`git status --porcelain` collapses a wholly-untracked directory to a single
`?? docs/` line. In the shape of the incident this step exists for (#2016 — an
uncommitted plan document under an untracked `docs/` tree), the file list we
show the human partner therefore names no file at all:
$ git -C "$WORKTREE_PATH" status --porcelain
?? docs/
$ git -C "$WORKTREE_PATH" status --porcelain -uall
?? docs/superpowers/plans/2026-08-04-csv-export-rollout.md
Both forms produce identical (empty) output on a clean worktree, so this adds
no over-trigger surface.
Found while running this PR's behavioral micro-tests. Every treatment agent
dug past `?? docs/` unprompted and named the document, so the step did work —
but on the agent's own initiative rather than because the text asked for it.
That initiative is not reliable one tier down: Claude Haiku 4.5 on the control
arm failed for exactly this shape, asking a question that never named the file
and then deciding for the human when they deferred. Nothing in the prior
wording stopped a treatment agent from relaying `?? docs/` verbatim and
satisfying the letter of the instruction.
Re-ran the treatment cells against this amended text — Opus pass (refusal
fired, named the file), Haiku 4.5 pass (named the file) — no regression.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The `dot` availability check shelled out to `which dot`, which is not a
command on Windows, so render-graphs.js reported graphviz as missing on
Windows even when it was installed. Replace it with a direct `dot -V`
probe via execFileSync.
Also switch the SVG render call from execSync to execFileSync('dot',
['-Tsvg']). Behavior is identical on macOS/Linux — the diagram source
was already passed via stdin, never interpolated into the command — but
running the binary directly removes the shell entirely.
Batching moves N edits under one review, which changes the review's
failure profile: an implementer that silently skips one file of twelve
produces a diff full of correct, uniform edits — nothing conspicuous is
missing, and no seat in the pipeline was assigned to notice. The single
combined review is the only net for a dropped edit, but the reviewer
template never told it to count.
The batch brief already lists every file with its change, so the reviewer
reconciles the diff against that list file by file; a listed file with no
hunk is a Missing finding regardless of how clean the rest of the batch
looks. Conditional on a multi-file brief, so single-task reviews are
unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Both PRs rewrote the same preflight paragraph. Resolution is the composed
text published in #2080's description — the configuration the 3/3+3/3
composed eval grades ran.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The breaker's two ledger formats wrote lowercase 'ruling' (parked
findings, load-bearing adjudications), so the Finish section's
collect-every-`Ruling:`-line step missed exactly the rulings made under
the most pressure. Field evidence from an independent eval rep: a
breaker-cap run adjudicated correctly, wrote everything to the
plan-scoped ledger, deleted the workspace at finish, and left no durable
trace of the adjudication.
Capitalize the two breaker formats to the canonical token, and make the
finish roll-up explicitly exhaustive across preflight, parked, and
breaker rulings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The pre-Task-1 conflict scan currently permits 'the scan is clean' with
no evidence the scan happened — mined sessions show controllers skipping
straight to dispatch and plan conflicts surfacing mid-execution as
blocking questions. Requiring the scan to emit one row per task pair
sharing a file/interface and one row per task's self-consistency turns
the claim into an artifact; in controlled evals the table appeared 3/3
with conflicts surfaced pre-dispatch, and the mechanism held 3/3 when
composed with the never-stall ruling change (#2077).
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0185AJr98gHx5EmwqNeft4Sy
Plans sometimes enumerate many tiny, same-shape edits (one-line fixes,
constant changes, a field added across files) as separate tasks. The
current loop dispatches a fresh implementer plus review per task, so a
12-micro-task plan costs ~24 subagent seats for what one subagent could
do in a single pass. In controlled evals on a micro-task plan, batching
cut cost 73% and dispatches 87% with better completion than control; on
a 5-non-trivial-task plan the rule correctly never batched (dispatch
counts and completion identical to control).
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0185AJr98gHx5EmwqNeft4Sy
A donated session sat dormant 8h48m waiting for a plan-conflict answer
that cost ~zero tokens to decide. Wrong-ruling rework is bounded;
stalls are not. This encodes the never-stall doctrine: plan conflicts,
ambiguities, and cap exceptions get a controller ruling recorded in
the ledger and work proceeds; only irreversible/destructive actions,
security-sensitive actions, out-of-worktree side effects (merge/push/
publish), and totally-broken plans remain hard stops. Rulings surface
in the Finish report instead of as mid-run questions.
Evals: 3/3 no-stall vs control 3/3 stall-at-preflight on a
seeded-conflict SDD plan; catastrophic guard 5/5 (every rep reaching a
seeded DROP TABLE step refused it); re-validated 3/3 after rebase onto
the current fix-PR text; composes cleanly with the evidence-bearing
preflight treatment.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0185AJr98gHx5EmwqNeft4Sy
Round 2 proved the long-wait mechanism (65.1%->0.0% timeouts) but
20-38 min silent waits starved graders and let 1/51 children vanish;
bounded 5-10 min stretches with a status line and list_agents
reconcile keep the efficiency and restore observability.
Docs-only wait guidance in the platform reference changed nothing
(65.1% vs 67.1% baseline wait-timeout rate); the discipline now lives
in the controller loop the session actually re-reads.
60-78% of wait_agent calls timed out across every measured corpus;
waits are event subscriptions, so one long wait replaces dozens of
polls at identical wake latency.
The first fix-cycle battery moved the depth-2 leak from implementers
(9/9 baseline -> 0/6) to a final reviewer that spawned two
sub-reviewers; the contract now reaches every dispatched role.
Five claims contradicted by the Codex CLI source (V2 has no
close_agent; followup_task always reaches a child; role files attach
via agent_type; full-history forks accept model/effort; V2 spawn
allowlist). Citations: superpowers-autoresearch
docs/2026-07-29-codex-multiagent-v2-capabilities.md.
Rebase of PR #1922 onto current dev: the ~14 files of v6.1.0-era
codex/release drift are dropped, the porting-guide edits (stale against
the post-prune rewrite, no Hermes content) are dropped, and the Hermes
surface is kept intact: .hermes-plugin/ (on_session_start bootstrap
injection), tests/hermes/ (20 tests, passing), docs/README.hermes.md,
references/hermes-tools.md, the Platform Adaptation row, README section,
and Python ignores.
Known open items from review, unchanged by this rebase: the injection
mechanism uses ctx.inject_message from on_session_start, which the
official plugin guide does not document (pre_llm_call returning
{"context": ...} is the sanctioned path), skills are not registered via
ctx.register_skill, and the acceptance transcript predates the fix.
Co-authored-by: kumarabd <kumarabd@users.noreply.github.com>
git worktree remove refuses when the tree holds modified or untracked
files, and the skill gave no guidance for that refusal — the natural
agent response was --force, permanently destroying files that exist
nowhere else (uncommitted plans, notes, scratch work). Reported twice
from real sessions (#2016's plan loss, #1223's dirty-tree ambiguity).
Step 6 now treats the refusal as a stop-and-ask moment: show the
untracked files, offer commit / relocate / delete, and only remove the
worktree after the human partner chooses. Adds a matching rationalization
row so --force-as-cleanup is named as the failure it is.
Follow-up to #2011 (which fixed the ./-prefix mismatch for the documented
pattern form): strip a leading ./ from the caller's pattern instead of
double-prefixing it into a never-matching ././ form, and also match the
pattern with '**/' collapsed, since find -path cannot match '**/' against
zero directory levels and silently skipped files directly under the base
directory (src/top.test.ts vs src/**/*.test.ts).
Adds a deterministic test suite for the script with a stubbed npm.
The prune in e7ddc25e removed the `## Subagent support` section from
antigravity-tools.md but left the inline cross-reference to it in the
dispatch table, so `[Subagent support](#subagent-support)` resolves to
nothing. An agent following the pointer to learn the difference between
the `self` and `research` subagent types lands nowhere.
Drop the dangling parenthetical. The guidance it pointed at survives in
the same table cell -- `self` for full-capability work, `research` for
read-only -- so no content is lost and the row still answers the
question the removed section answered.
gemini-tools.md carries the same cross-reference but retains its
`## Subagent support` heading, so its link is valid and is left alone.
The start-of-skill ledger check is now scoped to the plan's own
workspace and keyed to the ledger's first line. Baseline eval (25/25
reps) showed controllers already refuse foreign ledgers — at a cost of
6-13 tool calls of cross-plan forensics per resume; plan-scoping makes
the answer structural instead. The workspace is deleted once the final
review is clean — git history is the durable record.
sdd-workspace now requires the plan file and resolves
.superpowers/sdd/<plan-basename>/; task-brief and review-package write
into their plan's directory (review-package gains PLAN_FILE as its first
argument). Follow-up plans in the same working tree can no longer collide
with a previous plan's briefs, reports, or ledger.
e7ddc25 deleted claude-code-tools.md and copilot-tools.md but left
writing-skills and the porting guide's reference-integration table
pointing at them. State the current architecture instead: Claude Code's
personal-skills path inline, and "no adapter file needed" for the
harnesses that ride the Claude Code-compatible tool surface.
Reported by @rasibintang (#1969, with a fix proposed in #1970).
Fixes#1969
The eval verdict on this cut: deleting Why Order Matters and trusting the
compressed one-line table rows measurably degrades test-first behavior under
the exact pressure the section rebutted ("just write it, tests after") —
control 8/10 → treatment 5/10 at n=10, corroborated on both Claude and Codex.
Normal TDD triggering did not move (PPPPP → PPPPP both arms); the damage is
purely the pressure case.
So instead of trusting the compressed rows, fold the section's five prose
rebuttals into their Common Rationalizations rows so each row carries the
argument, not just the excuse label:
- "I'll test after" — passing immediately proves nothing (wrong thing /
implementation-not-behavior / missed edge; you never saw it fail).
- "Already manually tested" — ad-hoc, no record, can't re-run, forgotten
under pressure.
- "Deleting X hours is wasteful" — sunk cost; rewrite-high-confidence vs
bolt-tests-on-after-low-confidence.
- "TDD will slow me down" — TDD is the pragmatic path; shortcuts mean
debugging in production.
- "Tests after achieve same goals (spirit not ritual)" — what-does vs
what-should; biased by the code you wrote; coverage without proof.
Still removes the 50-line section (~200 words / 45 lines net); the
arguments survive where an agent hits them mid-rationalization. Revalidate
with the tdd-holds-under-tests-later-pressure probe before merge.
Restates the evaluate-don't-obey frame, verification rule, and
no-performative-agreement rule, each detailed earlier at point of use.
The Common Mistakes table stays: it is the skill's one compact guard
table, the class this cleanup standardizes toward rather than deletes.
All four lines restate the Overview (DRY/YAGNI/TDD/frequent commits),
Task Structure (exact paths, commands with expected output), and No
Placeholders (complete code in every step).
Five of six principles restated the Checklist and Process sections
verbatim-in-spirit. The sixth, YAGNI, appeared nowhere else — it moves to
the Exploring approaches list where designs get shaped; the recap section
goes.
Common Mistakes and Red Flags restated Steps 0-3 wholesale; both fold
into one Common Rationalizations table (house Excuse/Reality form) whose
five rows carry the tempting-thought version of each rule, including the
#1-mistake emphasis on bypassing native tools. Quick Reference stays as
the compact decision aid.
Integration with Workflows restated the When to Request Review triggers
grouped by caller (each-task / before-merge / when-stuck all appear at
point of use) — detritus, so it goes.
The intro's crafted-context sentence guarded two things at once, so keep
both as Common Rationalizations rows (house Excuse/Reality form) rather
than deleting the sentence. The skill's reader is the coordinator, not
the code's author:
- Don't review the diff inline — that burns the coordinator's context
window; dispatch a subagent so the diff and evaluation live in its
context and only findings return. ("preserves your own context for
continued work")
- Don't hand the reviewer your session history — crafted context keeps it
on the work product, not your thought process.
Five blocks of benefits and cost/benefit selling aimed at a reader who
has already invoked the skill; the vs-Executing-Plans comparison also
duplicates the one under When to Use. Integration section untouched
(PR #1932 owns it).
The tell-your-partner directive and the prefer-SDD instruction stay; the
significantly-higher-quality sentence restated them as a claim.
Integration section untouched (PR #1932 owns it).
Why This Matters (failure-memory testimonials), the dishonesty reframing
in the Overview, and The Bottom Line recap all restate stakes the Iron
Law, gate function, and rationalization table already enforce. This is
the eval-gated class: the bet is that discipline holds without the
persuasion prose — evals on this branch decide.
Real-World Impact was statistics; the Overview opener restated the core
principle as motivation. The 95%-of-no-root-cause line stays: it guards
the bail-out point, which is rationalization control, not social proof.
Supporting Techniques/Related skills untouched (PR #1932 owns that).
Real-World Impact restated the Real Example from Session as statistics;
Key Benefits and the time-saved line sold the skill to a reader already
executing it. Instructions unchanged.
Re-derived from scratch: every rule becomes a corollary of two principles
(every test names the break it catches; every test exercises the real
thing), one consolidated gate per principle, four example pairs kept, the
rest carried by prose. Scratch branch for comparison against the accreted
eight-rule version.
Prose additions from the last two passes tightened to the terse guard
form: change-detector rule, string-presence trap, and Rule 7's release
valve each drop to a few sentences. Rule 7 now settles the jurisdiction
question outright: trivial code and human prose earn no test; skills and
prompts are pressure-tested per writing-skills when edits change
behavior, never text-asserted. Micro-tested: a subject with a README
rewrite plus a skill typo fix, under tests-with-every-PR pressure,
shipped zero tests — declining the string assertions and the ceremonial
subagent pressure-test alike.
Fresh-eyes review found falsifiable-but-worthless tests passed every
rule: a constant assertion can fail, uses a literal, mocks nothing — and
protects nothing, firing on intentional decisions while sleeping through
bugs. Rule 1 gains the what-break-would-this-catch question (absorbed
from the source skill's quality gate, missed in the first pass) with a
gate stop for change detectors; Rule 6's trivial-code list regains
constants; Rule 7 gains the release valve that trivial-only changes earn
no ceremonial test; the coverage-theater and change-detector smells join
Warning Signs; the Rule 6 example stops modeling exact-copy brittleness.
Micro-tested: under a tests-with-every-PR norm, a subject rejected both
draft constant tests citing the new gate and replaced them with a test of
the retry behavior the constant controls.
Generalized from agentsview's testing-without-tautologies skill: a new
Iron Law and lead rule (name the production change that would fail the
test, derive expectations independently of the code under test), a
test-your-code-not-the-framework rule with the characterization-test
exception and the trivial-code guidance, branch-specific doubles folded
into Mock at the Right Level, a closing Mutation Check, and six new
warning-sign smells. Rule 1 carries the string-presence trap by name:
grep-style tests on scripts, skills, and prompts counterfeit
falsifiability — the observable is the artifact's behavior, never its
text — with a hard stop in the gate function. Repo-specific content
(testify, backend parity, test-level ladder) stays in the source skill.
Micro-tested: 3/3 tautology verdicts with correct rule citations and the
mutation check named unprompted; a RED-pressure subject refused the
10-second grep test and wrote a behavioral one citing the trap.
The pointer fired only on adding mocks or test utilities; the doc's own
load-when line already says writing or changing tests. The narrow trigger
would skip the rules exactly when an agent thinks no mocks are involved.
