kibitzer

Retritis

Retritis (n.): inflammation caused by repeated retries. A chronic condition of agent-assisted development. No known cure — only palliative treatments.

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Diagnosis

You have retritis if:

• You've copy-pasted terminal output into a chat window more than twice today
• You've typed git add . && git commit -m "wip" && git push from muscle memory while an agent watches
• You've explained the same codebase structure to three different Claude sessions
• You've lost work to a session crash and reconstructed it by hand
• You've written a bash script to avoid writing a bash script

Treatment

Each tool in the suite addresses a specific symptom. None of them came from a plan. They came from the moment where you think "I've done this enough times."

Parsing & querying

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
sitting_duck	"I need to find all functions matching X across 27 languages"	CSS selectors over tree-sitter ASTs in DuckDB
pluckit	"I want to query, mutate, test, and commit code in one chain"	jQuery for source code. Fluent API over sitting_duck

Code intelligence

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
squackit	"Claude keeps grepping for definitions and missing half of them"	MCP server + CLI with smart defaults, session caching, compound workflows
fledgling	"I need cross-file resolution, call graphs, structural similarity"	SQL macros over DuckDB. The query layer underneath squackit

History

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
duck_tails	"Who changed this function and when?"	Git history as queryable DuckDB tables

Build & test

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
blq	"I keep copy-pasting build output into the chat"	Build log capture, sandbox presets, structured query. MCP or CLI

Policy

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
umwelt	"Permissions are spread across 5 different systems"	CSS-syntax policy language with Datalog semantics over Beer's VSM
ducklog	"I need to query policy decisions with plain SQL"	Compiles umwelt policy to DuckDB. Authorization as materialized views

Git workflow

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
jetsam	"Did I forget to push?"	Save, sync, ship. Preview plans before execution

Generation

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
lackpy	"I want a local model that knows my tool APIs"	Micro-inferencer. Qwen 2.5 Coder 3B, local, $0

Observation & learning

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
kibitzer	"Claude keeps using grep when there's a structured tool for that"	Watches tool calls, suggests alternatives, coaches toward better patterns
agent-riggs	"The same effective pattern keeps getting rediscovered across sessions"	Cross-session trace analysis, pattern extraction, template promotion

Human-side palliatives

Tool	Symptom	Treatment
tmux-use	"Which tmux session was I in?"	Color-coded session management
git-wt	"Stash, switch, pop, merge, switch back"	Git worktree wrapper for structured layouts
ffs	"Claude crashed mid-task and I lost everything"	Find Failed Sessions. Crash recovery with runbooks
init-dev	"Setting up fledgling + blq + jetsam for the 15th time"	Project bootstrapping with auto-detection

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Claude Code Plugins

The quickest way to start treatment. Install the plugin marketplace, then pick your prescriptions.

# Add the retritis pharmacy
/plugin marketplace add teaguesterling/retritis

# Fill prescriptions individually
/plugin install blq@retritis
/plugin install jetsam@retritis
/plugin install fledgling@retritis
/plugin install squackit@retritis
/plugin install kibitzer@retritis

Each plugin bundles:

• MCP server config — tool availability
• Skills — routing instructions ("instead of grep, use find_definitions")
• Hooks (optional) — gentle warnings when you reach for bash instead of the structured tool

See plugins/ for the full formulary.

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Prognosis

There is no cure. The condition is progressive — each tool you build reveals new friction, which produces new tools. This is by design. The ratchet only turns one direction.