Design Philosophy
Not interception—delegation. The model decides when SubQ's context window advantage matters.
The v1 design intercepted every tool call, polluting the UI with status messages and burning tokens on simple lookups. Skills invert the relationship: ~100 tokens per skill at startup (progressive disclosure), and Claude Code's own Read/Grep/Glob remain available for targeted operations. The host decides when to delegate.
Skill Catalog
Two skills auto-trigger on conceptual queries (and can be invoked manually); four are user-invoked for heavyweight operations.
AUTO / USER
/subq-search
LLM-powered codebase search—find code by meaning, not just text. Cross-file conceptual queries, blast radius analysis, identifier discovery.
subq context search | answer | blast-radius | identifiers
AUTO / USER
/subq-context-pack
Structural analysis—directory trees, function signatures, context packs, raw dumps. Understand architecture without reading every file.
subq context tree | skeleton | pack | dump
POST-LAUNCH
/subq-spec
Implementation specification generation with interactive interview. Produces structured specs grounded in codebase analysis.
subq spec "<description>"
POST-LAUNCH
/subq-review
Code review for uncommitted changes. Full-codebase context means review catches cross-file regressions.
subq review
POST-LAUNCH
/subq-audit
Codebase quality audit across complexity, testing coverage, and security. Produces actionable findings.
subq audit
POST-LAUNCH
/subq-bench
A/B token and cost comparison between SubQ and Claude Code on the same query. Parallel runner with timing.
parallel SubQ vs Claude Code
When to Delegate
If the query requires understanding relationships across files or reasoning about architecture, delegate. If it's a lookup, don't.
Auto-Discovery
Skills are discovered automatically—no explicit manifest key needed. The flow from canonical source to provider-specific output:
apps/cli/src/skills/definitions/).
subq skills generate --provider claude|codex|gemini|all emits provider-specific SKILL.md files at build time.
skills/*/SKILL.md at the plugin root. ~100 tokens loaded at startup; full instructions on invocation.