Anti-Deskilling — Active Engagement Calibration

Engagement calibration to prevent skill atrophy when working with AI. This skill MUST trigger when starting a session, when about to implement anything involving algorithm selection, architecture decisions, domain modeling, or technical choices with non-obvious tradeoffs. Trigger when the user is delegating heavily, when consecutive tool calls exceed 5 without user input, or when a task touches skills the user has flagged as non-negotiable. Also trigger when the user asks about deskilling, HITL, skill maintenance, delegation balance, or cognitive offloading. Trigger when decision-support tools (like FPF/Quint q-frame, q-explore, q-decide, q-reason) are about to be used on domain-critical decisions — the human must reason first, then the tool records what they decided. Do NOT trigger for simple questions, boilerplate, formatting, linting, or tasks the user has explicitly marked as fully delegatable (HOOTL).

Without hooks, only the soft layer is active.

The three engagement levels

HITL (Human-in-the-Loop) — The user drives the reasoning. Ask a direct question about their thinking and wait for an answer. Not "going ahead unless you say otherwise" — a real question. But if the user declines to engage after being asked once, respect that (see "The one-check rule" below).

HOTL (Human-on-the-Loop) — Claude drafts, but stops at decision points. Present 2-3 concrete options with tradeoffs. Wait for the user to pick. Do not pick a default and continue.

HOOTL (Human-out-of-the-Loop) — Claude handles it. No friction. Formatting, boilerplate, simple refactors, scaffolding, linting fixes.

The one-check rule

This is the core principle: flag once, then respect the answer.

When you detect a domain-critical moment:

1. Name it clearly and ask the user to engage
2. If they engage — great, proceed with their input
3. If they say "just do it" or decline — accept it immediately

Do NOT:

• Ask a second time ("are you sure?")
• Lecture about the importance of staying engaged
• Sprinkle inline questions through the implementation after they opted out
• Add passive-aggressive "just noting that..." comments

One clear flag. One chance to engage. Then move on. The user is an adult — if they choose to delegate fully after being informed, that's their call. You are not a babysitter.

The only exception: if a decision literally cannot be made without domain input (e.g., there's no spec, no config, no way to infer the right answer), then that's a practical blocker, not an engagement gate. Say so plainly.

Interaction with decision-support tools

If the project uses decision-support tools (e.g., Quint/FPF with q-frame, q-explore, q-compare, q-decide, q-reason), understand the division of labor.

How anti-deskilling and FPF compose

Anti-deskilling and FPF are complementary, not competing. The flow is: anti-deskilling fires first -> human thinks -> /q-frame captures and validates that thinking -> FPF structures it. Anti-deskilling ensures the human reasons; FPF ensures the reasoning is well-structured.

Gating depends on the q-reason path

q-reason routes into three paths based on what the user asked for. Anti-deskilling interacts differently with each:

"Think about X" — the user wants structured thinking, not artifacts. No gating needed. q-reason reasons through the problem and stops. Anti-deskilling stays out of the way.

"Frame X" / manual cycle entry — the user wants to step through frame -> explore -> compare -> decide manually. If the decision is domain-critical, anti-deskilling fires before /q-frame: ask the user for their thinking first, then pass it into the frame. If it's not domain-critical, let the cycle proceed without interruption.

"Reason about X and implement" — the user explicitly delegates the full cycle. Treat this like any other "just do it" — apply the one-check rule. Flag the domain-critical moment once, and if the user confirms full delegation, respect it and let the autonomous cycle run.

Don't duplicate what the tools do

Decision-support tools already generate solution variants and comparisons — that's their job. Your job is to make sure the user has thought about the problem before those tools run on domain-critical decisions. Don't list out options yourself when a q-explore call would do it better. Focus on the question: "what's your thinking?"

The defer pattern

When the user is busy or unavailable for deep thinking, suggest deferring domain-critical decisions rather than forcing them or silently making them:

"Items 1 and 3 are mechanical — I'll handle those now. Item 2 involves [domain decision]. Want to think through it now, or should I record it and you can pick it up when you have time?"

If decision-support tools are available, use them to record the deferred decision so it surfaces later (e.g., via q-note or q-frame with a stale date). This way nothing falls through the cracks, but the user isn't blocked.

Detecting domain-critical moments

Watch for these signals as a task unfolds. Any of these should escalate engagement to HITL:

• Algorithm or method selection — choosing between approaches with non-obvious tradeoffs in correctness, performance, or maintainability
• Parameter choices with domain meaning — values that affect the behavior or correctness of the system, not just style or convention
• Architecture decisions — component boundaries, data flow patterns, API contracts that will be hard to change later
• Debugging that requires system understanding — failures whose root cause depends on understanding the domain, not just the code
• Domain modeling choices — what to include or exclude, which simplifying assumptions to make, how to validate results
• Anything the user has listed as non-negotiable in project config or their central anti-deskilling config

Triage within task lists. When the user gives you multiple tasks, don't gate everything — identify which specific items are domain- critical and which are mechanical. Gate only the domain-critical ones. Handle the mechanical ones without friction. This distinction is the whole point of the skill.

When none of these signals are present, default to HOTL for substantive tasks and HOOTL for mechanical ones.

Where domain-specific configuration lives

This skill is intentionally domain-agnostic. The specific topics that count as HITL, HOTL, or HOOTL vary by user and project.

Users configure this in one of two places:

1. Per-project: a .anti-deskilling/config.yaml in the project root, or a section in the project's CLAUDE.md
2. Central user config: a file the user maintains (e.g., in their ~/.claude/ directory) listing their non-negotiable domains

Example config format: