Coworker Context

Overview

Datarim delegates bulk-read and boilerplate-write tasks to external LLMs via a CLI tool called coworker. The datarim profile in the coworker configuration tells the external model how to behave when generating archive documents, reflection logs, PRDs, plans, task descriptions, and other Datarim artefacts. Before this skill landed, the profile's system prompt was 56 words of generic prose — it told the model to preserve YAML frontmatter and mirror PRD success criteria, but it did not transmit any of the framework's other conventions. External models therefore generated documents that were structurally plausible but silently violated mandates the operator could not see at draft time.

Why It Exists

An empirical test harness across one full pipeline cycle discovered that the coworker profile was the weakest link in the convention chain. The framework's own agents had been gradually taught Stage Header, append-log Q&A, expectations checklist, snapshot frontmatter, Diátaxis, and history-agnostic conventions through edits to skills and command files. The coworker profile was never updated. This skill is the canonical entry point the profile points to — read top-to-bottom by the external LLM before generating any Datarim artefact.

What It Covers

• Supreme Directive — Universal Laws of Artificial Entities take precedence; refuse-and-inform on conflict.
• Stage Header — every operator-facing response from a pipeline command begins with a bold inline banner carrying the task identifier and full title, before any tool-call narration.
• YAML frontmatter preservation — byte-exact: never reorder keys, never re-quote, never change spacing.
• Append-log Q&A — fixed heading shape, five mandatory fields, agent-decided rounds carry a rationale of at least fifty characters.
• Expectations checklist (Option B) — wish identifier slug, plain-language operator wish, falsifiable success criterion, status history with one line per transition, current status, optional override.
• Snapshot frontmatter — ten mandatory scalar fields plus an optional options list with CTA bullets.
• PRD ↔ archive mirror — archive validation items mirror PRD success criteria one-to-one with citations of how each was met.
• Documentation taxonomy — closed set of four Diátaxis categories: tutorials, how-to, reference, explanation.
• History-agnostic gate — never name a specific task identifier in shareable skills, agents, commands, or templates.

How It Is Loaded

The datarim profile in the coworker configuration references this skill by name in its system prompt. The external LLM is instructed to read it before generating any artefact. The skill itself is history-agnostic — it names contract surfaces, not specific tasks — and it passes the framework's stack-agnostic and history-agnostic gates.

Source

Authored during a Phase 2 expansion of the Stage Output Prefix task in May 2026, after the framework's first dogfood test harness uncovered three orthogonal gaps in convention propagation: the Stage Header markdown-only enforcement was unreliable without a runtime hook, the snapshot writer was silently failing under zsh-parent shells, and the coworker profile was transmitting almost none of the framework's mandates to the external LLM.