Context scoping for writing agent spawns — use when deciding what context a spawned agent should receive, whether ephemeral story decisions should be materialized before handoff, and how much to pass. Poor context handoffs cause writers to invent contradictions and critics to miss relevant history.
Every spawn starts with a context decision. Get it wrong and the writer invents facts that contradict established canon, the critic misses a continuity issue because it never saw the relevant chapter, or the brainstormer explores territory the author already rejected.
This skill teaches the judgment — what story context to pass, when to materialize decisions before spawning, and how much is enough.
File references — concrete artifacts. Use when the context already exists as files: chapters, outlines, wiki pages, style files from $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/styles/, character state from $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/characters/. The agent reads exactly what you point it at. This is the default choice because files are stable, inspectable, and survive compaction.
Conversation history. Use when the agent needs to understand decisions, reasoning, or brainstorm context that hasn't been written down yet. Session history captures the why behind choices — why the author picked this meeting angle, what tone they want, what they explicitly rejected.
Materialize first — when context is too important to be ephemeral. If critical story decisions only live in conversation, write them to or spawning. Story direction decisions are especially important to materialize — if the author chose "comedic misunderstanding" over "shared threat" for a meeting scene, that reasoning needs to survive compaction. The writer who drafts the scene weeks later needs to know not just what was chosen, but what was rejected.
$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/$MERIDIAN_WORK_DIR/Rule of thumb: if a writer could accidentally contradict this context, materialize it. If it's supplementary background that enriches but isn't load-bearing, conversation history is fine.
Writers need enough to stay in voice and on-canon, not everything ever written. The essential context:
$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/styles/ and pick the files that match the scene. Character files for whoever appears, scene-type files for the kind of scene being written. Each style file is self-describing — read the top to know when it applies.$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/characters/ for characters who appear in the scene, especially if their emotional state or knowledge has changed recentlyTell the writer where to find more if it needs to explore — "the full arc outline is in the work directory, focus on the Route 1 section" — rather than attaching everything preemptively.
Critics need the draft plus enough context to judge it against:
$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/issues/ if the critic should watch for specific recurring problemsBrainstormers need constraints, not answers:
Don't pass too much — brainstormers that receive the full project history tend to produce conservative ideas that fit neatly into existing patterns instead of exploring fresh territory.
$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ paths for where to write findings$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/canon/ and $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/timeline/ for deduplication$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ directory structure — it needs to see everything to rebuild connectionsCarry forward what a previous phase learned by including its outputs as context. The revision writer benefits from seeing what the first-draft writer discovered — where the outline was ambiguous, what choices were made to fill gaps. The critic benefits from seeing prior critique rounds — what was already flagged and addressed.
Combine mechanisms when phases produce artifacts: pass the prior spawn's reasoning context alongside the files it created for concrete outputs.