Quiddity

Quiddity (n.) — the essential nature of a thing; from Medieval Latin quidditas, "whatness."

Generate custom build-loop skills for any project. Quiddity figures out the what of your project — your tools, process, and conventions — then generates agent skills tailored to how you actually work.

My entire dev workflow runs on three agent skills: /new-issue turns a plain-English description into a well-structured ticket, /next-task picks up the highest-priority item, implements it, and opens a PR, and /approve checks that everything's green, squash-merges, and ships it.

The catch? Every team has its own issue tracker, branch conventions, CI setup, and review process. A /next-task skill that works great with Linear and GitHub is useless if your team runs Jira and GitLab. These skills have to be bespoke.

Quiddity makes them bespoke for you. It interviews you about your systems, helps install the right tools and MCPs, and generates /next-task, /approve, and /new-issue skills tailored to your project. The whole thing grew out of building a /next-task skill from scratch, extracting reusable sub-skills, and doing the same for /new-issue — then realizing the setup itself could be automated. Once your skills are dialed in, they're also a great precursor to a Ralph loop — an autonomous bash loop that runs your agent repeatedly until the work is done.

What is a build loop?

A build loop is a set of skills that keep your development workflow moving:

• /new-issue — Convert plain-English descriptions into structured issues in your tracker with proper labels, acceptance criteria, and milestones.
• /next-task — Pick up the highest-priority task, create a branch, implement changes, open a PR, and update the issue status.
• /approve — Verify checks pass, confirm no unresolved feedback, then squash-merge and mark the issue as shipped.

Install

npx skills add jlong/quiddity

Then run /q-setup in your LLM:

> /q-setup

  I'll scan your project, learn about your process and tools, set up
  CLIs and MCPs, then generate three custom skills: /new-issue,
  /next-task, and /approve.

  Scanning project structure...
  ✓ Wrote .quiddity/project.md

  Do you have a document that describes your development process?
  You can share a file path, URL, or paste the contents.
  > No, just interview me.

  What branching model do you use?
  > GitHub flow — short-lived feature branches off main.
  ...
  ✓ Wrote .quiddity/process.md

  Which issue tracker do you use?
  > Linear, team is ENG
  Which source control platform?
  > GitHub
  ...
  ✓ Wrote .quiddity/tools.json

  Checking tool setup...
  Tool             CLI            MCP
  GitHub           gh (ok)        —
  GitHub Actions   (no setup needed — runs in CI)
  Linear           linear (ok)    Linear MCP (not found)

  Linear MCP lets the agent create and update issues directly.
  Want me to set it up? [Y/n]

  ✓ Generated skills/new-issue/SKILL.md
  ✓ Generated skills/next-task/SKILL.md
  ✓ Generated skills/approve/SKILL.md

Quick start

1. Install the skills (see above)
2. Run /q-setup to walk through the full configuration flow
3. Use /new-issue, /next-task, and /approve in your daily workflow

Or run individual setup skills if you only need part of the flow.

Skills

Skill	Description
/q-setup	Run the full setup flow for your project
/q-scan-project	Scan your project and write project.md
/q-which-process	Discover your SDLC and write process.md
/q-which-tools	Interview you about your tools and write tools.json
/q-setup-tools	Install missing CLIs and MCPs for your tools
/q-setup-next-task	Generate a /next-task skill for your project
/q-setup-approve	Generate an /approve skill for your project
/q-setup-new-issue	Generate a /new-issue skill for your project

/q-scan-project

Scans your project and documents its structure, tech stack, key files, and conventions. Writes .quiddity/project.md.

/q-which-process

Discovers your software development lifecycle. You can share an existing process document or be interviewed about your branching strategy, code review process, issue workflow, and other conventions. Writes .quiddity/process.md.

/q-which-tools

Discovers what tools your project uses and writes the results to .quiddity/tools.json. Pass it the categories you need:

/q-which-tools issues source-control

Reads process.md first to pre-fill answers where possible. Categories already in tools.json are skipped unless you ask to reconfigure. Available categories include: issues, source-control, ci, pr, deploy, notifications, and others.

/q-setup-tools

Walks through the tools in .quiddity/tools.json and helps install any missing CLIs or MCPs. Checks what's already set up, offers to install what's missing, and lets you skip anything you don't want. Run /q-which-tools first if tools.json doesn't exist yet.

/q-setup

Runs the full setup flow in order: /q-scan-project, then /q-which-process, then /q-which-tools, then /q-setup-tools, then each setup skill in sequence.

/q-setup-next-task, /q-setup-approve, /q-setup-new-issue

Each generates a custom skill for your project. They call /q-which-tools with the categories they need, so they work standalone or as part of /q-setup.

Generated files

Quiddity writes configuration to a .quiddity/ directory in your project:

File	Purpose
.quiddity/project.md	Project structure and tech stack summary
.quiddity/process.md	Your development process and conventions
.quiddity/tools.json	Concrete tool configuration by category

These files should be committed to source control so your whole team shares the same configuration. The generated skills (in your agent's skills directory) should also be committed.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTORS.md for the current list of contributors and open a pull request if you'd like to help.