gen-mindset

gen-mindset

Intent

Synthesize a ranked list of software design heuristics by mining your Codex session logs.

This skill is optimized for:

• Design-only heuristics (types/invariants, testing/validation, error handling, readability/complexity, abstraction discipline).
• Signal-weighted ranking: what shows up often and what the user appears to approve.
• Low leakage output: list only (no scores, no quotes, no file paths).

When to use

• You want to distill the design principles that actually recur in your working style.
• You’re updating or drafting another mindset skill (e.g., $tk) and want evidence from your own sessions.

Defaults

• Sessions corpus: ~/.codex/sessions
• Output: top 20 heuristics
• Evidence: suppressed (no counts, no quotes)
• Approval detection: explicit positives + short approvals + next-step directives

Inputs

Ask only if the user hasn’t specified:

1. top N (default 20)
2. sessions path override (default ~/.codex/sessions)

Do not ask about scoring/evidence unless the user requests it.

Output contract

• Output only a bullet list of the top N heuristics.
• Do not include scores, weights, quotes, or snippets.
• Do not include paths into sessions.
• If fewer than N heuristics are detected, output what you have and state that fewer were found.

Method (what the script does)

1. Scan ~/.codex/sessions/**/*.jsonl.
2. Extract assistant messages (stripping the leading Echo: line when present).
3. Match against a curated set of design-heuristic patterns.
4. Weight by:
   • frequency across assistant messages
   • plus additional weight when the next user message looks like approval

Approval detection rules

A user message counts as approval if it is not a clear complaint and matches any:

• Approval keywords: thanks, great, lgtm, ok, yes, continue, etc.
• Short acknowledgements (very short messages)
• Next-step directives (imperative “do X next” instructions)

Execution

Run the helper script and return the list.

Recommended invocation:

• python3 ~/.codex/skills/gen-mindset/scripts/gen-mindset.py --top 20

If you prefer uv:

• uv run python ~/.codex/skills/gen-mindset/scripts/gen-mindset.py --top 20

Hard rules

• Explicit-only skill: do not auto-trigger.
• Don’t invent principles that aren’t in the corpus.
• Keep the list phrased as heuristics (“Prefer…”, “Treat…”, “When…”) not slogans.
• No scope creep: don’t update other skills unless asked.