[Quinnod345]

Pull Request Checklist

• I have read and followed the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines.
• I have read and followed the Guidance for submissions involving paid services.
• My contribution adds a new instruction, prompt, agent, skill, workflow, or canvas extension file in the correct directory.
• The file follows the required naming convention.
• The content is clearly structured and follows the example format.
• I have tested my instructions, prompt, agent, skill, workflow, or canvas extension with GitHub Copilot.
• I have run npm start and verified that README.md is up to date.
• I am targeting the main branch for this pull request.

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Description

I added the ponder skill under skills/ponder/ (SKILL.md and references/{protocol.md,perspectives.md,harness-notes.md}) and updated docs/README.skills.md via npm run build.

Ponder is a convergent, multi-pass deliberation loop for coding agents. Instead of running a single review pass that skips files or a naive repeat prompt that manufactures nitpicks on later passes, Ponder enforces:

1. Exhaustive unit enumeration (units.json): Every file, screen, or plan unit in scope is inventoried before grading begins, and decide stop refuses to pass (blocked) while any enumerated unit is ungraded (coverage < 1.0).
2. Four explicit perspectives (deliberation.json): Every pass records structured arguments from skeptic, builder, dreamer, and empath.
3. Append-only delta ledger (deltas.jsonl): Pass 2+ revises prior findings via explicit delta operations (add, edit, change, delete, unit-add, unit-edit, unit-delete) rather than rewriting findings from scratch, allowing late passes to converge quietly when all findings hold.

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Type of Contribution

• New instruction file.
• New prompt file.
• New agent file.
• New plugin.
• New skill file.
• New agentic workflow.
• New canvas extension.
• Update to existing instruction, prompt, agent, plugin, skill, workflow, or canvas extension.
• Other (please specify):

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Additional Notes

Local validation run before opening this PR:

• npx @microsoft/vally-cli lint skills/ponder --verbose: 2/2 checks passed (spec-compliance, valid-refs)
• npm run skill:validate: All 449 skills are valid
• uvx codespell skills/ponder: 0 errors
• node ./eng/pr-risk-scan.mjs: High: 0, Medium: 0, Info: 0
• npm run build and bash eng/fix-line-endings.sh: updated docs/README.skills.md cleanly.

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By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution abides by the Code of Conduct and will be licensed under the MIT License.

[github-actions]

🔒 PR Risk Scan Results

Scanned 4 changed file(s).

Severity	Count
🔴 High	0
🟠 Medium	0
ℹ️ Info	0

✅ No matching risk patterns were detected in changed files.

This is an automated soft-gate report. Findings indicate review targets and do not block merge by themselves.

[github-actions]

🚦 Submission status: 👀 Ready for review

Risk tier: merge-risk:high — Privileged execution, automation, or review-policy change
Required to merge: passing submission-gate checks plus 1 approval from reviewers with write access, including a maintainer with admin or maintain permission.

Why this tier

• Label needs-review:HIGH flags a high contributor-risk signal

Automated checks

Check	Status	Details
Line endings	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Spelling	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Generated README consistency	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Skill validation	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Skill lint (vally)	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Risk scan	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Contributor reputation	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
Duplicate resource scan	✅ Passed	Passed · logs
PR quality signal	⏭️ Skipped	Skipped by its workflow · logs

Review

• Approvals: 0/1
• Assigned reviewer: not assigned yet — comment /request-review to ask for one
• Review target date: not set
• Still needed: 1 more approval(s); an approval from a maintainer with admin or maintain permission
• The core-maintainers pool is not staffed yet; an approver with admin or maintain permission is required instead.

Commands

Command	Who	What it does
/rerun-checks	PR author, maintainers	Re-runs failed or incomplete checks and re-evaluates this gate
/request-review	PR author, maintainers	Asks the review rotation to assign a reviewer (adds needs-reviewer)

_{Updated for 78c4679 · gate run · This comment is maintained automatically — see submission gate docs.}

[github-actions]

🔴 Contributor Reputation Check: HIGH risk

Check	Risk
Profile	HIGH
Credential audit	NONE

Maintainers: please review this contributor before merging.
See the workflow run for full details.
Automated check powered by AGT.

[github-actions]

🔍 Vally Lint Results

✅ All checks passed

Scope	Checked
Skills	1
Agents	0
Total	1

Severity	Count
❌ Errors	0
⚠️ Warnings	0
ℹ️ Advisories	0

Summary

Level	Finding
ℹ️	✅ ponder (2/2 checks passed)
ℹ️	✓ [spec-compliance] All 1 skill(s) are spec-compliant.
ℹ️	✓ spec-compliance: All spec checks passed.
ℹ️	✓ [valid-refs] All file references across 1 skill(s) are valid.
ℹ️	✓ valid-refs: All file references resolve to existing files within the skill directory.
ℹ️	1 skill(s) linted, 1 passed

Full linter output

### Linting skills/ponder
✅ ponder (2/2 checks passed)
    ✓ [spec-compliance] All 1 skill(s) are spec-compliant.
        ✓ spec-compliance: All spec checks passed.
    ✓ [valid-refs] All file references across 1 skill(s) are valid.
        ✓ valid-refs: All file references resolve to existing files within the skill directory.

1 skill(s) linted, 1 passed

[Quinnod345]

/request-review

[github-actions]

🙋 Added needs-reviewer. Reviewer routing is assigning a reviewer now.