brainstormingUse BEFORE any design or feature work — picking an approach, scoping a change, fleshing out a sparse ticket, deciding whether something needs a design doc. Runs a structured brainstorm with one-question-at-a-time clarification, 2–3 approaches with explicit tradeoffs, ultimately producing a design ar
continuous-integrationUse when the user asks about vivarium-suite CI — build status, Jenkins console logs, job structure, GitHub Actions runs, etc. Covers the GH Actions / Jenkins setup, the per-package Multibranch Pipeline layout, URL-to-jobFullName translation for the Jenkins MCP, and parallel matrix log interleaving.
design-docSimSci Engineering team convention for drafting a Design Document on the IHME hub. Use whenever the user asks to e.g. "draft a design doc", "write a design document", "make a design doc", or "start a PRD".
environmentsHow to pick up the right Python environment in a vivarium repo, and how to create one if you need to. Use whenever you need to run tests, lint, scripts, or execute make commands, anything that imports the package. Also use when the user asks to "set up an environment", "use the shared env", "rebuild
framework-clisReference for the vivarium-ecosystem console scripts that a standard model-repo conda env puts on PATH — `simulate`, `psimulate`, `vipin`, the per-repo `make_artifacts`, and `update_gbd_round`. Use whenever the task involves running, restarting, expanding, or smoke-testing a vivarium simulation; lau
make-commandsReference for the shared `make` targets used across vivarium repositories, centralized in `vivarium/build_utils/resources/makefiles/`. Use this when the task involves making a new conda environment, formatting code, running development checks, or type hinting. Use whenever the user asks what a `make
model-developmentGuided iteration loop for a vivarium model — take one model change from a
plugin-setupUse when the user is performing post-install configuration for components shipped by this plugin — work that the plugin install itself doesn't perform.
pytestReference for the vivarium pytest setup. Use this skill when running, debugging, or developing automated test coverage.
repo-maintenanceAudit the repo's AI plaintext — both ai-tools plugins, simsci-internal (tools/ai-tools) and simsci (tools/ai-tools-public) (skills, agents, READMEs), and CLAUDE.md — for drift against the upstream sources those docs mirror, then fix approved findings. Use when the user asks to "audit the skills", "c
team-conventionsSimSci Engineering team conventions for everyday git/Jira/PR mechanics — branch naming from a MIC ticket, writing a Jira ticket against the team's hub doc, opening a PR with the repo's `.github/pull_request_template.md` via the GitHub MCP, and flagging the PR for team review in `#vivarium_dev`. Use
ticket-triageUse after a code review when some findings won't be addressed in the current PR — triages them into Jira ticket recommendations. Classifies each unaddressed finding (address-now / ticket / drop), groups ticket candidates by theme, checks the MIC backlog for duplicates via the `_duplicate_finder` sub
vivarium-researchSearch and retrieve content from the Vivarium Research documentation (vivarium-research.readthedocs.io). Use whenever the user asks, implicitly or explicitly, the specification for how something is modelled in Vivarium — a disease, risk factor, intervention, demographic process, or simulation-compon