fix(sdd): task reviewers re-read illegible evidence instead of re-running to regenerate it

Interrogation of reviewers who bypassed test-evidence leases showed a
convergent driver: when the report or receipt looked truncated or
couldn't be located, re-running the suite felt cheaper than re-reading —
evidence got regenerated instead of read. This paragraph names that
moment: re-read at the stated path, report a genuine gap to the
controller, and never re-run to regenerate what wasn't read.

Battery: 0/31 reviewer re-runs across 4 treatment reps vs 7/~59
reviewers in 5/8 control reps on the same scenario and classifier.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0185AJr98gHx5EmwqNeft4Sy

skills/requesting-code-review/code-reviewer.md

@@ -34,6 +34,15 @@ Subagent (general-purpose):
 
     Your review is read-only on this checkout. Do not mutate the working tree, the index, HEAD, or branch state in any way. Use tools like `git show`, `git diff`, and `git log` to inspect history. If you need a working copy of a different revision, check it out into a separate temporary directory (e.g. `git worktree add /tmp/review-[SHA] [SHA]`) — never move HEAD on this checkout.
 
+    ## You Do Not Dispatch Subagents
+
+    Do all of this review yourself. Never spawn a subagent to review part
+    of the diff, and never spawn another reviewer for a second opinion.
+    This process already provides every review seat the work gets; a
+    reviewer you spawn duplicates one of them at full cost, and its
+    verdict counts for nothing. If the diff feels too large for one
+    pass, review it in passes yourself and say so in your report.
+
     ## What to Check
 
     **Plan alignment:**

skills/subagent-driven-development/SKILL.md

@@ -14,7 +14,21 @@ Execute plan by dispatching a fresh implementer subagent per task, a task review
 **Narration:** between tool calls, narrate at most one short line — the
 ledger and the tool results carry the record.
 
-**Continuous execution:** Do not pause to check in with your human partner between tasks. Execute all tasks from the plan without stopping. The only reasons to stop are: BLOCKED status you cannot resolve, ambiguity that genuinely prevents progress, or all tasks complete. "Should I continue?" prompts and progress summaries waste their time — they asked you to execute the plan, so execute it.
+**Continuous execution:** Do not pause to check in with your human partner between tasks. Execute all tasks from the plan without stopping. The only reasons to stop are the four named below, or all tasks complete. "Should I continue?" prompts and progress summaries waste their time — they asked you to execute the plan, so execute it.
+
+**Rulings, not stalls.** A running plan does not wait on a human. Conflicts,
+ambiguities, plan defects, a cap you would have asked to exceed — decide
+them. The spec is the binding authority, the plan is its argument, and your
+judgment settles what neither answers. Record every decision in the ledger as
+`Ruling: <what you decided> — <why> — <what it costs if wrong>`, and keep
+going. A wrong ruling costs rework your human partner can see and undo; a
+session parked on a question costs their whole day and buys nothing.
+
+Four things stop you, and only these: an irreversible or destructive
+operation; a security-sensitive action; a side effect outside this worktree
+that norms say you ask about first (a merge, a push to a shared branch, a
+publish); and a plan so broken that every path forward is a guess. For those,
+stop and ask.
 
 ## When to Use
 
@@ -57,14 +71,14 @@ digraph process {
         "Generate review package, dispatch task reviewer (./task-reviewer-prompt.md)" [shape=box];
         "Spec ✅ and quality approved?" [shape=diamond];
         "Finding conflicts with plan text?" [shape=diamond];
-        "Ask human partner which governs" [shape=box];
+        "Rule on the conflict, ledger the ruling" [shape=box];
         "Fix round R of 5: R≤3 resume implementer; R≥4 fresh implementer, more capable model" [shape=box];
         "Dispatch scoped re-review (./re-review-prompt.md)" [shape=box];
         "All findings addressed?" [shape=diamond];
         "R = 5?" [shape=diamond];
         "Adjudicate each open finding" [shape=box];
         "Any load-bearing finding?" [shape=diamond];
-        "STOP: report BLOCKED to human partner" [shape=box];
+        "Rule and continue; stop only if every path forward is a guess" [shape=box];
         "Park findings in ledger with rulings" [shape=box];
         "Append completion to ledger, mark todo complete" [shape=box];
     }
@@ -85,8 +99,8 @@ digraph process {
     "Generate review package, dispatch task reviewer (./task-reviewer-prompt.md)" -> "Spec ✅ and quality approved?";
     "Spec ✅ and quality approved?" -> "Append completion to ledger, mark todo complete" [label="yes"];
     "Spec ✅ and quality approved?" -> "Finding conflicts with plan text?" [label="no"];
-    "Finding conflicts with plan text?" -> "Ask human partner which governs" [label="yes"];
+    "Finding conflicts with plan text?" -> "Rule on the conflict, ledger the ruling" [label="yes"];
-    "Ask human partner which governs" -> "Fix round R of 5: R≤3 resume implementer; R≥4 fresh implementer, more capable model";
+    "Rule on the conflict, ledger the ruling" -> "Fix round R of 5: R≤3 resume implementer; R≥4 fresh implementer, more capable model";
     "Finding conflicts with plan text?" -> "Fix round R of 5: R≤3 resume implementer; R≥4 fresh implementer, more capable model" [label="no"];
     "Fix round R of 5: R≤3 resume implementer; R≥4 fresh implementer, more capable model" -> "Dispatch scoped re-review (./re-review-prompt.md)";
     "Dispatch scoped re-review (./re-review-prompt.md)" -> "All findings addressed?";
@@ -95,7 +109,7 @@ digraph process {
     "R = 5?" -> "Fix round R of 5: R≤3 resume implementer; R≥4 fresh implementer, more capable model" [label="no - next round"];
     "R = 5?" -> "Adjudicate each open finding" [label="yes - breaker trips"];
     "Adjudicate each open finding" -> "Any load-bearing finding?";
-    "Any load-bearing finding?" -> "STOP: report BLOCKED to human partner" [label="yes"];
+    "Any load-bearing finding?" -> "Rule and continue; stop only if every path forward is a guess" [label="yes"];
     "Any load-bearing finding?" -> "Park findings in ledger with rulings" [label="no"];
     "Park findings in ledger with rulings" -> "Append completion to ledger, mark todo complete";
     "Append completion to ledger, mark todo complete" -> "More tasks remain?";
@@ -140,22 +154,29 @@ a ledger file, not only in todos.
   that happens, recover from `git log`.
 
 Read the plan once, note its context and Global Constraints, and create a
-todo per task. If the plan names a Spec, read that too: the spec is the
+todo per task.
-authority the plan argues from, and conflicts inside the plan resolve
-against it. A plan with no reachable spec gets a ledger note saying so —
-rulings made without one are provisional.
 
-Before dispatching Task 1, scan the plan once for conflicts:
+Before dispatching Task 1, scan the plan once for conflicts, writing down
+what you checked as you check it:
 
 - tasks that contradict each other or the plan's Global Constraints
 - anything the plan explicitly mandates that the review rubric treats as a
   defect (a test that asserts nothing, verbatim duplication of a logic block)
 
-Present everything you find to your human partner as one batched question —
+The scan's output is a table, not a verdict. One row for every pair of tasks
-each finding beside the plan text that mandates it, asking which governs —
+that share a file or an interface: the two tasks, what one produces against
-before execution begins, not one interrupt per discovery mid-plan. If the
+what the other consumes, and what you found. One row for every task: whether
-scan is clean, proceed without comment. The review loop remains the net for
+its own text agrees with itself — the tests it specifies against the code it
-conflicts that only emerge from implementation.
+specifies, the files it creates against the files it later touches. "The scan
+is clean" without those rows is not a scan you ran.
+
+Write the table to the ledger. Rule on everything you find before execution
+begins — each finding against the plan text that mandates it — and record
+each ruling in the ledger. If the scan is clean, proceed without comment.
+Rule on each conflict it surfaces — the spec is the binding authority, the
+plan is its argument — record the ruling beside its row, and dispatch
+Task 1. The review loop remains the net for conflicts that only emerge from
+implementation.
 
 ## Model Selection
 
@@ -196,10 +217,29 @@ that implementer. Single-file mechanical fixes also take the cheapest tier.
 
 ## The Task Loop
 
+**Batch small same-shape work.** When the plan lists several tasks that are
+each a small, independent edit of the same kind — the same one-line fix,
+constant change, or field addition repeated across files — do not dispatch
+one subagent per task. Compose ONE dispatch brief listing every file and
+its change, send the whole batch to a single subagent, and review its diff
+as one unit. Reserve one-dispatch-per-task for work that needs its own
+judgment, its own tests, or its own review surface.
+
 Everything you paste into a dispatch prompt — and everything a subagent
 prints back — stays resident in your context for the rest of the session
 and is re-read on every later turn. Hand artifacts over as files.
 
+**Waiting on dispatched subagents:** never poll a wait interface with
+short timeouts, and never sit in one silent, open-ended wait either.
+While you have local work — ledger updates, packaging the next review,
+reading reports — keep working; child results arrive on their own.
+When you are genuinely idle, wait in bounded stretches (five to ten
+minutes, where your platform allows), and between stretches post one
+line of status and reconcile your live children: list them, and chase
+any that finished without reporting. A bounded stretch keeps nearly
+all of a long wait's efficiency while guaranteeing a stuck or lost
+child is noticed within minutes, not at the end of the session.
+
 ### 1. Dispatch the implementer
 
 Record BASE (`git rev-parse HEAD`) before dispatching — the review package
@@ -226,6 +266,12 @@ and fix-round diffs need it.
   later dispatches — a real session's dispatch hit 42k chars of which 99%
   was pasted history. A fresh subagent needs its task, the interfaces it
   touches, and the global constraints. Nothing else.
+- The dispatch carries the no-subagents contract (it is in the
+  implementer template): the implementer never dispatches subagents —
+  not helpers, and never a reviewer. Review arrives from you, after the
+  report. In real sessions, every reviewer a worker spawned duplicated
+  the task review the controller dispatched anyway — a full extra
+  review seat per task.
 - If an earlier task parked a finding in the area this task touches, carry
   a pointer to that ledger entry in the dispatch.
 - Record the implementer's agent identity from the dispatch result —
@@ -248,7 +294,7 @@ Implementer subagents report one of four statuses. Handle each appropriately:
 1. If it's a context problem, provide more context and re-dispatch with the same model
 2. If the task requires more reasoning, re-dispatch with a more capable model
 3. If the task is too large, break it into smaller pieces
-4. If the plan itself is wrong, escalate to the human
+4. If the plan itself is wrong, rule on the correction, ledger it, and re-dispatch with the ruling carried in the dispatch
 
 **Never** ignore an escalation or force the same model to retry without changes. If the implementer said it's stuck, something needs to change.
 
@@ -315,10 +361,11 @@ Before the loop starts, two routes leave it immediately:
   before merge. A roll-up nobody reads is a silent discard. Minor findings
   never enter the loop.
 - A finding labeled plan-mandated — or any finding that conflicts with
-  what the plan's text requires — is the human's decision, like any plan
+  what the plan's text requires — is yours to rule on: weigh the finding
-  contradiction: present the finding and the plan text, ask which governs.
+  against the plan text, decide with the spec as the binding authority, and
-  Do not dismiss the finding because the plan mandates it, and do not
+  ledger the ruling before you act on it. Do not dismiss the finding because
-  dispatch a fix that contradicts the plan without asking.
+  the plan mandates it, and do not dispatch a fix that contradicts the plan
+  without a recorded ruling.
 Everything else enters the loop. A fix round is one fix dispatch plus one
 scoped re-review. Five rounds maximum per task:
 
@@ -363,15 +410,16 @@ dispatching. Adjudicate each open finding yourself — you hold the plan and
 the cross-task context the reviewer lacks:
 
 - **The reviewer is wrong, or the point is contestable:** park it —
-  `Task <N>: parked — <finding> — ruling: <why the code stands>`. The final
+  `Task <N>: parked — <finding> — Ruling: <why the code stands>`. The final
   review sees both sides.
 - **Real, but nothing downstream builds on it:** park it the same way, with
   a ruling that says it's real and deferred.
 - **Real and load-bearing** — a later task builds on it, or it reveals a
-  plan defect: STOP. Append `Task <N>: BLOCKED — <reason>` and report to
+  plan defect: rule on the smallest change that unblocks the dependent work,
-  your human partner with the finding, the plan text it collides with, and
+  ledger it as `Task <N>: Ruling: <finding> — <what you decided and why>`,
-  the fix history. Parking a structural failure lets every dependent task
+  and carry it into the next task's dispatch. Parking a structural failure
-  build on it and hands the final review a problem it cannot fix either.
+  silently lets every dependent task build on it. Stop only when the defect
+  leaves every path forward a guess.
 
 Adjudicate only at the cap. Adjudicating earlier to end a loop is
 pre-judging with a different name. Every adjudication is a ledger entry —
@@ -412,12 +460,22 @@ Then run exactly one scoped re-review of the fix wave
 (`scripts/review-package PLAN_FILE FIX_BASE HEAD` over the fix range,
 [re-review-prompt.md](re-review-prompt.md)).
 Adjudicate any residual findings as in the task loop's breaker: park with
-rulings, or stop on load-bearing ones. There is no second fix wave —
+rulings, or rule on the load-bearing ones and ledger what you decided. Only
+the four classes above stop you here. There is no second fix wave —
 residual load-bearing findings surface to your human partner when
 finishing-a-development-branch presents the options.
 
 ## Finish
 
+Before you delete anything, collect every ledger line containing `Ruling:` —
+preflight rulings, parked findings, breaker adjudications, all of them — into
+your final message under "Rulings I made", in the order you made them, each
+with what it costs if wrong. The list is exhaustive: if the ledger holds a
+ruling, the list holds it. That list is the only place the decisions you
+took on your human partner's behalf reach them — they read it and rework
+whatever you got wrong. A ruling that dies with the workspace was a decision
+made in secret.
+
 When the final whole-branch review is clean and its fixes are merged,
 delete this plan's workspace (`rm -rf <workspace>`) — the git history is
 the record now. Sibling directories belong to other plans; leave them
@@ -437,6 +495,7 @@ Use superpowers:finishing-a-development-branch.
 | "The fix was small, skip the re-review" | Unreviewed fixes are how regressions land. Every round ends with a scoped re-review. |
 | "Reviews slow the loop down" | The loop without reviews is just unverified churn. Reviews are the loop's brakes and steering. |
 | "Ledger bookkeeping is overhead" | The ledger is what survives compaction. Controllers without one have re-dispatched entire completed task sequences. |
+| "The implementer spawned its own reviewer — free extra assurance" | It's a duplicate seat reviewing the same diff; the task review is the gate. A worker-spawned reviewer is a defect to flag, not rigor. |
 
 ## Example Workflow
 

skills/subagent-driven-development/implementer-prompt.md

@@ -47,6 +47,18 @@ Subagent (general-purpose):
     While iterating, run the focused test for what you're changing; run the
     full suite once before committing, not after every edit.
 
+    ## You Do Not Dispatch Subagents
+
+    Do all of this task's work yourself. Never spawn a subagent to
+    implement part of the task, and above all never spawn a reviewer to
+    check your work. Self-review (below) means reading your own diff.
+    Review is the controller's job: after you report, it dispatches a
+    fresh reviewer against your diff. A reviewer you spawn duplicates
+    that review at full cost, and its approval counts for nothing in
+    the process. If you catch yourself thinking "an independent review
+    would strengthen my report" — that review is already scheduled.
+    Report instead.
+
     ## Code Organization
 
     You reason best about code you can hold in context at once, and your edits are more

skills/subagent-driven-development/re-review-prompt.md

@@ -43,6 +43,15 @@ Subagent (general-purpose):
     Your review is read-only on this checkout. Do not mutate the working
     tree, the index, HEAD, or branch state in any way.
 
+    ## You Do Not Dispatch Subagents
+
+    Do all of this review yourself. Never spawn a subagent to review part
+    of the diff, and never spawn another reviewer for a second opinion.
+    This process already provides every review seat the work gets; a
+    reviewer you spawn duplicates one of them at full cost, and its
+    verdict counts for nothing. If the diff feels too large for one
+    pass, review it in passes yourself and say so in your report.
+
     ## Scope
 
     Your scope is the findings list and the fix diff. Verdict every finding.

skills/subagent-driven-development/task-reviewer-prompt.md

@@ -52,6 +52,15 @@ Subagent (general-purpose):
     Your review is read-only on this checkout. Do not mutate the working
     tree, the index, HEAD, or branch state in any way.
 
+    ## You Do Not Dispatch Subagents
+
+    Do all of this review yourself. Never spawn a subagent to review part
+    of the diff, and never spawn another reviewer for a second opinion.
+    This process already provides every review seat the work gets; a
+    reviewer you spawn duplicates one of them at full cost, and its
+    verdict counts for nothing. If the diff feels too large for one
+    pass, review it in passes yourself and say so in your report.
+
     ## Do Not Trust the Report
 
     Treat the implementer's report as unverified claims about the code. It
@@ -75,6 +84,13 @@ Subagent (general-purpose):
     Warnings or other noise in the implementer's reported test output are
     findings — test output should be pristine.
 
+    Evidence you cannot see is not evidence that doesn't exist. If the
+    report or its test evidence looks truncated, or you cannot locate the
+    results it claims, re-read the file at its stated path — and if it is
+    genuinely missing or garbled, report that as a gap for the controller.
+    Re-running the suite to regenerate what you failed to read is not
+    verification; illegibility of the evidence is not invalidation of it.
+
     ## Part 1: Spec Compliance
 
     Compare the diff against What Was Requested:
@@ -86,6 +102,12 @@ Subagent (general-purpose):
     - **Misunderstood:** right feature built the wrong way, wrong problem
       solved
 
+    If the brief lists several files each with its own change (a batched
+    dispatch), check the diff against that list file by file: every listed
+    file must have its corresponding hunk. A listed file the diff never
+    touches is a Missing finding, no matter how clean the rest of the
+    batch looks.
+
     If a requirement cannot be verified from this diff alone (it lives in
     unchanged code or spans tasks), report it as a ⚠️ item instead of
     broadening your search.

skills/using-superpowers/references/codex-tools.md

@@ -7,7 +7,76 @@ Add to your Codex config (`~/.codex/config.toml`):
 multi_agent = true
 ```
 
-This enables `spawn_agent`, `wait_agent`, and `close_agent` for skills like `dispatching-parallel-agents` and `subagent-driven-development`. When using subagent-driven-development, close reviewer subagents when their review returns. Keep each implementer subagent open until its task's review passes — the fix loop resumes the implementer — then close it. If your harness cannot send another message to a spawned agent, dispatch each fix round as a fresh implementer carrying the brief, the report file, and the findings.
+This enables the multi-agent tools that skills like
+`dispatching-parallel-agents` and `subagent-driven-development` use.
+Which tools you get depends on the multi-agent version your model
+preset selects (current presets run V2; older ones run V1). Trust your
+actual tool list over any table — including this one — when they
+disagree.
+
+- **Spawning:** give children a clean context with
+  `spawn_agent {fork_turns: "none"}`; the default `"all"` copies your
+  entire transcript into the child. On Codex 0.145+, role files under
+  `~/.codex/agents/` attach to isolated forks via `agent_type`.
+  Full-history forks accept `model` and `reasoning_effort` overrides
+  (only `agent_type` is refused there) — isolated forks are the SDD
+  default for context hygiene, not because overrides require them.
+- **Fix rounds:** resume the implementer with `followup_task` — it
+  delivers your message, triggers a turn, and transparently reloads a
+  child the harness evicted. Never dispatch a fresh implementer on the
+  theory that a spawned agent cannot be messaged again; on V2 it
+  always can.
+- **Lifecycle:** V2 has no `close_agent`. Finished children are
+  evicted automatically when slots are needed; leaving them unclosed
+  costs nothing. Only V1 sessions have `close_agent` — there, close
+  reviewers when their review returns, and close each implementer
+  after its task's review passes.
+- **Model names:** never copy a model name from a skill, table, or old
+  session into `spawn_agent` without checking it against your current
+  spawn allowlist — V2 accepts only V2-capable presets and hard-errors
+  on the rest.
+
+## Waiting on children
+
+`wait_agent` is an event subscription, not a poll: a long wait wakes
+the moment a child produces mailbox activity, with the same latency as
+a short one. Short-timeout polling buys nothing and costs a tool call —
+and a context rebill — per poll. In measured sessions, roughly
+two-thirds of all wait calls were short polls that timed out.
+
+- While you still have local work, do not wait at all. A completed
+  child's final answer is pushed into your mailbox and arrives with
+  your next turn.
+- When you are genuinely idle with children outstanding, wait in
+  bounded stretches: `wait_agent` with `timeout_ms` 300000-600000
+  (5-10 minutes). After each stretch — wake or timeout — post one
+  status line, run `list_agents`, and chase any child that finished
+  without reporting. Never stack polls shorter than five minutes; the
+  event subscription wakes a bounded stretch just as fast as a short
+  one.
+- Completion mail cannot wake an idle controller (it is delivered
+  without triggering a turn); covering that idle window is
+  `wait_agent`'s only job. A stretch that times out with no activity
+  is your cue to reconcile, not to shorten the next stretch.
+
+## Model routing on spawns
+
+Every `spawn_agent` you issue — including when you are yourself a
+spawned child running a fan-out — sets `model` AND `reasoning_effort`
+explicitly, per the Model Selection rules of the skill you are
+executing. Setting `model` alone is a trap: the child's effort
+silently resets to that model's default, not to yours.
+
+Ask your human partner to add a machine-level backstop to
+`~/.codex/config.toml` so any spawn that slips through still routes to
+a deliberate tier instead of silently inheriting the session's most
+expensive model:
+
+```toml
+[agents]
+default_subagent_model = "<a mid-tier model from your spawn allowlist>"
+default_subagent_reasoning_effort = "medium"
+```
 
 ## Environment Detection
 

skills/writing-plans/SKILL.md

@@ -66,9 +66,6 @@ independently testable deliverable.
 
 **Tech Stack:** [Key technologies/libraries]
 
-**Spec:** [path to the spec/design doc this plan implements — the plan
-argues from the spec, so the spec travels with it; executors read both]
-
 ## Global Constraints
 
 [The spec's project-wide requirements — version floors, dependency limits,