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scope-guard

Pre-implementation scope control: evaluate feature necessity and enforce branch size limits

skill-install — Terminal

Install via CLI (Recommended)

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/athola/nm-imbue-scope-guard
Or

Night Market Skill — ported from claude-night-market/imbue. For the full experience with agents, hooks, and commands, install the Claude Code plugin.

Building more than what is needed takes choices away from those who work here next. Scope-guard is humility and foresight: preserving freedom by building only what is earned.

Table of Contents

  • Philosophy
  • When to Use
  • When NOT to Use
  • Quick Start
  • 1. Score the Feature
  • 2. Check Against Backlog
  • 3. Verify Branch Budget
  • 4. Monitor Thresholds
  • Core Workflow
  • Step 1: Calculate Worthiness (scope-guard:worthiness-scored)
  • Step 2: Compare Against Backlog (scope-guard:backlog-compared)
  • Step 3: Check Branch Budget (scope-guard:budget-checked)
  • Step 4: Document Decision (scope-guard:decision-documented)
  • Anti-Overengineering Rules
  • Backlog Management
  • Directory Structure
  • Queue Rules
  • Adding to Queue
  • Integration Points
  • With superpowers:brainstorming
  • With superpowers:writing-plans
  • During superpowers:executing-plans
  • Required TodoWrite Items
  • Related Skills
  • Module Reference

Scope Guard

Prevents overengineering by both Claude and human during the brainstorm→plan→execute workflow. Forces explicit evaluation of every proposed feature against business value, opportunity cost, and branch constraints.

Philosophy

Core Belief: Not all features deserve implementation. Most ideas should be deferred to backlog until proven necessary.

Three Pillars:

  1. Worthiness Scoring - Quantify value vs cost before building
  2. Opportunity Cost - Compare against existing backlog
  3. Branch Discipline - Respect size thresholds

When To Use

  • During brainstorming sessions before documenting designs
  • During planning sessions before finalizing implementation plans
  • When evaluating "should we add this?" decisions
  • Automatically via hooks when branches approach thresholds
  • When proposing new features, abstractions, or patterns

When NOT To Use

  • Bug fixes with clear, bounded scope
  • Documentation-only changes
  • Trivial single-file edits (< 50 lines)
  • Emergency production fixes

Quick Start

1. Score the Feature

Read Full Documentation on GitHub

Metadata

Author@athola
Stars4473
Views0
Updated2026-05-01
View Author Profile
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Add to Configuration

Paste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.

{
  "plugins": {
    "official-athola-nm-imbue-scope-guard": {
      "enabled": true,
      "auto_update": true
    }
  }
}
Safety NoteClawKit audits metadata but not runtime behavior. Use with caution.

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