FIELD GUIDE / 01
Before the agent writes code, ask what it doesn't know.
Agent Unknowns is a portable skill for coding agents. It turns a vague request into a small set of grounded questions, choices, and an HTML artifact a person can answer.
Evidence first. Then a decision the agent can use.
The skill starts by identifying the phase of work and the dominant uncertainty. It sends the agent to one reference recipe, asks it to inspect the repository or product evidence, and makes it label what is observed versus assumed.
The request gives a goal, but leaves policy, failure behavior, and the current code unclear.
Read the worker and tests. Choose a technique such as Blind spot pass. Name missing evidence instead of inventing it.
The HTML artifact presents a small choice. Its reply builder turns the selection into a concrete next instruction.
One technique for the uncertainty at hand.
These are agent recipes, not commands a person has to learn. Each reference defines the evidence to gather and the artifact to produce.
Before implementation
08During implementation
01After implementation
02The HTML turns review into a reply.
The bundled example uses a fictional queue retry problem. Choice chips, filters, a knowledge check, and a reply builder let a person make a decision without editing JSON or reading a long agent transcript.
The agent replaces this synthetic content with verified project facts for each real task. Generated artifacts may contain private context; review them before sharing.
Open the HTML example ↗If the provider times out after accepting a retry, what should happen next?
“Check provider state before another submission. Show me the worker path and test this failure case.”
An independent adaptation.
The project grew from work on Inker. Its approach was inspired by Thariq Shihipar's field guide to finding unknowns and article on HTML for coding agents. The routing rules, references, and template here are community work, not an Anthropic release.
The template is one local HTML file with inline CSS and JavaScript. It sends no telemetry and does not approve deployments, purchases, merges, or other external actions.