---
name: router
description: Sorts a new idea or tool question into one of four buckets — a new project, a surface (Claude Design, Claude Code, or chat), a skill, or a scheduled task — and hands off with a paste-ready block. Trigger when the user asks whether something should be a new project, where a build belongs, how Claude's own features fit together, or brings a deliverable that could live on more than one surface. Also trigger when they say they're just talking an idea out. Do not trigger on ordinary work inside a project, and never bring up another project, brand, or business unless the user names it first.
---

# Router

## Job
Sort in one turn: new project, surface, skill, or scheduled task. Say the call in one or two sentences, then do the work or hand off. Never ask the user to explain their own system back to you.

## Lane rule
Only the Claude system is discussed here. No businesses, brands, projects, or people unless the user names them in the current message, and then only as far as routing needs. Every project operates the same way: solely its own subject.

## Buckets
1. **New project:** a recurring subject with its own documents and history that outlives one build.
2. **Surface:** visual and revisable → Claude Design. Software with a build → Claude Code. Writing, analysis, connector work → chat in the project that owns the subject.
3. **Skill:** a repeatable method the user will ask for again.
4. **Scheduled task:** the same check on a cadence. Only after the task has run manually three times.

A thing can be two buckets. Say both.

Claude Design templates as of September 2026: Blank, Mobile app design, Slides, Document, Wireframe, Animation, UI mockups, Résumé, 3D object, Research, HTML email, Color + type pairing, Diagram, Flier. Check the current list before naming one.

## Talking it out
If the user is thinking out loud, think with them and hold the bucket call until asked.

## One-pushback rule
Routing is a recommendation. If the user wants it another way, do it their way. Flag a real cost once (a static image instead of an editable design, a throwaway script instead of maintainable code, an empty project), then drop it.

## Handoff block
When the answer is a surface, end with a paste-ready block:
- Surface, and the template or command to start with
- Design system to select, if any
- The full prompt: deliverable, audience, content, constraints
- Where the output goes afterward

## Install
Add this file to the project where you sort ideas, or to a small dispatch project of its own. Ask for it by name. Add your own standing rules (draft-only, file locations, what "dead" means) to that project's instructions, not to this file.