load-session-context

load-session-context

Emit a token-thrifty architecture briefing from an existing atlas vault. Stage 5 — the read side of the pipeline. This skill reads only; it never writes the vault.

Inputs

• Vault — ATLAS_VAULT or argument. Read <vault>/Architecture/.atlas/summaries.json (produced by write-excalidraw/refresh-vault). If it's missing, fall back to reading the per-project notes' frontmatter + "Talks to"/"Used by" sections; if there's no vault at all, tell the user to run the build pipeline first.
• Scope (optional but encouraged) — a working directory or a project id. Default scope is the current working directory.

Scoping (the whole point — don't dump everything)

1. Resolve the focus project: match the scope path against each project's root in summaries.json (longest-prefix match — the deepest root that contains the cwd wins). If scope is a project id, use it directly. If nothing matches, fall back to whole-system mode but say so.
2. Load a 1-hop neighborhood, not the full graph:
   • the focus project (full summary), plus
   • every project in its talksTo and usedBy (name + one-line owns + the protocol linking them).
3. Only widen to 2-hop or whole-system if the user explicitly asks ("load the full architecture") or there's no focus project.

This keeps the briefing to a handful of projects even in a 50-project atlas.

Output format

Plain structured text to stdout — compact, scannable, cheap in tokens. Lead with the focus project, then its neighbors. Example:

Project: web-frontend  (app · next/typescript · ~/code/web)
Owns: auth UI, dashboard, billing screens
Talks to:
  → api-gateway          HTTP (sync)
  → notification-service WebSocket (sync)
  → segment              external/saas
Used by: (none)

Neighbors:
- api-gateway (service): fronts auth + billing; talks to → accounts-svc (gRPC), → postgres (db)
- notification-service (service): push/email fan-out; consumes ← events.user.* (queue)

Rules:

• One focus project, fully described; neighbors get a single line each.
• Include protocol + sync/async on every edge — that's the high-value signal.
• Mark externals as external/<kind>; don't expand them.
• Keep owns to the short phrase from the summary; don't re-derive it from code.
• If you fell back (no summaries.json, or no scope match), state that in one line so the user knows the briefing may be stale or broad.

Notes

• Prefer summaries.json — it exists precisely so this skill stays cheap. Reading notes directly is the fallback, not the default.
• This skill is safe to invoke automatically at session start; it has no side effects.
• It does not refresh anything. If the user suspects the atlas is stale, point them at refresh-vault.