WhaleKit

WhaleKit is an agentic skills framework for DeepSeek Harness (DSH). It is a collection of composable, DSH-native SKILL.md skills plus an entry skill that ensures agents use them — built for full autonomy from upstream roadmaps and hardened against hallucination with an adversarial review mechanism.

Together with install.sh, it replaces binary skill invocation (Superpowers' weakness) with a five-tier routing ceremony: process depth is chosen per task, from none at L1 up to full ceremony at L5. Git is the traceability layer; every authoritative document is amendable but every amendment is a commit.

Quick Start

1. Install

From the repository root, run the installer:

./install.sh                 # install into ~/.dsh/skills (DSH_HOME overrides the root)
./install.sh --project       # install into <project>/.dsh/skills instead
./install.sh --uninstall     # remove every WhaleKit skill symlink (works with --project too)

• Default: symlinks all 22 skills into $DSH_HOME/skills (defaults to ~/.dsh/skills).
• --project: symlinks into <projectRoot>/.dsh/skills, which DSH ranks above the home root.
• --uninstall: removes every WhaleKit symlink and the emptied target directory.
• Options are order-independent (install.sh --uninstall --project behaves identically).

DSH discovers skills from <projectRoot>/.dsh/skills (rank 100) before ~/.dsh/skills (rank 400), so a project-local install takes precedence over a global one.

2. First session

using-whalekit is the entry skill: it must be invoked at the start of any conversation. After using-whalekit, invoke whalekit-conventions (mandatory) — the canonical global-conventions skill that binds every agent, including subagents, before any task work begins. When you begin a task, WhaleKit will classify it (trivial vs non-trivial), run targeted-exploration if needed, recommend a routing tier, and present 2–3 tier options for you to choose. The user's decision is the highest authority below the system prompt — the agent never picks the tier alone.

The Five Tiers

WhaleKit replaces binary skill invocation with a graduated routing menu. Process depth is chosen per task, from none at L1 up to full ceremony at L5. Core flow:

Session start → using-whalekit (mandatory entry)
  → Task assessment: is exploration needed?
      ├─ Trivial task (one-line fix) → artifact chain at Q1
      └─ Non-trivial task → targeted-exploration (target = task core or whole project)
           → Exploration report: findings + evidence + risks + scope estimate
  → Main agent applies routing: asks the artifact chain one question at a time
     (Q1 memo? → Q2 spec? → Q3 plan? → Q4 dual?)
  → User answers each question (gold standard)
  → Skills gated by reached tier → execution

The tier is reached one question at a time via the artifact chain — the tier = how far the chain went (memo → spec → plan → dual records, one question at a time): a "no" at Q1 stops at L1, memo-only at L2, memo + spec at L3, memo + spec + plan at L4, and dual records at L5.

Iron rules of routing:

1. User is the gold standard. Any tier recommendation must present 2–3 options; the user chooses. The agent never decides the tier alone.
2. One-way ratchet. Hidden complexity discovered mid-task upgrades the tier — stop, say so, step up. Nothing downgrades mid-task.
3. Exploration before recommendation. Tier recommendations for non-trivial tasks must be based on a targeted-exploration report, never on impression.

Skill Inventory

22 skills (9 original + 13 adapted). Adapted skills retain their Adapted from obra/superpowers (MIT) header; see individual SKILL.md headers for attribution.

Design Philosophy

• User is the gold standard. The user's decision is the highest authority below the system prompt. Every major decision presents 2–3 options; the agent never decides alone.
• Ceremony scales with task. Process depth is graduated (5 tiers) and chosen per task; small tasks get small process. The direct answer to Superpowers' binary-invocation problem.
• Fight hallucination with adversarial review. Big decisions and architecture-level bugs go through red/blue/black subagent loops (decision mode) and review-mode red-finds/blue-fixes loops, not single-agent judgment.
• Amendable truth. Review baselines (README.md in dual records) are authoritative but explicitly amendable, with every amendment traced in git.

All documents form a golden-standard chain — Dual → Plan → Spec → Memo → User requirement — where the user requirement is the highest authority and live user decisions outrank the chain. Process artifacts enter git by consent: every artifact write is preceded by a commit-policy check.

Installation

A single install.sh symlinks the skills into the DSH root, with --project (project-local .dsh/skills) and --uninstall modes. See Quick Start.

Testing

Skill TDD via pressure scenarios in tests/pressure/<skill>/ — each skill has ≥2 scenarios (one skip-temptation, one misleading-execution) plus pass-criteria.md. Run the harness:

tests/run.sh <skill>          # print the scenario prompt and pass criteria
tests/run.sh <skill> --dispatch  # print a ready-to-use subagent dispatch prompt
tests/run.sh <skill> --live      # print a manual live-session verification checklist

--live exists for entry-sensitive skills (whose ceremony a dispatched subagent is correctly exempted from by a <SUBAGENT-STOP> block) and any skill requiring live user interaction.

Roadmap

• v0.1 (current): DSH-only, coding domain, 22 skills, five-tier routing.
• v0.2 (planned — 2026-08-14 decision): multi-runtime planning. DSH-only is a concentration risk (SuperPowers ports to many harnesses); evaluate adapting the skill set to other harnesses to reduce single-runtime exposure. Scope and timeline TBD by a spec-level decision.

License

MIT. Portions adapted from obra/superpowers (MIT); see individual SKILL.md headers for attribution.