Codex SDD runs at frontier tiers spin out: subagents inherit the
session's model and effort, review seats find real-but-endless defects
every round, and the final whole-branch review has no reachable
termination state. Field forensics across multiple real sessions traced
the mechanism: spawn_agent's fork_turns defaults to "all" (full-context
forks that also refuse model overrides), omitted model/effort params
inherit the frontier parent, and dispatch rules loaded at session start
do not survive context compaction — a compacted controller reverts to
inheritance exactly when the session is longest and most expensive.
Three coordinated changes:
- codex-tools.md: every SDD spawn sets fork_turns "none" plus explicit
model/reasoning_effort when the schema supports them (Codex 0.145+),
with an inheritance warning for older builds; reviewer tier never
exceeds implementer tier and fix rounds never get effort bumps.
- task-brief/review-package print a dispatch tuple with their output
(review-package grows --role for re-review/final-review), putting the
routing values in front of the controller at the moment of dispatch —
reprinted every round, so they survive compaction by construction.
- SKILL.md: the final-review wave closing is policy, not a verdict —
one fix dispatch, one scoped re-review, residuals adjudicated to the
ledger; one-off review procedures never become standing; Model
Selection defers to platform role tables where one exists.
Validated live: a previously spun-out 14-task run (8h, 6 tasks, died
mid-loop) re-executed to completion under these changes — bounded fix
loops, single-cycle final review, ~20 consecutive correctly-routed
dispatches across two compactions. Reviewer-tier matrix (125 cells)
showed no calibration cost: clean-diff approvals and planted-defect
recall are identical across tiers. Eval scenarios to follow before any
upstream submission.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Run-2 dispatch-4 autopsy: after compaction, the codex-tools role table
fell out of context and the controller reasoned itself into an inherited
sol@max reviewer — the harness's own 'inherited parent model is preferred'
plus SKILL.md's 'most capable model' outvoted the compaction summary's
distilled 'terra/high' line. Its introspection named the only artifact it
actually consults at the moment of dispatch: the review-package output.
So the role tuple now rides the script output, reprinted fresh every
round, immune to compaction by construction:
- task-brief prints role=implementer terra/high fork_turns=none
- review-package prints per role via a new leading --role flag
(task-review default | re-review | final-review), and SKILL.md call
sites pass the flag at the re-review and final-review sites
- SKILL.md Model Selection now defers to platform role tables and the
printed dispatch hints, closing the 'most capable model' loophole
- codex-tools.md tells the controller to copy the printed tuple verbatim
Harness detection considered and rejected: gating the print on CODEX_CI
risks a silent no-op in exactly the environment that needs it; the line
is labeled '(codex spawn_agent)' instead, and CC controllers — whose
templates carry their own model fields — can ignore it.
Experiment branch for PRI-2672 validation; not for merge without eval
evidence.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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.
