Way Frontmatter Fields¶

Source: hooks/ways/meta/knowledge/authoring/frontmatter/frontmatter.md

Frontmatter

Field	Value
`description`	the way frontmatter field reference — pattern, files, and commands triggers, semantic description and vocabulary, state triggers, when preconditions, macro, and scope
`vocabulary`	`frontmatter field schema when precondition project scope subagent teammate macro prepend append threshold file-exists context-threshold session-start path commands files`
`refire`	`0.15`
`scope`	`agent, subagent`

All values must be single-line. ways author lint validates each field against frontmatter-schema.yaml.

Pattern-based¶

pattern: - Regex matched against user prompts
pattern_strict:, pattern_keep: - keyword-lane modifiers; see knowledge/authoring/keyword-lane(meta)
files: - Regex matched against file paths (Edit/Write)
commands: - Regex matched against bash commands

Semantic¶

description: - Natural language reference text for what this way covers
vocabulary: - Space-separated domain keywords users would say
Firing is global: the embedded prompt's cosine s against the alias (description + vocabulary) maps through the calibrated g(s) to a relevance probability, thresholded against global τ_s / τ_k. There is no per-way threshold (ADR-156).
Engine: embedding-only (per ADR-125). Explicit pattern: / commands: regex still fire independently.

State-based¶

trigger: - State condition type (context-threshold, file-exists, session-start)
threshold: - For context-threshold: percentage (0-100)
path: - For file-exists: glob pattern relative to project

Preconditions (`when:` block)¶

when: - Deterministic gate checked before any matching. If unmet, way is skipped entirely.
project: - Only fire in this project directory (e.g., ~/.claude). Path is resolved for comparison.

when:
  project: ~/.claude    # only fire when working in claude-code-config

Ways without a when: block fire everywhere (the default). Use when: sparingly — only for self-referential ways that are meaningless outside their home project.

Firing cadence (`refire:`)¶

Fire-bearing ways should carry a refire: field: a fraction of the session's context window (refire: 0.15) or a preset name (refire: normal) that sets how soon the way re-discloses (ADR-126). Without it the firing gate refuses the way, and ways author lint reports an error. Forms, presets, and common choices are in knowledge/authoring/refire(meta).

Other¶

macro: - prepend or append to run macro.sh for dynamic context
scope: - agent, subagent, teammate (comma-separated, default: agent). agent means any agent that is not a teammate, so it also fires on a plain subagent's own tool calls. subagent reaches a subagent only through the Task stash at dispatch. teammate fires for team members.