident

The touchpad stopped waking from suspend after today’s kernel update; downgrading libinput fixed it. Log the incident — what broke, what I tried, what worked.

• Fires log_incident → journal/incidents/incident-YYYYMMDD-<slug>.md with a stamped # <date> — <summary> header, incident_logged commit.

File a loose note where it belongs

Note that the Surface pen needs its firmware re-paired after a battery swap or the tip pressure goes dead. Put it wherever that belongs.

• Fires add_note into the routed accretive folder (here, input/notes/) → NNN-slug.md, the next number pulled from the folder’s .seq, with the # title and > Last reviewed: lines stamped.

Triage the inbox

Go through everything in inbox/ and file each item where it actually belongs.

• Fires (no single verb) — Claude reads the inbox/ placeholders natively, then refiles each through whichever verb matches its destination (log_decision, add_note, log_incident, …) and archives the emptied placeholder.

Refresh a snapshot

Refresh the pacman package snapshot.

• Fires refresh_snapshot → Claude runs the data-gathering command itself, then writes the formatted result under snapshots/… in a snapshot_refresh commit. (The daemon never runs commands for you — it only stores what Claude produces.)

Check something for staleness

Re-check the NetworkManager notes against the live /etc/NetworkManager/ config and mark them reviewed if they still hold.

• Fires set_reviewed → bumps the doc’s > Last reviewed: line to today (zero content; the daemon owns the date).

Fix one line

In services/network/notes/003-…, the DNS server is now 9.9.9.9, not 1.1.1.1. Fix just that.

• Fires patch_file → an exact old-to-new replacement of the one string, committed as a single edit. It refuses if the text is missing or appears more than once, so a vague edit fails loudly instead of landing in the wrong place.

Revise a note you already filed

Update note 007 in input/notes/ — the pen firmware fix also needs a reboot.

• Fires revise_note → replaces that note’s body in place and re-stamps its Last reviewed: date. Number, slug and title never change.

Several edits, one commit

Update the boundary table in the root CLAUDE.md and the matching line in meta/conventions.md together.

• Fires batch → the edits are validated first and then applied as one all-or-nothing commit, so related changes can’t land half-done.

Record a code review

Record a review of the my-daemon project: verdict, what matches the spec, and what’s left to verify.

• Fires add_code_review → a numbered review under the project’s code-reviews/ folder, with the header and review date stamped.

Who touched this?

Who last edited services/network/CLAUDE.md, and what changed?

• Fires file_provenance (read-only) → the path’s recent commits, newest first, with device, time and intent.

Queue work for growlight

Add a task: refresh every snapshot under snapshots/packages/ and note any drift. Queue it for the work loop.

• Fires add_backlog_item (or, on the v2 queue, queue_add_entry) → a task doc with mission and finish criteria, enqueued as queued.

Start a new area

We’ve started doing PC gaming on this machine. Add a gaming/ area, describe what it’s for, and route it in the boundary table.

• Fires — for a code project, add_project scaffolds projects/<name>/ with its reserved-name stubs in one commit. For a general concept dir it’s a small structural pass: write the new CLAUDE.md (replace_file, the one break-glass case — a fresh monolithic navigator), extend the root boundary table (append_to_section / edit_section), and record the reasoning (log_decision).

Route a question (read-only)

Where should notes about the flaky USB-C dock port go — hardware/, services/, or somewhere else?

• Fires nothing — this is a pure read. Claude consults the root boundary table and names the owning directory (plus the cross-references that point at it).

Grow your own cookbook

This list is a seed. Keep the phrasings that reliably land a task in the right place, in a note in your own garden or a list in inbox/.