Questline

Moves your project forward one clear, achievable result at a time. Discuss, implement, verify, repeat.

How it works

1. Invoke /questline with the description of the goal you want to advance. The agent uses a matching Questline or starts one for a new goal, with a Compass that records its longer-term direction.
2. Discuss with the agent the next deliverable's direction and rough scope. Once you confirm it as the next Waypoint, the agent creates a marked draft and keeps it current with settled decisions as you work through consequential questions. When its requirements are settled, the agent presents that draft for acceptance.
3. Ask the agent to implement the approved Waypoint.
4. Once the Waypoint is verified, return to step 2 to discuss the next deliverable. Agent is already familiar with the "waypoint" and "compass" concepts, so you can ask it to create new Waypoints directly without invoking /questline explicitly.

Installation

Just ask Codex or Claude Code to install this skill from the repository, or run:

npx skills add adiachenko/questline --global

Concepts

Questline

A Questline is one active, scoped software goal. Its directory under .questline/ contains a Compass and a numbered sequence of Waypoints. A project can pursue several goals at once, with one Questline per goal:

.questline/
├── message-delivery/
│   ├── compass.md
│   ├── 001_publish_through_rabbitmq.md
│   └── 002_receive_into_laravel_queues.md
└── billing-reliability/
    ├── compass.md
    └── 001_surface_reconciliation_failures.md

Keep only active goals in .questline/. When you stop pursuing a goal, delete its Questline folder or move it elsewhere to keep its history.

Waypoint

A Waypoint starts as a marked draft when you confirm the next bounded deliverable. It accumulates the settled result, evidence, decisions, and boundaries as you shape them with the agent. Once accepted, it becomes the agreement that guides implementation and preserves what was settled. A status line under its title tracks the lifecycle — draft, accepted, verified — so any session can resume from the files alone. Abandoning a Waypoint means deleting its file; its number is never reused.

Compass

Each Questline's compass.md records its goal and the durable boundaries that should guide more than one Waypoint. The agent maintains it when settled decisions or relevant implementation learning change that longer-lived direction, using it to align later Waypoints and surface conflicts across active Questlines. Decisions that define only the current deliverable stay in its Waypoint. You do not maintain or approve the Compass separately; if the direction itself needs to change, the agent discusses that decision with you first.

Pitfalls

• Deciding too early. Defer decisions the current Waypoint does not depend on; record when to revisit one only if that prevents premature commitment.
• Letting a Waypoint grow. Keep it focused on one bounded deliverable. Save adjacent features and follow-up work for the next Waypoint rather than expanding the current one.
• Assuming active Questlines are independent. The agent surfaces conflicts automatically; you decide how competing priorities or decisions that affect more than one goal should be reconciled.
• Turning .questline/ into a backlog. Create a Questline only for work you intend to pursue now.