Hiccup

Human Inline Context Charts for Unified Progress

A Kiro CLI skill that teaches agents to visualize agentic task progress as inline flow diagrams using unicode box-drawing characters.

What It Does

When a human is juggling multiple concurrent agent workflows, Hiccup lets them quickly see where each task stands — especially which steps need their input.

Example Output

╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  🔴 ACTION NEEDED (1 item)                   ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║                                               ║
║  1. Choose auth provider — Cognito or Auth0?  ║
║                                               ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ ✅ 1. Initialize project      │
└───────────────┬───────────────┘
                ▼
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ ✅ 2. Set up database schema  │
└───────────────┬───────────────┘
                ▼
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔄 3. Build REST API          │
└───────────────┬───────────────┘
                ▼
┌───────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔴 4. Choose auth provider                │
│    ➤ Cognito or Auth0?                    │
└───────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
                ▼
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ ⏳ 5. Write tests             │
└───────────────┬───────────────┘
                ▼
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ ⏳ 6. Deploy to staging       │
└───────────────────────────────┘

Progress: ██████░░░░░░ 2/6 complete

How It Works

Hiccup is a prompt-based skill — it's a set of instructions (SKILL.md) that teaches AI agents how to parse task lists and render them as unicode flow diagrams. No executable code, no dependencies.

Installation

Copy SKILL.md into your Kiro CLI skills directory.

Usage

Say any of these to activate:

• hiccup — show all active plans
• hiccup <plan-name> — drill into a specific plan
• show progress / where are things at / what needs my input

Key Features

• Flow diagrams — unicode box-drawing visualizations of task progress
• Status markers — ✅ done, 🔄 active, 🔴 blocked, ⏳ pending, ❌ failed
• Needs-input highlighting — blocked steps shown prominently with the specific question/decision needed
• Multi-plan dashboard — compact overview of all running agent tasks with progress bars
• Parallel flows — supports branching/merging task dependencies
• Data source integration — reads from markdown checklists and .kiro/cli-todo-lists/

Testing

This is a prompt-based skill (no executable code). Verify by:

1. Loading the skill in Kiro CLI
2. Creating a TODO list with mixed statuses
3. Saying "hiccup" and confirming the flow diagram renders correctly

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.