everyinc--compound-engineering-plugin/skills/ce-explain/references/intake.md

Intake

Classify the request into exactly one input shape — concept, diff, idea, or work-recap window — before any grounding runs. Parse by reasoning over the user's prompt; do not depend on argument-token substitution mechanics, which vary by harness.

Flag tokens

Literal-prefix tokens are consumed and stripped; everything else is the request text.

Token	Example	Effect
diff:<ref-or-range>	diff:abc1234, diff:main..HEAD, diff:PR#42	Forces diff mode on that change
since:<window-or-ref>	since:monday, since:7d, since:v2.1.0	Forces recap mode over that window
output:<md|html>	output:md	Overrides the artifact format (default html)

• An explicit token always beats inference.
• diff: and since: together conflict — say so and ask which mode the user wants.
• An unrecognized <word>:<word> token (including conventional-commit prefixes like feat: appearing inside a topic) is not a flag — it passes through verbatim as request text.
• output: with an unknown value: drop the token, note Ignored unknown output: value '<value>' — using html, and continue.

Inference (no forcing token)

Classify the remaining text by shape:

• Diff — the request names a resolvable change: a sha, branch, PR, "the last commit", "what you just did", "this change".
• Recap — the request asks what happened over time: "what did I do this week", "catch me up", "prep me for standup". Default window when unspecified: the last 7 days in the current repo.
• Idea — the request presents a proposal or notion of the user's to be understood: "explain my idea of X", "what would Y imply". The idea is a fixed given (see SKILL.md Boundaries).
• Concept — everything else: a topic, pattern, subsystem, or external subject to learn.

Tiebreak — concept vs diff: when the request is plausibly both (a repo topic that also names an identifiable recent change, e.g. "explain the retry logic we just added"), a concretely resolvable change wins: diff mode, with the concept as framing context. A topic with no resolvable change is a concept.

Repo footprint check (concept mode): a concept grounds in the repo only when it actually touches it. An external subject (a language feature, an interview topic, a paper) gets no repo grounding — do not force it.