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.

Five constellations of small amber nodes joined by fine traces on a dark field
5
plugins
31
skills
7
workflow chains
1
self-healing installer

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The earlier live operational dashboard, retained; superseded in daily use by the infographic.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

No claim reaches a minute that cannot be traced to a specific turn of a specific meeting.
raw transcript→transcription-correction→meeting-secretary→fact-checker→lexicon
One evidence base, four governance surfaces, zero re-keying.
daily sources→programme-status-report→programme-steerco-deck→programme-steerco-infographic→programme-war-room
The call can be audited against its outcome later.
a real decision→decision-toolkit→decision record→fact-checker
Routed to the right builder, never the nearest one.
half-formed idea→process-interviewer→the right builder→project-master
The system maintains itself.
capability need→canonical source + eval set→skill-maintenance→skill-transfer
The loop compounds: every ingest leaves the brain knowing more.
sources→read in full→reconcile + provenance→query, file answers back→adversarial lint
Every credit spend pre-costed and approval-gated.
idea→higgsfield brief→gated generation→critique vs brief

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

Doctor

Read-only diagnosis. Reports registry health, drift, orphans and exactly what heal would change. Safe with the app open.

plan

Plan

A dry run of heal. Every file operation printed as WOULD, nothing touched.

heal

Heal

Converges actual to desired: snapshot, back up, mirror by content hash, validate, roll back on failure. Idempotent.