fix(skills): polish loads AskUserQuestion via ToolSearch in forked context (#399)

2d9efda56103259ab474f4101a38f4f383a6f732 · 2026-04-29 17:35:30 -0700 · Trevin Chow

AskUserQuestion is a deferred tool — its schema must be loaded before
first use. In a forked context, agents that don't know this assume the
tool is unavailable and fall back to plain-text "reply 1 or 2" prompts.
Plain-text replies land in the parent session, never reach the fork,
and the workflow stalls. Document the load step explicitly in Setup so
every later prompt site (resolve CLI, divergence check, publish offer)
just works.

Discovered when polish stalled at the divergence check on weather-goat.
Validated by re-running polish in the same scenario after the change —
divergence sync proceeded interactively and the run completed.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Files touched

M skills/printing-press-polish/SKILL.md

Diff

commit 2d9efda56103259ab474f4101a38f4f383a6f732
Author: Trevin Chow <trevin@trevinchow.com>
Date:   Wed Apr 29 17:35:30 2026 -0700

    fix(skills): polish loads AskUserQuestion via ToolSearch in forked context (#399)
    
    AskUserQuestion is a deferred tool — its schema must be loaded before
    first use. In a forked context, agents that don't know this assume the
    tool is unavailable and fall back to plain-text "reply 1 or 2" prompts.
    Plain-text replies land in the parent session, never reach the fork,
    and the workflow stalls. Document the load step explicitly in Setup so
    every later prompt site (resolve CLI, divergence check, publish offer)
    just works.
    
    Discovered when polish stalled at the divergence check on weather-goat.
    Validated by re-running polish in the same scenario after the change —
    divergence sync proceeded interactively and the run completed.
    
    Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 skills/printing-press-polish/SKILL.md | 2 ++
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

diff --git a/skills/printing-press-polish/SKILL.md b/skills/printing-press-polish/SKILL.md
index 601d1865..54b2b351 100644
--- a/skills/printing-press-polish/SKILL.md
+++ b/skills/printing-press-polish/SKILL.md
@@ -48,6 +48,8 @@ PRESS_HOME="$HOME/printing-press"
 PRESS_LIBRARY="$PRESS_HOME/library"
 ```
 
+**`AskUserQuestion` is a deferred tool.** Before the first use in this session, load its schema with `ToolSearch select:AskUserQuestion`. Without that load step the tool's schema isn't visible in the tool list and it appears unavailable — do not fall back to plain-text "reply 1 or 2" prompts when running in a forked context. Plain-text replies land in the parent session, never reach this fork, and the workflow stalls. Load AskUserQuestion eagerly during Setup so every later prompt site (resolve CLI, divergence check, publish offer) just works.
+
 ### Public-library hint
 
 If the user's request includes phrasing like "polish notion **in the

← 262ab876 feat(skills): add /printing-press-import to bring published · back to Cli Printing Press · fix(cli): mcp-sync auto-fixes spec.yaml name drift for inter d1b9cd27 →