#2818 gatorwalk-factory skill: authoring: the agent interviews, starts from an example, validates, and shows the factory

The gatorwalk-factory skill covers driving a work item, but not creating or changing a factory. SKILL.md says "Designing and authoring lifecycles is not covered yet." Seth decided on 2026-09-30 that factories are created and edited by the agent, never by hand: the studio (#2803–#2808) views and simulates but does not edit. That makes the authoring skill the only way anyone makes a factory, and it is the heart of getting started.

This was planned as GW-11 in the rebuild but never filed.

Scope, as skill sections under .claude/skills/gatorwalk-factory/ (SKILL.md plus references):

Interview. Starting from "I want a factory for X", find out:

• the tracker (builtin, swamp-club or linear, per the tracker decision, #2795);
• where human stops belong;
• what counts as done;
• how work lands.

Model the flow on the verify-gated state machine in swamp-getting-started (~/sc/swamp/.claude/skills/swamp-getting-started/SKILL.md). Batch questions: one round, not a drip.

Start from an example. Pick the closest file in examples/ (#2767), copy it into place with init --from (#2803), and adapt it. Don't write from scratch.

Authoring rules. These carry the lessons of the 2026-09-29 trial:

• every loop has a reason and a bound;
• review prompts carry the severity rubric and the proportionality line (#2781);
• decide what reviewers see through inject;
• use description fields, not comments (#2804);
• declare products with schemas.

Check loop. Run validate, including the graph findings and saved scenarios (#2805). Explain each finding in plain words. Fix it and validate again until clean, or until the person accepts a warning.

Show it. Point the person at the studio (#2806–#2808) to see the design and simulate it. Take their change requests, including pasted "Copy reference" lines (#2807), and apply them as edits.

Change an existing factory. Covers what happens to work items already running, which pin their own copy at start, and when a change needs a new name instead.

Out of scope: the studio itself, and any new engine features. If a rule needs one, propose an issue.

Needs: #2767 (examples), #2803 (factory file and init --from), #2785 (the lifecycle-to-factory rename, so the skill is written once in the final vocabulary). It should follow #2804 and #2805 so it can use descriptions and scenarios.

Done when:

• A fresh agent in a new repo, given only "set up a gatorwalk factory for ", reaches a validating factory and a first started work item without being pointed at commands.
• Record that run's transcript as the acceptance evidence.
• integration/skill_test.ts checks every command in the new sections.