# Proactive skill suggestions

gstack notices what stage you are in (a new idea, a diff to review, "does this
work?", time to land it) and can invoke the matching skill without you typing
its slash command. The `proactive` config key says how far that goes.

| Value | What auto-invokes | Who it is for |
|-------|-------------------|---------------|
| `core` (default) | `/office-hours`, `/review`, `/qa` and `/ship` only. Every other skill waits for you to type it, unless a skill you ran hands off to it (`/office-hours` offering the next review). | Most people, and anyone running gstack beside another skill pack: the four core skills are the ones users praise, and the others no longer compete with another pack's niche skills. |
| `all` | Any skill whose purpose matches your request. | You use gstack on its own and want the whole sprint suggested. |
| `off` | Nothing. gstack never suggests or auto-invokes a skill, not even by asking "want me to run /X?". | You type every command yourself. |

`true` and `false` still work as the older spellings of `all` and `off`, so a
config written before the `core` default keeps its behavior; `gstack-skill-start`
reports them to the skill as `all` and `off`. A hand edit may be quoted, upper-case
or commented (`proactive: "OFF" # mine`), and the YAML yes/no family (`yes`, `on`,
`1`; `no`, `none`, `0`, `disabled`, `never`) reads as `all` or `off`, in
`gstack-config set` as well, so a typed opt-out never fails open.

```bash
gstack-config get proactive          # core, all, off (or a legacy true/false)
gstack-config set proactive all      # suggest every matching skill
gstack-config set proactive off      # suggest nothing
gstack-config set proactive core     # back to the default
```

A skill you name is always invoked, whatever the setting, and so is a skill that
a running skill invokes itself (`/ship` dispatching `/document-release`). The
setting governs unasked suggestions, and an in-skill *offer* to run another skill
is one: under `off`, `/office-hours` recommends the next review in one line
instead of offering to launch it, and the one-time first-run
tips stay quiet. The change takes effect on the next skill run; no `./setup` is
needed, because every skill reads `PROACTIVE` from `gstack-skill-start` at the
start of each run and the router (`/gstack`) applies it to its routing rules. A
value gstack does not know (a hand-edited `proactive: maybe`) reads as `core`.

Two surfaces follow the setting only in part. The first is the `## Skill routing`
section gstack offers to append to your project's CLAUDE.md. Under `off` the offer is
not made, because those rules are the auto-invocation you turned off (a section
already in CLAUDE.md stays; delete it yourself). Under `core` the offered
section still lists every routing rule and tells the host to invoke any
matching skill. If you accepted it before the `core` default, trim that section
to the four core rules (or delete it and let gstack offer it again); making the
offered section follow `core` is tracked in #3446.

The second is the full skill descriptions, which a `--catalog-mode=full` build
and the non-Claude hosts keep. Non-core skills still say "Proactively suggest
when ..." there, and that text does not change with the setting, so a host
that picks skills from those descriptions can still reach them under `core`.
The default Claude build uses one-line descriptions without that sentence.
#3446 tracks that too.

gstack asks once, after the telemetry question, which of the three you want;
if you stored `off` before that, it takes the answer as given and does not ask.
"Say stop suggesting" in a session runs `gstack-config set proactive off` for you.

If collisions with other skill packs keep coming up under `core`, the fallback
Garry approved on 2026-10-25 is `off` by default.