Ratchet Ledger Agent Skill
> ledger at .ratchet/ledger.jsonl, the accepted complexity mark, and every upgrade trigger. Use when the user says "ratchet ledger", "/ratchet-ledger", "what did we defer", "show the complexity trend", "what shortcuts are in here", or asks whether the codebase is getting simpler or more complex over time. Reports real recorded numbers only, never estimates.
Install
one command, takes just this skill from the repositorynpx skills add https://github.com/0xwilliamortiz/ratchet --skill ratchet-ledgerThe instruction itself
5 sections, as written by the authorRatchet ledger
Three sections. Real numbers only.
1. Trend
Read .ratchet/ledger.jsonl, one JSON object per finished session. Report
the last ten: date, mode, lines added, new dependencies, findings by tag, and
the repository line count at the end of that session.
Show the direction plainly. If the line count has risen for three sessions in
a row, say so.
If the file is missing, say the ratchet is not initialised for this repository
and that mkdir .ratchet turns it on. Do not invent a trend.
2. Mark
Read .ratchet/mark.json, the accepted high water mark. Compare it to the
repository now.
Below or equal to the mark: At the mark. Above it: report the gap and the
reason recorded on the mark, then ask whether to bring it down or accept a
new mark with a written reason.
3. Shortcuts
grep -rnE '(#|//|--) ?ratchet:' . --exclude-dir=node_modules --exclude-dir=.git
One row per hit, grouped by file:
<file>:<line> <what was simplified>. ceiling: <the limit>. upgrade: <the trigger>.
The convention is ratchet: <ceiling>, <upgrade path>, so both fields come
straight out of the comment. Any marker with no upgrade trigger gets tagged
no-trigger, those are the ones that rot silently.
End with <N> shortcuts, <M> with no trigger.
Honesty
Every number here is read from a file or counted from the tree. Never report
what a session "saved": the version that was not written was never written,
so there is nothing to subtract from. The trend and the shortcut count are
the real figures, and they are enough.
Reports only. Changes nothing unless asked to write the report to a file.
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How to use it
Take 0xwilliamortiz/ratchet-ledger from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal
use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.
The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the
same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.