# skill & tool scan

First of three blocking steps: before any task, check whether a skill or connected tool already does this. Written procedure beats re-derivation.

## What it is
The first of three steps that run before any task, however small: scan the available skills and connected tools for one that already covers the job. Skills encode procedures that earned their place by failing once; skipping the scan re-derives work and reintroduces solved bugs.

## Why
Skills encode procedures that already survived their failure modes. Skipping the scan means re-deriving the steps from scratch — and re-deriving drops the one step that was added because it broke last time.

## How Andrew uses it
Every prompt starts with a match against the skill list and the connected MCP servers — by the task's shape, not just keywords. If a skill almost fits, I use it and adapt rather than rebuilding the procedure. If nothing fits and the task recurs, that's the signal to write a new skill.

## How to get it
The whole method is downloadable and adaptable — `method/steps/skill-mcp-scan.md` inside the zip, alongside the full rules file the step comes from.

_Distilled from: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md § Three blocking first steps_
