feat: package Nous as a Claude Code plugin with skills and slash commands

[sriumcp]

TL;DR

Ship Nous as a Claude Code plugin. Expose campaign verbs as skills (/nous-run, /nous-status, /nous-resume, /nous-list, /nous-bisect, /nous-find-principle). Discoverable from the /<tab> palette in any Claude Code session.

Why this matters

Today users invoke Nous via nous run … from a separate terminal. Inside a Claude Code session you cannot easily say "run the saturation campaign and watch it"; you have to context-switch out. Plugins solve this — they're the canonical Claude Code distribution mechanism for reusable team workflows.

What's already shipped

• feat: nous CLI — unified command-line interface #114 unified nous CLI gives us the entry points; this issue is the wrapping into skills.

Proposed approach

1. Create plugin/nous/plugin.json with metadata.
2. Create plugin/nous/skills/ with one markdown file per skill:
   • nous-run.md — wraps nous run
   • nous-status.md — wraps nous status --watch (depends on Phase 2: Templates + orchestrator skeleton #7)
   • nous-resume.md — wraps nous resume
   • nous-list.md — campaign index lookup (depends on Phase 1: Data contracts + protocol doc #6 MCP server)
   • nous-bisect.md — comparative replay across two iterations
   • nous-find-principle.md — search principles across campaigns
3. Add a claude plugin install nous story (publish to a registry or document local install).
4. Skills should accept conversational arguments where possible ("status of best-of-field" should work, not just "status best-of-field").

Acceptance criteria

• After claude plugin install ./plugin/nous, /nous-<tab> lists at least 5 skills.
• Each skill works end-to-end on a real campaign.
• Documentation walks a newcomer through install and first use.

Out of scope

• The MCP server (separate issue, Phase 1: Data contracts + protocol doc #6).
• Custom UI / TUI in skills — keep them shell-out wrappers that delegate to the existing nous CLI.

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Part of #120.

[sriumcp]

Closed by #153 (squash-merge 3e69b85, merged into reflective 2026-05-24). The plugin/nous/ directory was added in this commit; the commit message used Refs #120, #125 rather than Closes #125, but the feature is on reflective. Closing as completed — open a new issue if any follow-up plugin work is needed.