refactor(agents): move conditional workflows into skills

.agents/skills/ask-user-authority/SKILL.md

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ metadata:
 # ask-user-authority
 
 This skill is the single owner of the decision policy for no-mistakes ask-user findings.
-`AGENTS.md` section 7 points here and does not restate this procedure.
+`task-delivery` and `AGENTS.md` section 13 point here and do not restate this procedure.
 Finding authority is determined by the criteria below, not by `yolo`.
 Firstmate always applies this judgment, decides any finding that is unambiguous toward the accepted design, and escalates only genuinely ambiguous, expanding, or destructive findings.
 

.agents/skills/backlog-management/SKILL.md

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+name: backlog-management
+description: >-
+  Agent-only policy for filing, holding, handing off, updating, reviewing, and closing work in a Firstmate backlog.
+  Load before any backlog mutation, captain-call filing, cross-home backlog handoff, task-note replacement, or queue review after teardown or heartbeat.
+user-invocable: false
+metadata:
+  internal: true
+---
+
+# Backlog management
+
+The configured `tasks-axi` backend is the durable queue; the tracked default is `data/backlog.md`.
+It tracks work items only, never agents; persistent secondmates never appear as backlog items.
+Work routed to a secondmate is recorded in that secondmate home's own backlog, not the main backlog.
+
+A decision is simply a task held for the captain.
+Create the task with `bin/fm-tasks-axi.sh add` when needed, then always hold it through `bin/fm-captain-hold.sh hold <id> --reason "<reason>"`.
+Add `--until <date>` only when the call itself should stay gated until that date; a captain's own "later" is a recorded answer, never a bare re-hold.
+When a main-side thread such as a pending captain decision or Relay reminder is worth durable tracking, file it as its own work item and hold it through that wrapper.
+Captain calls discovered by investigations or visual reviews follow `captain-hold-lifecycle`, which owns their completion gate and recorded-answer rules.
+
+When the automatic transition gate applies, dispatch and completion move the item themselves.
+[`bin/fm-spawn.sh`](../../../bin/fm-spawn.sh) and [`bin/fm-teardown.sh`](../../../bin/fm-teardown.sh) own those transitions and refuse rather than report success without them.
+What remains yours is filing the item before dispatch, recording decisions, and keeping notes current.
+[`docs/configuration.md`](../../../docs/configuration.md) owns gate applicability and the manual-backend exception.
+Re-evaluate queued work after every teardown and heartbeat, dispatching items only when dependencies and time gates have cleared.
+
+`.tasks.toml`, `docs/configuration.md`, and current `tasks-axi --help` own the backlog schema, compatibility, retention, and routine command syntax.
+Use compatible `tasks-axi` when the configured backend selects it, always through `bin/fm-tasks-axi.sh` so the call reaches this home's backlog from any directory.
+Use the documented manual path otherwise and keep only the configured recent Done entries.
+`secondmate-provisioning` and `bin/fm-backlog-handoff.sh` own cross-home handoff safety.
+
+Keep free-form notes free of temporary paths, moving versions, ephemeral identifiers, and copied state that will rot.
+Inspect the current task note before replacing its considered body, and archive the superseded body when recoverability matters rather than appending by default.
+Verify volatile details against their authoritative config, live system, or API before acting, and correct or delete stale prose immediately.
+Preserve durable structured identifiers, dependencies, and completion artifact links, and route reusable knowledge through `AGENTS.md`'s project and knowledge management contract rather than scattering it through task notes.

.agents/skills/captain-hold-lifecycle/SKILL.md

@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ Only `answer` with the captain's words or an evidence-backed `reconcile close` m
 Never close anything the captain owns without recording what he actually said: `bin/fm-captain-hold.sh answer` writes his exact words into the task and closes a question-shaped call, while `--release` frees a captain-gated work item to proceed.
 A merge approval uses that existing release path because approval permits the merge to proceed; cleanup closes the work only after it lands and records what shipped.
 Closing a held row at merge approval instead records completion before landing, so the backlog claims completion before the work actually ships.
-When the answer changes what a task must build, follow `AGENTS.md` section 7's Validate contract to preserve the captain's words in the brief and steer the worker.
+When the answer changes what a task must build, load `task-delivery` and follow its Validate contract to preserve the captain's words in the brief and steer the worker.
 When the captain says "later", that is an answer too: give the keyed-answer intake its `defer` close mode and a YYYY-MM-DD date, or use `answer --defer-until <date>` for a direct answer, so the captain's exact words are recorded before the existing `tasks-axi hold --until` gate leaves the item dated and held on the same call, with its original age basis intact.
 A recorded-answer defer date must be strictly later than today's UTC date; past and same-day dates are refused before the captain's words are recorded, while bare `hold --until` remains the calendar-only scheduling primitive.
 A defer without a date is refused rather than assigned a default.

.agents/skills/project-management/SKILL.md

@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Keep each registry description useful for identifying the project, but keep deli
 Do not turn the registry into project documentation.
 
 Before adding, cloning, creating, or registering any project in the main home, inspect the authoritative `data/secondmates.md` routing table and judge every existing natural-language `scope:` against the proposed project or domain.
-Apply `AGENTS.md` section 7's authoritative secondmate routing rules; if an existing scope owns that domain, route the new-project operation or work there instead of creating or registering a duplicate main-home clone.
+Apply `task-intake`'s authoritative secondmate routing rules; if an existing scope owns that domain, route the new-project operation or work there instead of creating or registering a duplicate main-home clone.
 Absence from the main `data/projects.md` registry is never evidence that no second mate owns the domain.
 If the owning second mate cannot accept the route, report that concrete blocker or obtain an explicit captain redirection rather than silently duplicating the project in the main home.
 
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ Do not overwrite or repurpose an existing path.
 
 ## Delivery posture
 
-The registry records the project's standing posture, which is the captain's default for the work rather than any task's answer; `AGENTS.md` section 7 owns how each task's concrete mode and yolo are resolved at intake and passed explicitly to the brief, the spawn, and any promotion.
+The registry records the project's standing posture, which is the captain's default for the work rather than any task's answer; `task-intake` owns how each task's concrete mode and yolo are resolved at intake and passed explicitly to the brief and spawn, while `task-delivery` owns promotion.
 Choose that posture when adding or creating the project:
 
 - `no-mistakes` runs the full validation pipeline before a PR.

.agents/skills/quota-array-dispatch/SKILL.md

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ metadata:
 # quota-array-dispatch
 
 This skill is the single owner of the completion-aware profile-array selection procedure.
-`AGENTS.md` section 4 owns the always-loaded intake boundary, load trigger, malformed-config refusal, every-candidate accounting, and strongest-reasoning/tie safety rules.
+`task-intake` owns the intake boundary, load trigger, and malformed-config refusal; this skill owns every-candidate accounting and strongest-reasoning and tie safety rules.
 `harness-adapters` owns harness verification, model/provider discovery, and effort fallback.
 `quota-axi` remains data-only: it publishes `spendPriority` as a comparable scalar and never recommends, selects, ranks, or infers a route.
 Do not add a daemon, opaque composite score, routing wrapper, hard-coded model-specific policy, or producer-side route recommendation.
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ An `exhausted_now` runway vetoes the candidate.
 The helper selects a candidate only when its applicable quota has a known `effectivePercentRemaining` greater than zero.
 This is an optional narrow helper with a known limitation: it maps each harness to one primary provider family only, so a candidate whose established provider differs from that primary family is checked against the wrong quota row.
 omp has no primary family, so the helper keys an `omp:` candidate on its model prefix, mapping only `openai-codex/` and `claude-bridge/` and refusing every other prefix; the helper's header owns that mapping.
-Authoritative multi-provider routing - including provider discovery from the harness catalog and quota matching by that explicit provider - stays owned by this skill's intake procedure above and AGENTS.md section 4, not by the helper.
+Authoritative multi-provider routing - including provider discovery from the harness catalog and quota matching by that explicit provider - stays owned by this skill's intake procedure, not by the helper.
 Use it only when the brief already fixed the candidate order and every candidate's provider is the harness's primary family.
 It does not replace the reasoning-class, runway-feasibility, or authentication gates above.
 Firstmate can optionally arm `bin/fm-procevent-quota.sh` for a recurring mid-task check that wakes when the tracked provider drops below its configured threshold or its runway becomes `exhausted_now`.

.agents/skills/secondmate-provisioning/SKILL.md

@@ -13,7 +13,8 @@ metadata:
 
 Use this reference before creating, seeding, validating, launching, handing backlog to, recovering, pushing inherited local material into, or retiring a persistent secondmate, and before editing `data/secondmates.md`.
 
-Keep the always-inline routing rules in `AGENTS.md` authoritative: route by natural-language `scope:`, local-only projects stay with the main firstmate, and secondmates are idle by default.
+Keep `task-intake`'s routing rules authoritative: route by natural-language `scope:`, and local-only projects stay with the main firstmate.
+The charter `bin/fm-brief.sh` seeds into the secondmate's own `data/charter.md` owns idle-by-default.
 
 ## Routing table
 
@@ -97,7 +98,7 @@ When the file's tokens do apply, an explicit per-spawn `--model` or `--effort` f
 Because this resolves from the file on every spawn, the pin is durable across every respawn (recovery, `/updatefirstmate`, restart) exactly like the harness axis itself - e.g. `config/secondmate-harness` containing `claude opus` keeps a secondmate pinned to Opus even if the primary's own default model later changes.
 This is secondmate-only: crewmate/scout model resolution is untouched by this file.
 
-This section is the single owner of the secondmate sync and inherited-local-material propagation contract; `AGENTS.md` sections 3 and 4 point here.
+This section is the single owner of the secondmate sync and inherited-local-material propagation contract; `AGENTS.md` section 13 points here.
 Before a local launch, `fm-spawn.sh --secondmate` locally fast-forwards the home to the primary firstmate checkout's current default-branch commit when it is safe, or reconciles a clean divergence whose complete local result is already present there (e.g. after a squash merge) with `reset --keep`; dirty, uniquely diverged, or in-flight homes launch unchanged with a warning, and a genuine divergence gets the same durable reconciliation record `bin/fm-ff-lib.sh` writes for `/updatefirstmate`.
 The locked session-start deferred network stage runs the same bootstrap sweep for every live local secondmate home, discovered from `state/<id>.meta` records with `kind=secondmate` (`data/secondmates.md` only backfills `home=` for older records).
 That no-fetch path is a purely local fast-forward or redundant-divergence reconcile of tracked files, never an origin fetch, and it never touches the gitignored operational dirs, so a secondmate's backlog, projects, and in-flight work are never disturbed; a linked worktree advances immediately, while a standalone clone that lacks the target receives firstmate updates through `/updatefirstmate`'s origin refresh.
@@ -181,7 +182,7 @@ Treat an inherited queue that carries plans with no matching delivery record as
 
 ## Backlog handoff
 
-Apply `AGENTS.md` section 10's work-items-only backlog contract before creation or handoff.
+Load `backlog-management` and apply its work-items-only backlog contract before creation or handoff.
 When a secondmate is created for a domain, existing main-backlog items that fall under its scope should become its work instead of staying stranded in the main backlog.
 Scope-matching is firstmate's judgment against the secondmate's natural-language scope, not a keyword rule.
 Read `data/backlog.md`, pick queued items that fit the new scope, and move them with: