Individual skill
theory-of-constraints
Apply the Theory of Constraints (Goldratt's Five Focusing Steps) to find and fix the single bottleneck that caps a process, workflow, pipeline, or Agent Skill/plugin's throughput. Use whenever optimizing speed, lead time, cost, or token/context budget of a system — CI/build pipelines, dev value streams (idea→review→merge→ship), an Agent Skill's trigger/context flow, or runtime code paths — ESPECIALLY when you don't know where to optimize, a local speedup didn't improve the whole, work piles up at a stage, everything is busy but little ships, adding capacity didn't help, or a policy/rule (not a resource) is the limiter. It locates the constraint with measurement, then prescribes exploit → subordinate → elevate → repeat, and stops you optimizing non-constraints (the "mirage of the non-bottleneck"). Trigger even when the user just says "speed this up", "why is this slow", or "make this more efficient" without mentioning constraints or bottlenecks.
skills/.experimental/theory-of-constraints/SKILL.md
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SKILL.mdcore · 8,418 bytesassets/templates/report.mddoc · 3,241 bytesconfig.jsonasset · 1,692 bytesgotchas.mddoc · 3,620 bytesmetadata.jsonasset · 1,270 bytesreferences/conflict-resolution-tree.mddoc · 5,881 bytesreferences/elevation-misfire-tree.mddoc · 4,911 bytesreferences/find-the-constraint-tree.mddoc · 5,623 bytesreferences/local-optimum-tree.mddoc · 3,975 bytesreferences/moving-constraint-tree.mddoc · 5,491 bytesreferences/policy-constraint-tree.mddoc · 6,041 bytesreferences/queries/five-focusing-steps.shruns · 4,117 bytesreferences/queries/measure-stage-times.shruns · 4,071 bytesreferences/queries/measure-wip.shruns · 3,601 bytesreferences/queries/skill-context-cost.shruns · 4,168 bytesreferences/queries/throughput-accounting.pyruns · 5,083 bytesreferences/queries/utilization-vs-throughput.pyruns · 4,888 bytesreferences/symptoms.mddoc · 3,751 bytesreferences/utilization-trap-tree.mddoc · 4,432 bytesreferences/wip-accumulation-tree.mddoc · 5,089 bytes
Read excerpt
# Theory of Constraints
A diagnostic runbook for optimizing any process — a CI/build pipeline, a dev value stream, an Agent Skill or plugin, or a runtime code path — through Eliyahu Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (ToC).
The one idea that makes ToC powerful: **every system has exactly one binding constraint at a time**, and global throughput rises *only* when you improve that constraint. Effort spent anywhere else produces nothing — "an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is a mirage." This runbook finds the constraint with measurement, then walks the Five Focusing Steps to relieve it without creating new problems.
## When to Apply
Use this skill when the user wants to optimize a process or workflow and any of these are true:
- They want to optimize but **don't know where** to start ("make this faster", "why is this slow", "reduce the cost of this").
- A local speedup **didn't move the end-to-end result** (you optimized the wrong thing).
- Work, queues, or WIP **pile up at one stage** while others sit idle.
- Everything looks **100% busy but little ships** (high utilization, low throughput).