/query

/ephemeris:query

Answer a natural-language question about the user's project from the local ephemeris wiki. All reasoning happens in this session — no subprocess, no API key, no outbound calls. This skill is read-only: it never writes, edits, or moves a file.

Instructions

1. Parse the question

• If $ARGUMENTS is empty, emit Usage: /ephemeris:query "<question>" and stop.
• Otherwise, treat $ARGUMENTS as the question. Extract 3–6 key terms: nouns, named entities, distinctive verbs. Ignore stop-words and generic filler.

2. Resolve the wiki root

• <wiki_root> is $EPHEMERIS_WIKI_ROOT if set and non-empty, else ~/.claude/ephemeris/wiki.
• If <wiki_root> does not exist, emit Wiki not found at <path>. Run /ephemeris:ingest first. and stop.

3. Enumerate the wiki

Glob: <wiki_root>/**/*.md.

• If zero results, emit Wiki is empty — no pages have been built yet. and stop.

4. Search for relevant pages

For each key term from step 1, run Grep with:

• pattern: the key term (case-insensitive)
• path: <wiki_root>
• output_mode: files_with_matches
• glob: *.md

Union the file paths returned across all terms. Rank by number of terms matched (most terms = most relevant). Take the top 5.

• If the union is empty, emit Cannot answer this from the wiki — no relevant pages found. followed by an empty ## Sources block and stop.

5. Read the top matches

For each of the top 5 files: Read the full file contents. Hold the content in working memory.

6. Answer from read content only

Compose an answer to the question using only the content of the pages you just Read. Do not draw on training-data knowledge about the project or codebase — only what the wiki explicitly says.

Grounding rule: Every claim in the answer body must be traceable to a specific wiki page you read. If the pages don't support a claim, drop the claim or mark it (not found in wiki). If none of the pages actually answer the question, emit Cannot answer this from the wiki — no relevant pages found. and skip to the ## Sources block.

7. Cite sources

End the response with a ## Sources block listing every wiki page referenced in the answer, as relative paths under <wiki_root>. Example:

## Sources
- topics/authentication.md
- DECISIONS.md
- entities/AuthMiddleware.md

The ## Sources block appears even when the answer is the cannot-answer sentinel (possibly empty). It is the contract that tells the user what the skill looked at.