Systematic audit of how services talk to each other. Not just finding broken wires — questioning whether each wire should exist, in which direction, at what rate, and what comes back.
The core principle: deep modules with simple interfaces, not webs of shallow wiring. The consumer sees one health surface, one response, one interface. The implementation behind it can be as complex as needed — the consumer doesn't know or care. Every design decision filters through: "does this expose internal wiring to the consumer, or does it stay behind the module boundary?"
The full field guide is at references/communication-audit-guide.md (40 principles). Do NOT summarize the guide in prompts — workers read it directly.
Use when analyzing, designing, or fixing how services communicate — especially when communication is unstable, one-directional, fire-and-forget, lacks backpressure, or has no recovery path. Covers inter-service sync, connection lifecycle, tick rate analysis, failure mode mapping, and protocol design for self-healing systems. Use when user mentions instability between services, sync issues, reconnection problems, or asks to review how two systems talk to each other. Source: cygnusfear/agent-skills.