Chapter 02 · The machine
What it is made of, and how it runs.
Five plugins and thirty-one skills, the chains that join them into pipelines, and the self-healing installer that keeps it in order.
I build working systems, not slideware: thirty-one skills running real work daily.

The estate: five plugins, thirty-one skills
programme-toolkit 7 skills
Governance engine for a major platform migration: a daily flood of artefacts turned into audit-grade outputs with full provenance.
programme-status-reportprogramme-toolkit
Synthesises daily status files, transcripts, issue logs and vendor scorecards into an audit-grade narrative report. Every claim sourced; vendor-attributed claims gated.
When
The recurring reporting cycle; the anchor the deck and infographic build from.
programme-steerco-deckprogramme-toolkit
Builds the governance PowerPoint from the status report plus the prior deck, with brand binding and a full per-slide QA battery.
When
Every governance cycle.
programme-steerco-infographicprogramme-toolkit
A self-contained interactive HTML view with three audience depths and drill-down to atomic claims with source citation.
When
The live operational view; pre-meeting refreshes.
programme-steerco-design-promptprogramme-toolkit
Generates the Claude Design prompt that produces the same three-view prototype via the chat-plus-canvas loop.
When
Iterating the visual in Claude Design rather than building directly.
programme-war-roomprogramme-toolkit
A reasoning engine: hand it any artefact and it calibrates is this normal, is this a real blocker, what would an experienced hand see. Backed by an evidence-graded research base.
When
A second read on programme health, especially under pressure.
programme-premortemprogramme-toolkit
A structured pre-mortem: assumes failure, works backwards to failure modes, leading indicators and the verification that would have caught each.
When
Before gate decisions; periodic stress tests.
programme-dashboardprogramme-toolkit
The earlier live operational dashboard, retained; superseded in daily use by the infographic.
When
Legacy; scheduled refresh hooks remain.
business-solution-toolkit 7 skills
A full delivery life cycle in plain language, so a non-technical person can solve business problems with Claude without engineering vocabulary.
scope-itbusiness-solution-toolkit
A clear brief: the problem, success criteria, and what is in and out of scope.
When
Turning a fuzzy idea into a brief, before any building.
the-approachbusiness-solution-toolkit
The shape of the solution and the key trade-offs, before anyone builds.
When
Deciding how the whole thing fits together.
data-shapebusiness-solution-toolkit
Your information structured so it holds together, with quality rules.
When
When a solution depends on data.
the-buildbusiness-solution-toolkit
A sound build plan: what to use, where the risks and shortcuts are.
When
Before building the working thing.
the-experiencebusiness-solution-toolkit
A screen, form or page people can actually find their way around.
When
When a solution has something people interact with.
quality-checkbusiness-solution-toolkit
How it could break, the edge cases, and proof it does what the brief promised.
When
Before it goes live.
honest-insightsbusiness-solution-toolkit
What the data actually says, with the analysis and charts kept truthful.
When
When the question is what does this data say.
everyday-toolkit 9 skills
The daily work engine: meetings to minutes, document production, filing, estate maintenance, cross-machine transfer, and generated media.
transcription-correctioneveryday-toolkit
Context-corrects raw meeting transcripts into clean merged markdown, with a per-file audit log and a versioned lexicon applied.
When
Cleaning a raw transcript before minutes.
lexiconeveryday-toolkit
Manages a versioned lexicon of canonical names and terms with a staged propose-review-commit workflow.
When
Keeping terminology canonical across documents.
meeting-secretaryeveryday-toolkit
Chair-ready minutes from a corrected transcript plus attendance. An intake readback gate, a Claims Verification Table sourcing every claim, then the fact-checker as a separate verification layer; high-severity findings halt the ship.
When
Producing defensible minutes.
pptx-build-with-qaeveryday-toolkit
PowerPoint to a board-scrutiny bar: native primitives only, a 13-gate programmatic battery, and a per-slide visual walkthrough. Two-gate done.
When
Decks that must withstand scrutiny.
workspace-filing-assistanteveryday-toolkit
Files any folder into the workspace taxonomy by sampling contents, proposing a reviewable ledger first; commits only approved, reversible moves.
When
Tidying a folder safely.
skill-maintenanceeveryday-toolkit
The installer and reconciler for the whole estate: doctor, plan, heal, with backup, snapshot, validate and rollback. Appends a dated changelog line to every skill it edits.
When
Installing, syncing or repairing the estate.
skill-transfereveryday-toolkit
Packages skills into a self-contained payload (verbatim files, per-file hashes) plus an executor prompt that rebuilds them on the other machine, hash-verified, with backup.
When
Moving skills between the two laptops.
higgsfield-creative-directoreveryday-toolkit
Turns a rough idea into a signed-off brief, then production-quality images or video, picking the right model and critiquing every output. Every spend pre-costed and gated.
When
Any image or video need.
afrihost-web-managereveryday-toolkit
Expert web engineer for sites hosted on a personal domain: publish a build, push an update, configure hosting (SSL, DNS, email, databases), or advise before a build. Four modes, each interview-first, reference files loaded only when needed.
When
Publishing or maintaining a hosted website.
prompt-master 5 skills
A family of prompt and setup builders, one per surface, each interviewing, building, and saving to a growing prompt library.
prompt-master-chatprompt-master
Claude.ai chat prompts: a lean and a full version, writing rules applied, grounded in the published technique stack.
When
Building a chat prompt worth reusing.
prompt-master-coworkprompt-master
Cowork agentic briefs: depth-first, files in and out, persistent logs, skill routing, standing guardrails and a verification step.
When
Setting an agent on a real task.
prompt-master-designprompt-master
Claude Design prompts: researches current capabilities every run, maximises interactivity, prepares the upload-ready files and says what to upload.
When
Creating a visual artefact in Claude Design.
prompt-master-copilot-researchprompt-master
Audit-grade Microsoft 365 Researcher prompts that defend against that agent's known failure modes with source inventories and evidence ledgers.
When
A deep cross-source mailbox or document audit.
project-masterprompt-master
Sets up and maintains whole projects: scaffolds instructions, CLAUDE.md, logs, tasks, decisions and references; nothing built before a confirmed readback.
When
Standing up or maintaining a project.
thinking-toolkit 3 skills
The reasoning-quality layer: not produce-a-document skills, but how the system keeps the thinking honest.
decision-toolkitthinking-toolkit
Works a hard call through frame, outside view, three-plus options, a bias check and the strongest opposing case, written to a decision record. Strengthens reasoning, does not confirm it.
When
A consequential choice, work or personal.
fact-checkerthinking-toolkit
An adversarial verifier: extracts every checkable claim and verifies against primary sources, grading with severity. Default posture HALT; never fabricates a source.
When
Before anything is sent or published.
process-interviewerthinking-toolkit
Turns a half-formed idea into a build-ready spec, pushing on edge cases and handoffs, then recommends the right builder. Challenges the premise first.
When
When an idea is not yet a spec.
Workflows: seven end-to-end chains
The operating model: a self-healing reconciler
The workspace is the source of truth; everything installed is a derivative that can be rebuilt at any time. A single declarative desired state, driven through three modes:
Doctor
Read-only diagnosis. Reports registry health, drift, orphans and exactly what heal would change. Safe with the app open.
Plan
A dry run of heal. Every file operation printed as WOULD, nothing touched.
Heal
Converges actual to desired: snapshot, back up, mirror by content hash, validate, roll back on failure. Idempotent.