Router Skill
When user-invoked skills multiply beyond what a person can remember, a single user-invoked router skill that maps the others and when to use each cures the cognitive load, but must be kept in sync or it becomes a router that lies.
Evidence: moderate
Making skills user-invoked removes their context load but piles cognitive load on the human, who becomes the index. Past a handful of skills that index fails. Matt Pocock's cure is a router skill: one user-invoked skill (ask-matt) that names the others and says when to reach for each, so the human remembers one name instead of twenty.
A router can only hint. User-invoked skills have no model-facing description, so the router cannot fire them; it tells the human which to type. ask-matt is organised as flows rather than a list: a main flow from idea to ship (grill, optional prototype detour, spec, tickets, implement, review, retro), two on-ramps, standalone skills, and context-hygiene advice about where to clear or compact.
The maintenance rule is written into the repository's CLAUDE.md: whenever a user-reachable skill is added, renamed, removed or changes how it fits the flows, re-read and update the router. A router that never mentions a new skill, or still routes to a stale one, lies. That makes it a cache of the skill set, and it goes stale like any cache.
Boundary: a router earns its place only once user-invoked skills outnumber what the human can hold; for a few skills it is pure overhead.
Sources
- https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/ask-matt/SKILL.md (read 2 Oct 2026, v1.2.3)
- https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/CLAUDE.md (read 2 Oct 2026)