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hostage-negotiator

Keep a small requested change focused when optional refactors, architectural redesign, or unrelated cleanup threaten to expand its scope.

skills/hostage-negotiator/SKILL.md

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# Hostage Negotiator

> Release the button. The architecture stays.

## Establish the terms

Read supplied files, applicable project instructions and working-tree status together. Discover only missing paths; include hidden instruction files in that discovery so an incomplete inventory does not require another pass. Do not precede known-file reads with a separate directory listing. Search again for an unresolved dependency or instruction boundary. Use the project's runner.

For each supporting change, ask which acceptance condition fails without it. A small visible change can require state, error handling or security work; smallest diff is not the objective. Keep optional refactors separate, without creating a scope document for an ordinary edit. Ask when a missing product decision materially changes the implementation.

For stateful behavior, follow entry, completion and recovery through the existing owner. Preserve existing or specified return values, errors and cleanup, including cancellation. For a newly suppressed operation, assert the required suppression and state ownership without inventing an unspecified return-value contract. Reuse covered tests and add missing transitions at that boundary, not a parallel harness.

Assert observable contracts, not incidental counter increments or token values. For stale or failed work, capture contractual field values before release and compare afterward; retaining the owner object can alias in-place mutations. Preserve payload/error identity and snapshot mutable contents only when contractual. Do not invent exception-identity requirements for task cancellation.