Related: Proactive behaviors let Charlie run selected playbooks on a schedule. If you want repo‑wide guidance that always applies (planning, coding, reviews), use Instructions instead. New to customization? Start with the Customization overview.
What to include
- Action-oriented title that will be used to determine when a playbook is relevant.
- Repeatable workflows with exact steps and gotchas (one outcome per file).
- Concrete content: Overview, prerequisites (caps, env vars, context), numbered steps (1–2 lines each), exact commands.
- Quality gates: “Verify” checks and minimal “Rollback” notes.
- References: links or repo paths for background or to compose playbooks.
What to exclude
- Never: secrets, tokens, credentials.
- Vague verbs (“handle,” “update”) without concrete actions.
- Cross‑cutting “kitchen‑sink” playbooks; split into focused outcomes.
- Duplicating the same content/steps across multiple files — consolidate and cross-reference.
- Long rationale or essays — link out.
- Giant code blocks, generated outputs, changelogs.
- Anything meant for PR reviews (playbooks aren’t available during PR review).
Structure & style
- File location:
.charlie/playbooks/*.md(one playbook per file). - Title: the first H1 is the title (≤ 80 chars). This is required and must be the first line (no front‑matter).
- Sections (all but steps are optional):
- Overview (one sentence: the outcome)
- Prerequisites (capabilities, env vars, context)
- Steps (numbered; 1–2 lines each; include exact commands)
- Verify (what to run/see)
- Rollback (how to recover in case of failure)
- References (other playbooks, instructions, or URLs)
- Commands: idempotent, copy‑pasteable; use clear placeholders like
<SERVICE_NAME>— not…. - Not subtree‑scoped: path doesn’t limit applicability; relevance filtering does.