task-pipeline-skill 1.41.0 → 1.42.0

package/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,5 +1,77 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## v1.42.0 — a probe proves the phrasing its author had in mind
+
+Six times in one session a guard was defeated by **text that was not its subject**, and
+every one of those guards had a probe, and every probe fired. The probes and the guards
+were written in the same hour from the same reading of the same file, so they shared the
+blind spot rather than covering it.
+
+| The check's subject | What answered it instead |
+|---|---|
+| stage 2 names the loop's arming | *"it **arms** the UX track"*, present since v1.7.0 |
+| the section states the authorization floor | the same phrase in a Rationalizations row, and in a section from v1.11.0 |
+| the run stamps have a cap | the **standing instructions'** `max 10` in the same cell — and, once narrowed past it, the same cap on the other side of the `·` |
+| a section read in full stays capped | rows under one heading, while a second heading held forty more |
+
+### The doctrine failed its own first use, and a reader caught that too
+
+R-005's fourth consecutive reader read the three new probes against the section that
+defines them. **`nb03` was not a neighbour probe.** It planted the needles of two
+*retired* predicates — proving the guards that used to exist were neighbour-answerable
+and saying nothing about the one that does. The instruction *"plant the guard's own
+evidence"* reads as *"plant something that used to satisfy it"* unless it says **which
+literal**, and now it does: the one the predicate matches today, read out of the guard.
+
+Seven more, each planted and watched passing, each now replayed and failing:
+
+- **Part 1a's precondition could be replaced by its opposite** and a housekeeping aside in
+  a `###` subsection answered for it — the reading `Default off` exists to forbid, shipping
+  behind a parenthesis;
+- **the stage-2 guard's declared span was false.** Its comment said *"the GATE bullet and
+  nothing else"*; the GATE is the last bullet, so the split handed it everything to the
+  section end and a trailing note satisfied it;
+- `- **GATEways to stage 3:**` was taken as the gate — no word boundary;
+- **a decoy row about the archive answered for the live file**, because the retrospective
+  check scanned every `|` line rather than the row it names;
+- **the scope depended on a `·`** no doctrine requires: replacing it with `, and` restored
+  the v1.41.0 defeat by punctuation;
+- **one disjunct was dead and the live one was a literal** — the source line-wraps, so the
+  check was a false positive on any reword and a false negative on inversion;
+- and **rekeying the stage-2 guard silently lost coverage**: deleting the whole queue
+  bullet began to pass, while its probe kept firing only because it *also* deleted the
+  gate clause. A probe whose stated claim has quietly become another probe's claim.
+
+**A probe that only deletes is not a neighbour probe** — it may be correct, but if it
+leans on copies already next door it must assert they are there, or a later edit demotes
+it to a delete-only test that still passes.
+
+### The neighbour probe
+
+`gates.md` now asks a guard that reads a scoped span for a **second** probe, planting in
+two places at once: break the subject, plant the guard's own evidence **next door**, and
+require it to still fail. A guard that goes green is reading the neighbourhood, and the
+ordinary probe cannot tell the difference — which is why it is a separate probe rather
+than a stricter one.
+
+Three shipped with it, one per guard that fell this way. **The third failed on its first
+run and was right to:** a planted sentence saying *"after-decomposition remains a word in
+the schema"* satisfied the stage-2 guard, proving it neighbour-answerable. The guard is
+now keyed on the stage's **gate** — what it must DO — rather than on prose around it,
+because prose above a gate can say anything.
+
+**Positional narrowing is not scoping**, and three of the six were "fixed" that way
+before falling again to text still inside the cut.
+
+### Half of B-057 was already mechanised, and the row overstated it
+
+`test/negatives.py` runs `differs_from_repo` on every planted copy, so a probe whose
+needle no longer matches fails **loudly** rather than silently — which is what every
+stale literal in this session actually did. The remaining half is the silent one, and it
+is what the neighbour probe is for.
+
+- Guards: 250 → **253**.
+
 ## v1.41.0 — one line per run is a slope, not a bound
 
 `retro.md` is read **in full** at stage 0, and its own doctrine called both read sections

package/SKILL-CARD.md

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ harmless.
 |---|---|
 | **Purpose** | Runs a substantial task through ten gated delivery stages — intake grill, docs study, brainstorm, spec, plan, subagent build, tests, lint/deploy, post-deploy, docs+registers, acceptance — refusing to advance until each gate passes |
 | **Owner** | ssheleg ([github.com/ssheleg/task-pipeline](https://github.com/ssheleg/task-pipeline)) |
-| **Version** | 1.41.0 |
+| **Version** | 1.42.0 |
 | **Surface** | Claude Code (filesystem skill + plugin) and the vercel `skills` CLI. **Not** uploaded to the Skills API; custom Skills do not sync across surfaces |
 | **Dependencies** | None required. Optional: `context7` (MCP), `figma` (MCP), super-ux, agent-sync, graphify, obsidian-wiki. Every stage's doctrine ships in-repo; the one conditional requirement is super-ux for the stage-3 UX track on a user-facing task |
 | **Evaluation status** | Suite authored, 5 categories. One recorded run, **self-observed by the author**; **zero blind runs on zero of three models** — the split, and the numbers, live in [`evals/RESULTS.md`](evals/RESULTS.md) and are computed by `evals/run.py` |

package/package.json

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "task-pipeline-skill",
-  "version": "1.41.0",
+  "version": "1.42.0",
   "description": "Full-cycle delivery pipeline for coding agents: a mandatory built-in intake grill, then 10 gated stages (docs, brainstorm+decompose, spec, plan, build, tests, lint/deploy, post-deploy, docs/wiki, acceptance). Every stage's doctrine ships inside the skill — no companion plugin required. This package is the installer CLI.",
   "bin": {
     "task-pipeline": "bin/task-pipeline.js"

package/plugins/task-pipeline/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
   "name": "task-pipeline",
   "displayName": "Task Pipeline",
   "description": "Runs a substantial task through a mandatory built-in intake grill, then 10 gated stages (docs, brainstorm+decompose, spec, plan, subagent build, tests, lint/deploy, post-deploy, docs/wiki, acceptance). Every stage's doctrine is built into the skill — no companion plugin required — with typed auto/manual gates, a frozen requirement spine that closes with evidence, a work board and a verification ledger that outlive a run, an exposure line naming what shipped unconfirmed, a progress rail computed from the project's own config, a loop guard whose review ceiling measures rather than stops, and stage-3 tracks for what a product does, how it sounds and how it looks. Two modes need no task: `checkup` (what is unverified) and `setup` (audit existing docs). Retro insights can publish upstream as issues, opt-in and redacted.",
-  "version": "1.41.0",
+  "version": "1.42.0",
   "author": {
     "name": "ssheleg",
     "url": "https://x.com/sshlg93"

package/plugins/task-pipeline/skills/task-pipeline/references/gates.md

@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ elsewhere and is not restated here:
 - Anatomy of a project gate
 - Writing the check itself
 - Probing — plant, run, restore
+- The neighbour probe — plant the evidence outside the subject
 - The false-positive budget
 - Ratchets
 - Disclosures — counted like a ratchet, and deliberately not monotone
@@ -295,6 +296,57 @@ Otherwise the next reader has to redo it to know whether it was ever done.
 
 ---
 
+## The neighbour probe — plant the evidence outside the subject
+
+A probe proves a guard rejects **the phrasing its author had in mind**. That is less than
+it looks, and the gap has one shape: **a check answered by text that is not its subject.**
+
+Measured on one project in one session, six times, each found by a reader planting a
+defect and watching `PASS`:
+
+| The check's subject | The text that answered it instead |
+|---|---|
+| stage 2 names the loop's arming | *"it **arms** the UX track"*, present since an earlier release |
+| the section states the authorization floor | the same phrase in a Rationalizations row, and in a section written twenty-nine releases before |
+| the run stamps have a cap | the **standing instructions'** `max 10`, in the same table cell — and, once the check was narrowed past it, the same cap moved to the other side of the `·` |
+| a section read in full stays capped | rows under **one** heading, while a second heading in the same file held forty more |
+
+Every one of those guards had a probe. Every probe fired. The probes and the guards were
+written in the same hour from the same reading, so they shared the same blind spot.
+
+**So a guard that reads a scoped span owes a second probe, and it plants in two places at
+once:**
+
+1. **break the subject** — remove the thing the guard is about;
+2. **plant the guard's own evidence next door** — in a sibling section, an adjacent table
+   cell, a rationalizations row, the other side of a separator;
+3. require the guard to **still fail**.
+
+A guard that passes step 3 is reading its subject. A guard that goes green is reading the
+neighbourhood, and the ordinary probe cannot tell the difference — which is why this one
+is separate rather than a stricter version of it.
+
+**Step 2 means the literal the predicate matches *today*, read out of the guard.** The
+first three neighbour probes written against this section got that wrong on their first
+run: one planted the needles of two **retired** predicates, which proves the guards that
+used to exist were neighbour-answerable and says nothing about the one that does. A
+neighbour probe keyed to a needle the guard no longer reads is the same defect it was
+written to catch, one level up.
+
+**A probe that only deletes is not a neighbour probe.** It may still be a correct probe —
+but if it relies on copies that already sit next door, it must **assert they are there**.
+Otherwise a later edit removes them and the probe quietly becomes a delete-only test that
+still passes, having stopped testing the thing it is named for.
+
+**Positional narrowing is not scoping.** Three of the six were "fixed" by cutting the
+search down to a row, then to everything after a phrase, and fell each time to text that
+was still inside the cut. Scope by *what the span is about*: split to the cell, then to
+the item, then match on flattened text so an emphasis marker cannot hide the boundary.
+
+**And state the span in the guard.** One line above the predicate — *what it reads, and
+where that ends*. It costs nothing and it is the only part of a check a later reader can
+disagree with before the defect arrives.
+
 ## The false-positive budget
 
 Run a new heuristic over the **real corpus** before shipping it and count the false