tldr-experts 0.4.0 → 0.5.0

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Files changed (44) hide show
  1. package/CHANGELOG.md +1433 -0
  2. package/README.md +61 -13
  3. package/dist/hooks/answer-capture.js +6 -7
  4. package/dist/hooks/budget-gate.js +14 -11
  5. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-4cp363kv.js → chunk-14zn51kh.js} +60 -16
  6. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-s1c5h7yx.js → chunk-3w55tp71.js} +26 -7
  7. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-7y2dq0pj.js → chunk-5556vjt5.js} +1 -1
  8. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-t1ywrfr4.js → chunk-889tybxc.js} +10 -8
  9. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-9gb21660.js → chunk-a5dq2dcp.js} +54 -14
  10. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-sq44k6g2.js → chunk-a6rpj2cp.js} +684 -3
  11. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-tzzwddct.js → chunk-bvm6vjrt.js} +1 -1
  12. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-phmdk72a.js → chunk-hcrbr430.js} +1 -1
  13. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-rpcxsqh3.js → chunk-nadqsr3w.js} +1 -1
  14. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-9zsqxr6y.js → chunk-q8d3sff9.js} +23 -16
  15. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-c6t5nx0r.js → chunk-qw73rdbr.js} +1 -1
  16. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-rz541e2b.js → chunk-sae7sqty.js} +2 -0
  17. package/dist/hooks/{chunk-b8kxzna2.js → chunk-v1c1hpb8.js} +1 -1
  18. package/dist/hooks/claim-sources.js +19 -16
  19. package/dist/hooks/dod-gate.js +7 -6
  20. package/dist/hooks/no-reask.js +9 -9
  21. package/dist/hooks/session-start.js +46 -21
  22. package/dist/hooks/statusline.js +8 -9
  23. package/dist/tldrx.js +6364 -2465
  24. package/package.json +2 -2
  25. package/plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json +2 -2
  26. package/plugin/skills/tldrx/SKILL.md +1 -1
  27. package/stages/watch/stage.md +4 -0
  28. package/templates/expert.md +13 -1
  29. package/templates/watcher.md +8 -1
  30. package/workflows/bugfix.yml +8 -4
  31. package/workflows/docs.yml +8 -4
  32. package/workflows/feature.yml +8 -4
  33. package/workflows/hotfix.yml +8 -4
  34. package/workflows/integration.yml +8 -4
  35. package/workflows/migration.yml +8 -4
  36. package/workflows/performance.yml +8 -4
  37. package/workflows/prototype.yml +8 -4
  38. package/workflows/refactor.yml +8 -4
  39. package/workflows/security-patch.yml +8 -4
  40. package/workflows/spike.yml +8 -4
  41. package/workflows/upgrade.yml +8 -4
  42. package/dist/hooks/chunk-m3mewgnw.js +0 -522
  43. package/templates/epic.md +0 -40
  44. package/templates/story.md +0 -55
package/CHANGELOG.md CHANGED
@@ -1,5 +1,1438 @@
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  # Changelog
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+ ## 0.5.0 — 2026-09-02
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+
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+ ### Added
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+
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+ - **The dashboard answers the five questions #85 left open (#93).** Each needed a decision
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+ rather than a patch, and each was taken the CONSERVATIVE way: render what the files
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+ already say, invent no interaction the page does not already have, and let nothing on a
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+ read-only page run anything. Every choice below is a **maintainer call, subject to owner
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+ review** — they are listed on the issue.
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+ - **The Watchers tab draws the cards.** `05-watch/watchers/*.md` is read into the model as
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+ the seven fields `Watcher` really declares — `id`, `epic`, `title`, `stories`, `repos`,
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+ `status`, plus the optional `owner` (#70) — and the tab prints them instead of printing
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+ the shape it wished it had. A `draft` card also carries **why**: the `absent:` sources it
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+ cites under `## Signal`, which is the card's own rule for not being `verified`. The
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+ reading is deliberately the SMALL one — the model resolves no `[src: …]`, calls no
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+ `parseWatcherCard` and computes no `CardChecklist`, because that re-checks every citation
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+ against today's working tree and would make a read-only dashboard the only screen in the
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+ product that runs something. `tldrx watch check` stays the thing that checks, and the
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+ page says so. A `verified` stamp over an `absent:` Signal is shown as what it is rather
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+ than silently corrected: `watch check` re-stamps cards, and a viewer that disagreed with
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+ the file would be a third opinion.
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+ - **A `draft` card raises no attention card.** The page's rule — an alert means a run is
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+ waiting on a PERSON right now, derived once in `waiting.ts` — is unchanged. An
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+ uninstrumented signal is a fact about coverage that stays true until somebody
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+ instruments it, and it belongs in a panel the way `budget.blocked` does.
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+ - **Preflight refusals leave their rows on the page.** `04-build/preflight.yml` is read the
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+ same way `budget.yml` is: read-only, additive, and through the reader that never throws.
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+ A new **Base gates** section names each of the workspace's own gate commands, the repo
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+ and base it ran on, its exit code and its `ok`/`failed`/`unmeasured` status — so a Build
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+ that refused to start is no longer a stage that went backwards for no visible reason.
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+ The alternative on the issue was to emit an EVENT instead; that is the bigger, better
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+ change and it is not this one, because the owner's #85 decision covered the two files
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+ that already existed and an event is a new write on a refusal path. Reading the file it
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+ already writes is the same doctrine one step further. Red rows are drawn as rows, not as
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+ alerts, for the same reason `budget.blocked` is.
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+ - **`keep_worktrees` is one line on the run detail**, and only when it is set (#16). The
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+ key is written only when true, so drawing `false` would put a row on every run in the
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+ workspace saying what all of them do. `RunDocument` projects it tolerantly: anything that
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+ is not the boolean `true` is not a promise to keep the worktrees.
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+ - **A cancelled run says who closed it, when, and why.** All three facts already travelled
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+ on `waiting.message` (#86); the run detail printed the status chip and dropped them. It
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+ is one `kv` row carrying that sentence — not a second derivation, so the page cannot word
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+ it differently from `tldrx run status`.
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+ - **An annotated run wears a marker in the runs list** — one ✎ glyph with the note count in
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+ its `title`, nothing more. #85 §1 asked for it and the wave declined to invent it. This
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+ is the smallest thing that is true: no column, no badge count, no new sort key, and the
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+ notes themselves stay on the run detail where they were. Explicitly **provisional** — a
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+ count in a row is a design decision, and the first person with a real opinion about that
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+ list should replace it.
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+ - **`DASHBOARD_MODEL_VERSION` stays at 3.** `watch`, `preflight` and `keepWorktrees` are
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+ three additions and nothing was removed; no existing field reads differently than it did
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+ at v3. The argument for bumping is that `docs/dashboard-model.md` promised, under *What
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+ is NOT in it*, that two named files were unread, and that promise is now void — but a
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+ documented absence is not a field, and the number is for fields.
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+
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+ - **The dashboard reads `budget.yml` and `events.jsonl` (#85).** The audit that filed the issue
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+ found five gaps with one root: `buildModel()` read `run.yml`, the phase artefacts, the Plan
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+ artefacts and the expert files, and nothing else — so five facts a reader went looking for were
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+ nowhere on the page, each because it lives only in one of those two files. The owner's decision
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+ (2026-09-02) was that the model may read both, read-only and additive. All five are now drawn.
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+ - **Operator notes** (`tldrx note`, #46) get their own section on the run detail, with the actor,
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+ the stage or phase, and the time. **All of them**, not the last three: `tldrx run status` caps
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+ at three because a terminal has a bottom, and a run detail page does not.
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+ - **Free review retries** (#78/#79) and the **attempt** each story is on. Both are event-only —
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+ the story file carries `status` and `evidence` and no counters — so a story that burned both
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+ attempts and was granted two free re-prompts read on disk exactly like one nobody had touched.
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+ The plan table gains an `attempts` column (`1 of 2`, against the model's new `maxAttempts`), and
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+ a **Reopens & retries** section shows the `story.reopened` arcs with their `fix`/`attempts`
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+ reason and the operator's note. A reopen written before the `reason` key existed reads as
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+ `attempts`, which is the only kind that existed, rather than as a blank.
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+ - **`budget.blocked`** occurrences are listed with the phase, both economies' numbers, and — for a
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+ dollar refusal — the exact `tldrx budget raise` command, short-by rounding included, pinned by a
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+ test against `raiseCommand` because the renderer is serialised into the page and cannot import
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+ it. Deliberately **not** an attention card: the page's rule is that an alert means a run is
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+ waiting on a person NOW, and a refusal in the log is not evidence of that.
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+ - **The `$0.00 of $25.00` progress bar on a host run is fixed properly.** A run whose `budget.yml`
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+ says `economy: host-tokens` is not priced in dollars at all, so `ceiling_usd` governs nothing
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+ and the bar stated a fraction of a denominator that does not apply. Such a run now reads in
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+ TOKENS on both screens — the runs list and the run detail share one `dashSpendText`, because
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+ suppressing the bar alone would leave the words `$0.00 of $25.00` making the claim the bar
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+ was — metered against `ceiling_host_tokens`, the ceiling those tokens really are judged
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+ against, which exists in no other file. A **Budget** panel carries the per-phase ceilings, `on_exceed`,
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+ `warn_at_pct`, `on_host_tokens_exceed` and the per-phase economy. An unset phase economy is
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+ reported as *inherits*, never as a choice somebody made.
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+ - **`DASHBOARD_MODEL_VERSION` stays at 3**, and the issue asked. Eight fields were added and none
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+ removed. `spentUsd` was the one with a case to answer — a consumer reading it alone is
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+ demonstrably wrong about a host-attended run now that the ceiling can sit beside it — but it is
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+ computed from the same `run.yml` key, holds the same number, and has meant "METERED dollars, a
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+ lower bound when `unmeteredTasks > 0`" since v3 put `unmeteredTasks` and `hostTokens` next to it.
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+ A field that gained neighbours did not change meaning.
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+ - **Neither file is opened by the model**, and the ledger is walked **once per run**. `loadRunResult`
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+ already parsed both for every run and this file had been discarding them, so the page costs the
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+ reads it always did; the per-story facts come out of one pass rather than from
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+ `readReviewLedger`, which re-reads the whole ledger per story and would have made a forty-story
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+ plan forty passes over a file already in memory.
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+ - **Absence and damage stay graceful.** No `budget.yml` and no `events.jsonl` renders exactly as
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+ before, with none of the new sections. An unparseable `budget.yml` costs the panel and nothing
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+ else. A torn ledger line costs that line and **says so** on the page, because "no operator notes"
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+ over a damaged ledger is the same lie by omission an unlisted corrupt `run.yml` was.
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+ - Fixed on the way: an event with **no `payload` key at all** parses fine through the tolerant
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+ `EventLog.readAll`, and reading `payload.story` off it threw a `TypeError` out of `buildModel`
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+ and killed the live server for the whole workspace. `TldrxEvent.payload` is typed non-optional;
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+ the type is a claim about `validateEvent`'s output, not about what is in the file.
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+
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+ - **The `tldrx drive` mandate carries its own preflight (#84).** Launching a cold unattended
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+ session took SIX hand-run commands before the mandate could be pasted at all — `tldrx run
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+ attend host`, then `tldrx run gates set` five times. Every one of them is a precondition of
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+ the discipline the mandate exists to transfer, so an owner typing them by hand was doing the
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+ driver's job for it, and a mandate that assumes its own preconditions only works where
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+ somebody has already been careful. Both modes now open with a **`## Before anything: the
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+ preflight`** section, ahead of the roles, that establishes attendedness (`tldrx run status
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+ <run>`), the gate policy (`--json`, stage by stage) and `budget.yml` — and makes the driver
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+ **state the ceiling it will honour** before the first turn. Any one it cannot establish is a
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+ **refusal to start** that names the command that failed, because a driver that starts anyway
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+ has spent money on a run whose gates it may not close.
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+ - The two modes differ here exactly as they differ at the gate. `--unattended` may SET what
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+ it finds wrong: `tldrx run attend host <run>`, and `tldrx run gates set <stage>:agent
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+ --note "…"` for a stage the owner delegated, over a note **quoting the owner's own
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+ delegation from the launch message** — so the policy change is signed by the owner's words
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+ rather than the driver's judgement. `--attended` gets the mirror and may not: gates stay
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+ human there, so it checks attendedness and the budget, reports a stage that is not `human`
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+ where it was expected, and moves nothing. A test asserts the attended text contains no
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+ `gates set <stage>:agent` at all.
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+ - The `<run>` substitution (#75) covers the new lines like every other, `<stage>` untouched:
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+ the pinned occurrence count moves from 5/7 to **7 attended / 10 unattended**.
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+ - Both mandates stay inside `MANDATE_MAX_LINES` (119 unattended, 116 attended), paid for out
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+ of the header, the driving block and the unattended gate. The sections that make the
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+ document worth pasting — the three-role spine, evidence discipline, parking, review
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+ calibration by stakes and budget honesty — are untouched.
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+
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+ - **The retro aggregate has consumers: `--json`, the reviewer prompt, and a workspace taxonomy
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+ (#74).** `tldrx retro --all` (#64) produced exactly the dataset that issue asked for — finding
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+ class × count × runs × one cited example — and nothing read it. The reader existed; the loop it
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+ was meant to close was open at the far end. Three seams close it.
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+ - **`tldrx retro --all --json`** — a stable machine shape: `{version, root, runs, contributed,
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+ deduped, classes, trends[{cls, count, runs, example{run, kind, text, src}}], findings[]}`. A
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+ deliberate projection rather than a dump of the internal type, with its key sets asserted
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+ literally by a test, so adding a field is a visible act and renaming one bumps `version`.
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+ `--json` belongs to `--all` alone: closing one run WRITES a file and has nothing to parse, so
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+ `retro --json` on its own is a refusal rather than a stringified sentence.
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+ - **The adversarial reviewer is fed the workspace's top three classes** before it reads the
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+ diff, so a review starts from what this team keeps getting wrong instead of rediscovering
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+ `test-cannot-fail` on its own, run after run. Computed by the same `mineAll` over the same
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+ workspace, so what the reviewer is told is exactly the top of what `tldrx retro --all` prints.
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+ Additive and absent-safe in every direction — no runs, no findings, nothing but `other`, or a
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+ broken taxonomy file, and there is no section at all, not a heading and not a blank line.
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+ `other` is never offered: it names no defect to look for. Mined once per `tldrx next`
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+ invocation, so a wave of six stories pays for it once and every reviewer in that invocation
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+ gets the same prior. The section says out loud that it is a PRIOR and not a checklist — a
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+ reviewer handed three defect classes and no framing finds three defect classes.
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+ - **`.tldrx/memory/finding-classes.yml`** adds classes for defects the seven built-in ones do
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+ not name (`version: 1`, `classes:` of `{name, rules}`, 1–16 each, rules compiled
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+ case-insensitively). Extensions are tried AFTER every built-in rule and before `other`, so a
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+ workspace class can only ever claim a finding the built-ins left unclassified — which is what
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+ keeps an unbounded taxonomy testable, and leaves every shipped fixture immune to whatever a
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+ workspace writes. A file that will not load is a REFUSAL naming the file, the class and the
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+ rule — including a rule such as `.*` that matches every text and would swallow the taxonomy —
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+ never a silent fallback, because a rule its author believes is running and is not would make
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+ every count a lie. The Build reviewer never fails on it: a refusal costs the prior and prints
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+ one line, so no story loses an attempt to a YAML typo.
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+
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+ - **`CONTRIBUTING.md`, and a section an outside contributor can build a model provider from
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+ (#27 companion).** #27 (a generic model-provider layer) was closed as parked, not rejected:
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+ `TLDRX_CLAUDE_BIN` covers today's needs and a provider layer with no second provider is
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+ speculation. So the seam is written down instead. The new file covers the contribution loop,
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+ the four gates and what CI actually runs, the red-first rules (including "a test that cannot
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+ fail is worse than no test", with the shipped example of one that could), and a
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+ **Contributing a model-provider config** section: what `TLDRX_CLAUDE_BIN` does and does not
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+ buy, `buildClaudeArgs`' exact command surface, the `stream-json` transcript contract
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+ `AgentStream` parses and the two behaviours an adapter most easily breaks (the read cap and
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+ the cost ledger), the result-envelope requirement with its fail-closed rule, and the five
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+ test files a PR would have to touch. Linked from the README.
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+
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+ - **`tldrx questions cards [<run>]` — a parked question, as something to decide (#59).** Measured
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+ on run `260830-ordering-inventory`, 2026-09-01: the host parked four product questions with
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+ notes and reported them in its tl;dr. The owner's live words were *"cuales preguntas? no las
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+ veo? por que no me guió por las preguntas Claude?"* — they were on disk, they were in
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+ `tldrx questions <run>`, and the count was in the summary. None of that PRESENTED them. Counted
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+ is not asked, and the gap was never the data; it was the arc from parked to answerable.
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+ - **Three slots, each a refusal.** Two lines of context (which run and file the question is
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+ parked in, who asked it, when, in what area) so a card pasted into chat stands up away from
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+ the terminal. The question's OWN `Why asked:` note verbatim, `[src: …]` included — the slot
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+ for what the binding docs already decide, quoted rather than summarised; a note that cites
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+ nothing is FLAGGED as somebody's recollection, and a question parked with no note says so.
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+ The file's lettered options verbatim, or a loud `NEEDS OPTIONS` marker when it carries none,
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+ because manufacturing A/B/C would be answering the question in the act of asking it.
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+ - **A reader, and only a reader** (owner decision 2026-09-01: no interactive loop in v1). It
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+ opens no run, spawns nothing, records no fact, and a test asserts `questions.md` is
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+ byte-identical across a render. Answers still flow through `tldrx answer`, and every card
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+ prints the exact line to type. It does not extend the §2.7 grammar: every field on a card is
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+ one the existing parser already produces.
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+ - **No open question is a sentence and an exit 0** — and two silences are told apart, because
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+ "this run never parked anything" and "everything here is answered" send a reader to different
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+ places.
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+
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+ - **`tldrx watch arm --run <id>` — the merge detector that fires the post-merge checklist (#69).**
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+ `watch check` (#65) answers *"what do I check now?"*. Nothing answered *"the PR just merged, go
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+ and check it"* — the half that happens without a human remembering, which matters because the
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+ failure #65 was filed about IS a memory failure: the owner's own CD gap, a merged branch read as
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+ a deployed one, cost 19 destroyed records. v1 would not have caught it either, because nobody
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+ ran it.
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+ - **A bounded FOREGROUND poller, not a daemon** (owner decision 2026-09-01: no GitHub Actions in
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+ v1). It reads the branch Build cut from `run.yml` — through the same `pickBranch`/`findRepos`
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+ `tldrx ship` uses, now exported, so the two verbs cannot disagree about which branch a run
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+ shipped — asks `gh pr view <branch> --json state,mergedAt` per repo, and prints the same
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+ checklist the moment every PR for that branch has merged. **Three independent bounds**: a hard
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+ deadline (`--timeout`, default 3600s, max 86400), a floor on the interval (`--interval`,
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+ default 60s, under 10 REFUSED rather than quietly raised), and a poll cap that holds even if
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+ the clock does not move.
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+ - **Every refusal is a sentence, and they are different sentences.** No epic branch ⇒ `ship`
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+ cannot have run. No PR for the branch ⇒ either `ship` has not run or the branch was never
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+ pushed, with both commands printed. A PR `CLOSED` without merging ⇒ stop now, because waiting
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+ for it could only ever time out. A window that expires ⇒ exit `4` and the command that
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+ re-arms it.
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+ - **It never pushes, opens or merges anything**, and `--execute` is deliberately not offered: an
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+ hour-old poller must not start running the workspace's build commands the instant a merge
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+ lands. Re-running a recorded command stays an explicit, typed decision.
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+ - **No test in this suite runs the real `gh` or touches a network.** The unit cases drive a
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+ recording fake transport; the one end-to-end case puts a stub `gh` first on `PATH`. The clock
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+ and the sleep are injected, so a test covering a one-hour timeout finishes in milliseconds.
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+
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+ - **`tldrx plan schema` — the story/epic/waves contract, printed for a human (#71).** #48 deleted
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+ `templates/story.md` and `templates/epic.md`, rightly: nothing read them, so nothing kept them
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+ honest. But they were answering a real question — what shape does a story file take? — and after
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+ #48 the only reader of the generated contract was `checkContracts.ts`, which splices it into the
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+ Plan stage's prompt. The shape existed for the agent and not for the person writing a story by
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+ hand, reviewing one an agent wrote, or debugging a `plan` check refusal.
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+ - **The same bytes the agent gets.** `plan schema` renders `renderPlanSchemaContract()` verbatim,
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+ generated from the validators the check runs, so it cannot become the second source of truth
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+ the templates were. `--story`, `--epic` and `--waves` print one example on its own; at most one
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+ of them, because two would make the answer ambiguous. A test copies the printed story example
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+ straight into `validateStoryFile` and asserts it comes back clean.
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+ - **The one verb in `plan` that resolves nothing.** No workspace, no run, no disk, no spend — the
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+ question comes before any of that exists, and is often asked from outside a workspace entirely.
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+
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+
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+ - **`tldrx drive [--attended|--unattended]` — the host/driver mandate, shipped (#63).** Every elite
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+ run of 2026-08-31/09-01 was driven by a session carrying a hand-written playbook, and that playbook
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+ was the framework's real quality floor. It lived in the owner's chat pastes, so a third party
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+ inherited the CLI and rediscovered the discipline — or did not. It is now plain text the package
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+ prints, versioned with the package, for a human to paste into the driving session or read before
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+ they start.
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+ - **What it carries**: the three-role protocol (developer sub-agent → a FRESH adversarial reviewer,
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+ never the author → the host verifying BOTH in the code, not in their reports); evidence
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+ discipline (measured / inferred / assumed labelled in the same sentence as the claim, exit codes
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+ never read through a pipe, verification from the source, remote shas via `git ls-remote`);
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+ parking product questions with what the docs already decide, because an open question is never a
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+ licence to ship an unguarded write; review calibration by stakes, so a security-bearing story
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+ gets the strongest reviewer; and budget honesty — declare a turn once, state a floor when the
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+ records are incomplete.
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+ - **Two modes, one spine.** The disciplines are identical — they are about how a claim is made,
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+ not about who is watching. What differs is the GATE (`--unattended` signs over a validated
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+ evidence note with `tldrx approve --as-agent`; `--attended` never signs and hands the decision
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+ over) and DRIVING (who spawns). Each mode is bounded at 120 lines, asserted by a test: a mandate
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+ long enough to skim is one nobody follows.
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+ - **A mode is required and never guessed** (exit `1`), the same refusal `tldrx run attend` makes.
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+ Handing an attended session the unattended text tells it to sign gates that were never its to
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+ sign. It needs no workspace, opens no run, spawns nothing and writes nothing.
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+
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+ - **`tldrx retro --all` — cross-run mining of what keeps catching you (#64).** Each run left gold
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+ nobody aggregated: a reviewer's verdict and findings in `04-build/log/<story>.md`, a fix list with
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+ a disposition per finding, `retro.md`'s `## Build feedback`, and the reason a person typed when
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+ they reopened a story. Across the first six real runs the same finding CLASSES kept coming back,
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+ and nothing read more than one run at a time.
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+ - **A trends table**: finding class × count × how many runs it appeared in × one example with the
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+ `[src: …]` that lets a reader go and check it.
269
+ - **Seven classes, in a documented precedence**: `test-cannot-fail`, `missing-negative-control`,
270
+ `unreachable-structure`, `stale-comment`, `authorization-not-widened`, `schema-drift`, `other`.
271
+ Classification is ordered keyword rules over the finding text — no model, no scoring, no
272
+ threshold — so the same tree always produces the same table and a rule that misfires can be
273
+ pointed at. The rules are tested against fixtures in the shape the real artefacts carry.
274
+ - **Zero new state.** It writes nothing anywhere: no `retro.md`, no `practices.md`, no cache.
275
+ A test asserts the workspace is byte-identical across the call.
276
+ - **Absence is never an error.** A run with no Build phase, no retro, no events log or an
277
+ unreadable one contributes what it has and is still counted; an empty workspace is an empty
278
+ answer at exit `0`. A repeat of one finding WITHIN a run is collapsed (`retro.md` quotes the fix
279
+ list verbatim); the same finding in two runs is two occurrences, which is the point. A `refuted`
280
+ fix-list finding is read and dropped — ranking a class by disproven findings would make the
281
+ table a report on the reviewer.
282
+ - `--all` is refused (exit `1`) alongside a `<run-id>` or `--apply`, before a file is opened: each
283
+ asks for the opposite of what `--all` does.
284
+ - **`tldrx watch check` is the post-merge checklist (#65, owner decision 2026-09-01: manual command
285
+ first, `gh` detector later).** `tldrx ship` opens the PR carrying the handoff and the watcher card
286
+ lists the signals that would prove the feature works — and nothing joined the two, so
287
+ "merged ≠ deployed ≠ verified" stayed a thing a person had to remember. Remembered wrongly once, it
288
+ destroyed 19 records. `watch check` now reads the run's cards under `05-watch/watchers/` and prints
289
+ each card's `## Signal` items as a numbered checklist with `## Where`, the baseline, what broken
290
+ looks like, and the Query block, so there is one screen to work through after a merge.
291
+ - **A feature id is now OPTIONAL.** `tldrx watch check` checks every card in the run — the shape a
292
+ CI job wants; `tldrx watch check <feature>` scopes it to one and still prints the citation
293
+ verdict `check` always printed. The citation re-check is unchanged and still exits 1 on a dead
294
+ `[src: …]`.
295
+ - **Owners are DERIVED, never invented.** The watcher schema has no `owner:` key and adding one
296
+ would have been a key nothing writes (the #48 defect again). The owner of a signal here is the
297
+ repo its own citation names — `[src: api:src/Leaderboard.cs:64]` says `api` — and an item that
298
+ cites no repo says so rather than borrowing the card's.
299
+ - **Runnable means the card AND the workspace say so.** Only a `$ <cmd> → exit <n>` source whose
300
+ command `.tldrx/workspace.yml` declares, in a repo the item or the card names unambiguously, is
301
+ offered. `--execute` (off by default) re-runs exactly those, through `runDeclaredCommand` — the
302
+ same allowlist, argv-never-a-shell and timeout the stage `cmd` check uses, extracted rather than
303
+ copied — and reports the exit each gets NOW against the exit the card recorded. That is the one
304
+ thing in the framework that catches a card whose `$ … → exit 0` has quietly become an exit 1:
305
+ `resolveSrc` checks a `cmd` source's MEMBERSHIP and takes the exit code on the agent's word.
306
+ - **A `## Query` block is never runnable.** It is KQL or SQL for the console named under
307
+ `## Where`, which tldrx has neither credentials nor a client for, so it is reproduced with its
308
+ fence language and marked print-only.
309
+ - **Three refusals, told apart because they need different actions.** No `05-watch/` at all ("its
310
+ Watch stage never ran"), a Watch stage that wrote no card ("no story reached `done`"), and a
311
+ `draft` card — which is not a failure but an answer: the card's own `absent:` sources are quoted
312
+ back as what to instrument. The two empty cases exit 3, never 0; a green meaning "I read no
313
+ cards" is the failure this command exists to stop.
314
+
315
+ - **Evals v1 — five golden-transcript evals, one per stage (#26, owner decision 2026-09-01: small
316
+ v1 now).** The suite proved the harness; nothing proved a STAGE. `test/evals/` now runs each of
317
+ What, How, Plan, Build and Watch through the real facilitator against the scripted stand-in agent
318
+ and asserts that stage's output CONTRACT. About 5 seconds on top of `bun test`.
319
+ - **One stage at a time, not a chain.** Stages are sequential — Plan cannot run until How's gate
320
+ is signed — so playing four stages to reach the fifth would make every eval depend on the ones
321
+ before it, and a regression in What would turn all five red without any of them saying why.
322
+ Each eval instead opens its own run on a workflow preset holding exactly one stage, which needs
323
+ no new code: `workflowPath` already prefers `.tldrx/workflows/<scope>.yml` over the shipped
324
+ presets, and `normalisePhase` already takes the phase folder from the stage's own `phase:`
325
+ rather than from its position. Whatever the stage genuinely reads — a plan for Build, a done
326
+ story for Watch — is seeded onto the disk by the scenario.
327
+ - **Built on `learn`'s machinery, not beside it.** The stand-in `claude`
328
+ (`src/core/learn/agentScript.ts`, `learnAgent.ts`) and the toy-repo sandbox are reused as they
329
+ are; the real CLI is unreachable by the same two doors `learn` closes. No production code
330
+ changed for this.
331
+ - **Contract, not snapshot.** Nothing compares bytes. The evals assert what the FRAMEWORK
332
+ computes: the declared outputs read back off `gate.requested`, the `checks:` outcomes and their
333
+ computed detail (`checkPlan`'s branch-model line), the artifacts re-parsed with the framework's
334
+ OWN validators (`validateQuestions`, `parseWatcherCard`), and the side effects a stage exists
335
+ for — a branch cut, the story's `dod` block re-run and its exit code recorded, a `--no-ff` merge
336
+ into the epic branch with `main` untouched, and a watcher card's status COMPUTED as `verified`
337
+ when the scenario's front matter claimed `draft`.
338
+ - **A check that is `skipped` for any reason other than being write-time-only now fails an eval.**
339
+ `runCheck` falls through to `unknown check id '<x>'`, which is what a renamed or deleted check
340
+ looks like from outside — and it would otherwise read as a pass.
341
+ - **`EVALS` is load-bearing, not bookkeeping.** A coverage test asserts it names every stage
342
+ under `stages/`, so a sixth stage shipping without an eval turns the suite red and says which
343
+ one is missing.
344
+ - **Every eval was watched failing before it was trusted.** One sabotage each, listed with its
345
+ symptom in `test/evals/README.md`; the Plan one is the shape to aim for — nothing crashed, every
346
+ count still matched, and dropping a cross-epic `depends_on` was still caught because the derived
347
+ branch model changed. The same file says how to add a sixth eval, and what v1 deliberately does
348
+ not cover: failure paths, the agent gate, attended runs, and prompt QUALITY, which needs a real
349
+ model and a judge.
350
+
351
+ - **`tldrx story reopen <id> --for-fix --note "<defect>"` — a sanctioned fix round on a `done` story
352
+ (#58, owner decision 2026-09-01).** Measured on `260829-scoring-leaderboard`: S11's adversarial
353
+ review found a real defect (linkEmail succeeds, setDisplayName fails, the account is permanently
354
+ linked and the score never claimable). It was accepted, small and well understood — and the story
355
+ was already `done`, so the only choices were rejecting the whole Build stage, which destroys
356
+ fourteen good stories' closure, or fixing it outside the story machinery, which leaves an
357
+ epic-level commit with no story provenance. `done` → fix round was the missing arc.
358
+ - **No attempt is consumed.** The mechanism is the one that was already there: `story.reopened` is a
359
+ reset boundary the review ledger reads, so the approve that closed the story stops counting and
360
+ the fix runs as attempt 1 of 2 — with both turns available to it.
361
+ - **The same DoD and the same reviewer.** The story goes back to `todo` and the Build pipeline picks
362
+ it up unchanged; a fix a reviewer refuses twice blocks, exactly as the original would have.
363
+ Nothing is waved through because a human asked for it.
364
+ - **It cannot relitigate scope.** The `--note` names a defect, and `status:` is the ONLY line the
365
+ verb moves on the story file — the acceptance criteria the reviewer will judge against are the
366
+ ones that were already there.
367
+ - **One open fix round per story.** It opens on a `story.reopened` carrying the new `reason: fix`
368
+ and closes when the story is `done` again; a second `--for-fix` while one is open is refused,
369
+ naming who opened it and with which defect. The bound is read from `events.jsonl`
370
+ (`ReviewLedger.fixRound`), so it holds across processes.
371
+ - Refused when the story is **not** `done` (an unfinished story is the plain verb's job), when
372
+ `--note` is missing, and on that second round. `reason` is written on every `story.reopened` now —
373
+ `fix` or `attempts` — and an event without it predates the key and is an `attempts` reopen, the
374
+ only kind that existed.
375
+ - The plain verb's `done` refusal now points at `--for-fix` beside `reject --stage`.
376
+
377
+ ### Changed
378
+
379
+ - **tldrx is no longer sold as "lightweight" (owner decision, 2026-09-02).** The word survived from
380
+ the concept doc, where it was true of a proposal. What it now describes is five stages, a
381
+ machine-enforced `[src: …]` grammar that refuses a write it cannot resolve, an adversarial
382
+ reviewer that is never the author, a dual-economy budget ledger, and a written trail from `run
383
+ new` to `retro`, held up by a suite that measured 3093 tests across 108 files on 2026-09-02. One line replaces it everywhere, so
384
+ the npm page, the binary's own `--help`, the plugin manifest, the README and both landing pages
385
+ say the same thing: **an evidence-first, file-based AI development framework: five stages, a gate
386
+ on every one, and every claim cited or refused.**
387
+ - Changed in `package.json`, `src/cli/commands/help.ts` (the first line of `tldrx --help`),
388
+ `plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json`, `plugin/skills/tldrx/SKILL.md`, `docs/concept.md`,
389
+ `README.md`, and the docs site's `description`, hero and Spanish mirror.
390
+ - **The status tag moved with it, because it was already stale.** 0.4.0 shipped as `beta`
391
+ (`CHANGELOG.md`, `README.md` release table) while the badge, the README preamble, the binary,
392
+ the plugin manifest, the site's "Where this is" section, both site footers and the generated
393
+ release-notes preamble all still said `alpha`. They say `beta` now. The site's beta bar is
394
+ stated as CLEARED rather than as being worked through, which is what the release table has
395
+ claimed since 0.4.0.
396
+ - `docs/RELEASING.md` gains the thing that made this drift invisible: the `status-…` badge is a
397
+ hardcoded shields.io URL and does **not** update on its own, unlike the npm and CI badges
398
+ beside it. The README's own release paragraph now shows `--tag beta`, because `release.sh`
399
+ writes `alpha` when `--tag` is omitted.
400
+
401
+ - **A watcher card may name a HUMAN owner — optional, per item, never invented (#70).**
402
+ `watch check` derived an owner from each item's own citation: `[src: api:src/Leaderboard.cs:64]`
403
+ → `api`. That was right for v1 and stays the fallback, but it answers a different question from
404
+ the one #70 asked — which repo EMITS a signal is not who gets paged when it stops.
405
+ - **Additive, in both halves.** An optional front-matter `owner:` (validated only when present,
406
+ so every card already on disk still validates) and an optional `(owner: <name>)` annotation on
407
+ an individual item, placed BEFORE its `[src: …]` token because §2.8 makes that token the last
408
+ thing on the line. Resolution is item → card → repo-derived, and the printed line says WHICH
409
+ it is showing: `owner: alice (declared on the item)` versus the pre-#70 `owner: api`, left
410
+ byte-identical for every card that declares nothing.
411
+ - **Filled from the ledger that already names owners, or not at all.** `tldrx init` parks
412
+ "Who owns `<repo>`?" as an `ownership` question and the answer lands in
413
+ `.tldrx/memory/facts.yml`. The Watch prompt was inlining `observability` and `deploy` facts
414
+ only, so a sub-agent asked for an owner had no honest source and would have invented one;
415
+ `ownership` is now inlined, and the brief says the name may come from nowhere else.
416
+ - **A lost name is an error, not an absence.** `(owner: )` is a card that TRIED to name somebody
417
+ and lost it, so it is a shape issue on the card rather than a silent fall-through to the repo
418
+ — which is the exact substitution the issue is about.
419
+
420
+ - **`docs/guide/08-cli-reference.md` documents `note` and `ship` (#72).** Every command in `COMMANDS`
421
+ had a `## tldrx <cmd>` heading except three; #55 wrote `plan`'s, and these are the other two —
422
+ `ship` being the command that opens the PR at the end of a run, and `note` how an operator records
423
+ something against a stage. `DOCUMENTED_SUBCOMMANDS` in `test/cli.test.ts` grew to cover them, which
424
+ is what keeps each of these gaps a red test rather than a note. Only `hook` is left out, and
425
+ deliberately: its seven scripts are documented as the one `<script>` slot `USAGE_SPELLINGS` already
426
+ records as a spelling.
427
+
428
+ - **`tldrx watch`'s one-line summary says checklist.** It read "List and re-check the watcher cards a
429
+ run produced", which described half of what `watch check` is for and disagreed with the `--help`
430
+ text #65 updated.
431
+
432
+ - **`tldrx ship` opens one PR PER REPO when the branch is in more than one (#66, owner decision
433
+ 2026-09-01).** Since #57 a chained multi-repo run cuts ONE integration branch, `epic/<run-id>`,
434
+ with the same name in every repo — so `ship` found it in several, every time, by construction, and
435
+ refused with `pass one: --repo <name>`. The last step of every such run was typing the same command
436
+ once per repo and remembering which ones had already gone through.
437
+ - Same handoff as the body of every PR, the repo name in the title, and every URL listed at the
438
+ end. Each PR opens against **that repo's own** `default_branch`.
439
+ - **One repo is byte-identical**, down to the four lines it prints and the number of processes it
440
+ spawns: the `gh pr list` probe below exists for the multi-repo case and never runs when there is
441
+ only one. The single-repo lines are asserted as exact strings, not substrings — "we did not
442
+ change the common case" is not a claim a `toContain` can make.
443
+ - **A partial failure names both sides.** PR 2 of 3 failing still opens PR 3, and the report lists
444
+ the repos that succeeded with their URLs and the repos that failed with the reason (exit `2`).
445
+ Aborting on the first failure would leave a half-shipped run and no statement of which half.
446
+ - **Re-running is safe.** Before creating, each repo is asked whether an open PR for the branch
447
+ already exists (`gh pr list --head`); one that has is skipped and listed. So the fix for a
448
+ partial failure is `tldrx ship` again and nothing else. A `gh` that fails or answers with
449
+ non-JSON is treated as "there is none", so a transient error can never silently turn a real ship
450
+ into a skip.
451
+ - `--repo` still narrows to exactly one, and `ship` still never pushes: an unpushed branch in one
452
+ repo is that repo's failure line, naming its `git push`, while the other repos' PRs still open.
453
+
454
+ ### Fixed
455
+
456
+ - **A training pass with nothing to read is no longer paid for (#101).** `runTraining` had
457
+ exactly one "nothing to work on, refuse before the money" check and it guarded one half of one
458
+ mode: `nothingToMineRefusal` fires only for a ROLE expert with zero minable runs. The CODE pass
459
+ was pushed unconditionally and nothing ever looked at `selection.inlined.length`, so an expert
460
+ whose `## Domain` matched no file on disk spawned a sub-agent, was shown no code at all, and
461
+ wrote a knowledge file about nothing at full price. Measured on the training fixture before the
462
+ fix, with a domain of `src/does-not-exist/`: **`{ code: 0, costUsd: 0.37, wroteKnowledge: true }`**
463
+ — a successful run, priced, from zero input. Live cost, from #94's thread: two near-empty
464
+ trainings at $0.82 each whose "code sweeps found nothing in-domain".
465
+ - **The choice, named: SKIP a dead pass, REFUSE only when none survives.** That is
466
+ `nothingToMineRefusal`'s own idiom — refuse when there is nothing to train from — without
467
+ denying a `--mode full` run that still has one real pass. The skipped pass's reason goes to
468
+ stderr before the money, exactly like the #96 pre-start line, and rides back in
469
+ `TrainOutcome.warnings`; `--prepare` prints it too, and its `N sub-agent(s)` line was already
470
+ derived from the surviving passes so it stays honest by construction.
471
+ - **`roleTraining.ts:79`'s uncovered arm is closed.** Its guard reads
472
+ `if (!isRole || minedFiles > 0) return null`, so a NON-role `--mode full` run against zero
473
+ minable runs was never refused: it spawned a second sub-agent to write
474
+ `- none [src: absent:tldrx-work]` — no evidence, no level, full price. That case is now a
475
+ skip. The role case keeps its own, better-worded refusal untouched, because its runs pass is
476
+ the only pass it has.
477
+ - **It is NOT the #96/#98 preflight and does not touch it.** Underfunded and empty are different
478
+ refusals with different remedies, so they are different checks that never consult each other.
479
+ In particular a skipped pass does not re-divide the ceiling: the share `trainPreflight` priced
480
+ and printed is what the surviving sub-agent gets, and the skipped one is simply not spent.
481
+ - **Exit `1`, deliberately.** `2` is this codebase's MONEY refusal (the `MIN_TRAIN_USD` floor and
482
+ the #96 preflight). Every "you asked for something with nothing behind it" refusal in
483
+ `expert train` is `1` — `missingAreaRefusal`, `lightModeRefusal`, and `nothingToMineRefusal`,
484
+ this check's literal sibling, which `test/training.test.ts` pins as "refused (exit 1)".
485
+ - **One doc correction found while checking that.** `docs/guide/08-cli-reference.md` claimed
486
+ `--mode light` on a role expert exits `2`. It exits `1`: `lightModeRefusal` returns
487
+ `EXIT_USAGE`, and `src/cli/exitCodes.ts` defines `EXIT_USAGE = 1`.
488
+
489
+ - **`expert create` now yields an expert that can actually be trained, and states the `## Domain`
490
+ grammar it will be read under (#94).** Live 2026-09-02: `tldrx expert create discoverer` printed
491
+ *"no areas — every level starts at 0"*, and `tldrx expert train discoverer --area discoverer`
492
+ answered *"has no area (areas: none)"*. Neither sentence said HOW to add one; no flag or
493
+ subcommand existed; the sanctioned path — a block in `competencies.yml` — was discoverable only
494
+ by reading the source. Then the same gap cost money twice more: the hand-written `## Domain`
495
+ bullets came out WORKSPACE-relative (`Scavtopia.Workflows/src/…`) because nothing documents the
496
+ grammar, so **a $2.10 full training earned zero evidence — all 13 of its code citations read
497
+ `outside domain`** — plus two near-empty $0.82 runs whose code sweeps found nothing in domain.
498
+ - **`--area <id>` seeds the first competency area, and `--title <text>` names it.** The title is
499
+ not decoration: light mode greps the words of the area title to choose which files the expert
500
+ is shown (`training/selectFiles.ts`), so `create` prints the default title it chose and names
501
+ `--title`. An area id obeys the same slug rule the expert name does — it is a filename
502
+ (`knowledge/<area>.md`) and half of a copy-pasteable `--area` argument.
503
+ - **Both refusals name the FILE and print the block.** `expert train` on a missing area now
504
+ answers with `.tldrx/experts/<name>/competencies.yml` and the five keys to paste (`id`,
505
+ `title`, `level: 0`, `train_prompt`, `evidence: []`), from one helper both the CLI and
506
+ `runTraining` use, so the two paths cannot drift. `create` with no area says the same thing.
507
+ - **`create` writes the front-matter `repos:`**, read off `.tldrx/workspace.yml` (`repos: []`
508
+ when there is none, rather than a guess). `expert.md` had no such key at all, so a
509
+ hand-created expert declared nothing about which repos its `## Domain` bullets are relative
510
+ to — and that is exactly the thing the bullets are relative to.
511
+ - **The created `expert.md` states the grammar in its own `## Domain` section**: bullets are
512
+ repo-RELATIVE with no repo prefix, a whole-repo claim is `` - repo `api` ``, citations arrive
513
+ as `repo:path:line` so `api:src/Checkout/Cart.cs:12` is matched by `` `src/Checkout/` `` and
514
+ **not** by `` `api/src/Checkout/` ``. It is written as prose, deliberately: a worked example
515
+ written as a BULLET would itself be parsed as a declared domain path, and an expert that
516
+ silently claims `api/src/Checkout` puts every real citation outside its own domain — the bug,
517
+ not the fix. Pinned by a test that the created file still parses to zero domain paths.
518
+ - **The `outside domain` warning names the grammar FIRST** when the cited path would match with
519
+ one leading segment dropped from either side — the bullet carrying a repo prefix it should
520
+ not, or the citation being workspace-relative where a `repo:path:line` was wanted. It says the
521
+ measured fact (`X` without its first segment DOES contain this path), not a diagnosis.
522
+ - **And naming another expert no longer reads as exclusivity.** *"train that expert on it
523
+ instead"* was measured false: overlap between domains is legal, and the hint fires whenever
524
+ this expert's own paths miss. It now reads *"also declares a domain that contains it, so it
525
+ may be the better home for this one (overlap is legal: this fired because none of `<expert>`'s
526
+ own paths match)"*.
527
+ - **`init/loadWorkspaceFile.ts` reads `.tldrx/workspace.yml`'s name from `core/paths.ts`**
528
+ (`PROJECT_WORKSPACE_FILE`, the constant #92 added) instead of from `init/runInit.ts`;
529
+ `runInit` keeps exporting `WORKSPACE_FILE` under that name, aliased to the same string, so no
530
+ import site changed. `loadWorkspaceFile` is the small leaf several commands read the repo list
531
+ through, and taking that one constant off `runInit` dragged the whole of `init` — detection,
532
+ map providers, the MCP probe — into every module that read it: `dist/hooks/session-start.js`
533
+ went 37,937 → 54,467 bytes and blew the 50 KB entry-point cap `test/build.test.ts` enforces.
534
+ It is back to 37,937.
535
+ - Documented in `docs/spec.md` §2.3 and §2.8, `docs/guide/04-experts.md`,
536
+ `docs/guide/08-cli-reference.md`, `docs/guide/09-troubleshooting.md` and both docs-site expert
537
+ guides — the grammar had never been written down anywhere outside `expertDomain.ts`.
538
+
539
+ - **`release.sh` ran the gate AFTER pushing the release commit to `main` (#100).** The order was
540
+ commit → push `main` → `release-check.sh` → tag → push tag, so every red item the gate has —
541
+ tests, typecheck, build, the `Bun.*` seam grep, "tag already exists", "already on npm", "tree
542
+ not clean" — landed a `release: X.Y.Z` commit on `origin/main` carrying a **dated** CHANGELOG
543
+ heading and a **dated** README row, with no tag behind it. That is precisely the half-released
544
+ state checklist item 4 exists to prevent, and it costs a revert commit on `main` or a
545
+ hand-repaired CHANGELOG to undo. The order is now commit → **gate** → push `main` → tag → push
546
+ tag: a red gate leaves `origin/main`, the tags and npm untouched, the whole of the damage is one
547
+ local commit, and the script says so and prints the one command that drops it.
548
+ - **The gate did not have to be weakened to move it.** Of its items only "in sync with
549
+ `origin/main`" assumes the push already happened; run against an unpushed release commit it
550
+ would be permanently red, which is the trap in the naive reorder. `release-check.sh` takes a
551
+ new `--pre-push` that restates that one item as **"`origin/main` is HEAD's parent"** — the same
552
+ assertion (nobody moved `main` under you, nothing but the release commit is unpushed) for a
553
+ tree that has not pushed yet, and one notch stronger, since it also refuses a second unpushed
554
+ commit. Items 1–3 already needed the edits, which exist by then; "working tree clean", "on
555
+ main", "tag does not exist", "not on npm", typecheck, tests, build and the seam grep are
556
+ untouched and all still run. **No flag, no default, no CI path changed**: bare
557
+ `release-check.sh` (the `release-gate-hook.sh` PreToolUse deny) and `--ci` (publish.yml)
558
+ behave exactly as before, and there is a test for each.
559
+ - **`sed -i ''` was macOS-only**, which is why this path had never had a test: measured against
560
+ GNU sed 4.9 in `debian:stable-slim`, `sed -i '' -E …` exits **2** with `sed: can't read
561
+ s/^## …/: No such file or directory`, so `release.sh` could not run on the ubuntu CI runner at
562
+ all. Both substitutions now go through a temp file outside the tree and are `cat` back (inode,
563
+ mode and a clean working tree preserved) — byte-identical output on BSD sed, and it runs on
564
+ GNU sed, which is what lets `test/release-gate-order.test.ts` hold the ordering in CI. The new
565
+ file runs the real two scripts against a real bare "origin" with only `bun` and `npm` stubbed,
566
+ and reads the ordering off the shas the gate actually ran against: pre-fix, HEAD and
567
+ `origin/main` were EQUAL at gate time; now they differ by the release commit.
568
+
569
+ - **The prose was validated against the binary, top to bottom, and a lot of it was false.**
570
+ The last docs QA (3ee3723) was a release ago; `watch check`/`watch arm`, `update` and
571
+ its notice, the `drive` preflight, `plan schema`, `questions cards`, `story reopen --for-fix`,
572
+ the host-token economy and the dashboard's new sources have all landed since. Every claim in
573
+ `README.md`, all thirteen English pages, all thirteen Spanish pages and `CONTRIBUTING.md` was
574
+ cold-read for lies first, then checked against `tldrx <cmd> --help` and the source. What was
575
+ found was not drift at the edges — most of it was load-bearing.
576
+ - **A flag that does not exist.** The README's cost section explained what `--max-budget-usd`
577
+ does. That is the flag tldrx passes DOWN to `claude`, not one a user may type: `tldrx next
578
+ --max-budget-usd 5` answers `unknown flag`. The user-facing flag is `--max-usd`.
579
+ - **"Every run-targeting command exits `2`" was wrong twice**, in the README, the CLI reference
580
+ and the FAQ. `tldrx cost` refuses at exit **1** (`cost.ts` returns `EXIT_USAGE`, and its own
581
+ `--help` never lists a 2), and `tldrx run status` does not refuse at all — it lists every open
582
+ run and exits **0**, which is the whole point of it, since it is the screen you read to find
583
+ the id the others are asking for. All three pages also named five commands as taking a
584
+ positional `<run>`; the real split is that most take either form, `replay` and `retro` take
585
+ the positional only (`--run` there is an unknown flag, measured), and seven take `--run` only.
586
+ - **A documented command that silently creates a directory where you asked for a file.**
587
+ `tldrx dashboard --static --out ./somewhere/page.html` was in the reference. `--out` is a
588
+ directory and the filename is not negotiable (`writeStatic.ts` joins `index.html` and
589
+ `mkdirSync`s the path), so that line makes a directory literally named `page.html`.
590
+ - **A required tool the Quickstart did not name.** `env.yml` declares four `required: true`
591
+ tools; the install page named Node, `git` and `claude` and never mentioned **Bun ≥ 1.3**, so a
592
+ reader who followed it exactly got `tldrx doctor` exit 1 and no explanation.
593
+ - **The `tldrx learn` chapter list was stale AND swapped** on both language Quickstarts: 6 and 7
594
+ are `the agent gate` and `attended`, and the pages had two other titles in the other order —
595
+ so `--chapter 7` sent a reader looking for the agent gate to the wrong chapter.
596
+ - **Counts that had grown.** The `.gitignore` block `init` writes excludes **eight** paths, not
597
+ the five the README listed. The `[src: …]` grammar has **eight** kinds, not the seven the
598
+ evidence table showed — `aidlc:` was missing while the page's own next paragraph said
599
+ "eight". The What, How and Plan stages each declare `questions.md` as an output and Plan also
600
+ declares `budget.yml`; the stages table showed none of them, which matters because the auto
601
+ gate is measured on exactly that file. `tldrx init` seeds **three** kinds of expert — role,
602
+ stack and **domain** — and both expert sections said two.
603
+ - **Twelve `workflows/*.yml` said the auto gate has "the five spec §5 conditions"** and listed
604
+ five. `evaluateAutoGate` has had **seven** since the stories and boundary conditions landed.
605
+ - **The `tldrx drive` mandate's preflight (#84) was absent from every page that enumerates what
606
+ the mandate carries**, in both languages, and the English driving guide still taught the
607
+ three-command recipe the preflight replaced.
608
+ - **`CONTRIBUTING.md` overstated the ref guard and understated the lock.** The guard refuses a
609
+ ref move while ANOTHER invocation holds the lock — the holding run's own git children carry
610
+ `MW_LOCK_TOKEN` and pass, which is what lets the wave commit and push through its own guard;
611
+ as written it would have refused the merge it exists to protect. `merge-wave.sh`'s seven exit
612
+ codes were documented nowhere, in a file whose own rule is to read exit codes. The lock's wait
613
+ is bounded (`MW_LOCK_WAIT_S`, default 3600 s, then exit 6) and `CLAUDE.md` implied it was not.
614
+ - **The Bun/Node seam rule was stated more broadly than it is enforced**, in `CONTRIBUTING.md`,
615
+ `CLAUDE.md` and `docs/RELEASING.md`: the grep scans `src` only, and `scripts/build.ts` calls
616
+ `Bun.build` for a living. A contributor reading it literally files a bug against the build.
617
+ - **`publish.yml` does not "run the same check".** `release-check.sh --ci` skips items 4 and 5
618
+ entirely; the seam check runs in no CI workflow at all. Said plainly now, in both the README
619
+ and `docs/RELEASING.md`.
620
+ - **Four translated strings that had to stay English** in the Spanish mirror: two `--note`
621
+ samples, the `## Qn · Title` heading the §2.7 parser matches on, and `$0.00 of $25.00`, which
622
+ is what the dashboard actually renders.
623
+ - Fixed on the way: the `0.5.0` CHANGELOG section had grown **two `### Fixed` groups** and had
624
+ two additions (Evals v1, `story reopen --for-fix`) filed under `### Removed` — an artefact of
625
+ unioning sibling branches. One group per kind now, in the order `0.3.0` used, with every entry
626
+ byte-identical and only the duplicate heading gone.
627
+ - Two defects found while checking and **filed rather than fixed**, both outside this pass:
628
+ [#99](https://github.com/ederwii/tldr-experts/issues/99) `test/merge-wave.test.ts` asserts over
629
+ a shared `TMPDIR`, so a sibling process fails it (measured: red under load, green alone, and
630
+ green for the full suite with no sibling), and
631
+ [#100](https://github.com/ederwii/tldr-experts/issues/100) `release.sh` pushes the release
632
+ commit to `main` before it runs `release-check.sh`.
633
+
634
+ - **`expert train` says what it is about to spend, on which model, BEFORE it spends it (#96).**
635
+ Live 2026-09-02: `tldrx expert train discoverer --area discoverer --mode full` inherited the
636
+ claude CLI's last-used model — `fable-5`, a premium tier — and ran against the default ceiling.
637
+ Full mode splits that ceiling between its two sub-agents, so the code pass was handed $1.00. It
638
+ died with `Reached maximum budget ($1)` at 54 s, **$1.31 spent and recorded, nothing written to
639
+ `competencies.yml`.** Three defaults compounded and not one of them was said out loud.
640
+ - **A pre-start line names the model, its tier, and where the name came from** — `--model`,
641
+ `$ANTHROPIC_MODEL`, or a `model:` key in `.claude/settings.local.json` /
642
+ `.claude/settings.json` / `~/.claude/settings.json`: `model claude-fable-5[1m] (premium,
643
+ inherited from your claude CLI via ~/.claude/settings.json) — pass --model to override ·
644
+ --mode full · $3.00 across 2 sub-agent(s), $1.50 each`. When nothing on the box says which
645
+ model the CLI will pick, the line says THAT rather than inventing a tier.
646
+ - **A refusal — exit `2`, nothing spawned, nothing spent — when the share cannot fit and the
647
+ ceiling is the DEFAULT one.** The test is arithmetic, not a category: does the money one
648
+ sub-agent gets reach what one pass on that tier costs? Measured full trainings run
649
+ **$1.21–$1.60 end to end on a mid model** (two `training.jsonl` lines on `aparece-platform`,
650
+ `docs/audits/2026-08-29/experts-knowledge.md` §E, plus the top of the band in #96), so one
651
+ pass is ~$0.70 mid and ~$1.76 premium (opus lists at 2.5x sonnet). Full mode's $1.50 a pass
652
+ does not reach it. The refusal names both remedies — `--model sonnet`, or `--max-usd <n>`.
653
+ - **An explicit `--max-usd` is never refused.** The operator looked at the number; that is the
654
+ whole decision this check exists to ask for. It warns in one line and proceeds.
655
+ - **The full-mode default `--max-usd` is now $3.00**, up from the $2.00 light mode still uses,
656
+ because full mode pays for two sub-agent passes and the one repair round a rejected knowledge
657
+ file earns comes out of the same share. $1.50 a pass is ~2x the measured per-pass midpoint.
658
+ Deliberately not scaled higher for a premium model: `--max-budget-usd` is a stop after the
659
+ turn, not a cap (spec §2.6.1 — a $1.50 ceiling has realised $5.15), so a bigger default cannot
660
+ make a premium turn affordable, only more expensive to lose. `budget-gate` prices `--mode
661
+ full` at $3.00 to match.
662
+ - Salvaging the partial evidence a budget death throws away is a design call and was NOT built;
663
+ the question is asked on #96.
664
+
665
+ - **`expert train --prepare` carries that check into the bundle (#98).** The check above was wired
666
+ to the spawning path only, and `--prepare` spawns nothing — but it writes the ceiling into
667
+ `pending.json` (`max_budget_usd: 1.50`) and into the prompt text (`Ceiling for this sub-agent:
668
+ $1.50`), and a host session then spends against it. Measured on `b5d59c5`: a full `--prepare` with
669
+ a premium model inherited from `~/.claude/settings.json` printed `$1.50 ceiling each`, returned
670
+ `preflight: null`, and wrote two bundles saying `model: null` — the same trap, one command later,
671
+ on the host's money.
672
+ - The model line and any warning now go to **stdout with the prepared block** and into an optional
673
+ **`preflight`** key on each bundle's `pending.json`. Absent when there is no warning, so an
674
+ unremarkable bundle stays byte-identical to the one this command has always written.
675
+ - **What it may CLAIM differs by half.** Headless, tldrx spawns `claude` with no `--model`, so the
676
+ CLI's default is a prediction about a process this code starts: the refusal stands. On
677
+ `--prepare` an **explicit `--model`** is an instruction written into the bundle and is refused
678
+ the same way (exit `2`, no bundle written); an **inherited** model only warns, naming both
679
+ remedies — refusing a bundle over a settings-file key, for a session tldrx does not control,
680
+ would be asserting more than is known. `--commit` says nothing: that money is already spent.
681
+
682
+ - **`test/merge-wave.test.ts` no longer fails a wave over another wave's log directory (#95, #97).**
683
+ `merge-wave.sh` writes its logs to `${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mw-$$`, and the test that asserts a green run
684
+ cleans up after itself diffed a listing of the machine's SHARED tmpdir. Every wave on the box
685
+ writes there — this file's other tests, every sibling agent's wave, and the real merge wave whose
686
+ `bun test` is running this very file — so the assertion was about ONE run's cleanup and measured
687
+ the whole machine. It went red twice on trees whose diff touches neither the script nor its tests:
688
+ **#95**, on a sibling's DELIBERATELY KEPT red-wave log (`mw-35458`, carrying another run's
689
+ `poison.txt` merge — merge-wave keeps a failed run's logs on purpose, "every FAIL above names the
690
+ directory it kept"); and **#97**, on a CONCURRENT invocation's LIVE `mw-15412`, twelve minutes into
691
+ #90's wave, with `main` left at an unpushed merge commit. Both cost a full re-gate, and the same
692
+ trees passed standalone.
693
+ - **Every invocation now gets a private `$TMPDIR` inside its own sandbox**, so "did THIS run clean
694
+ up after itself" has an answer that does not depend on what else the box is doing. Per
695
+ invocation, not per sandbox: this file deliberately runs two waves at once. The scan is read only
696
+ after the run has exited, so anything left in that root is a genuine leftover and no liveness
697
+ rule has to be guessed at — a concurrent wave's live `mw-<pid>` is, correctly, invisible from
698
+ there.
699
+ - **What the test asserts about merge-wave is unchanged.** A green run that stops removing its log
700
+ directory still fails it, and a red run that stops keeping the one it names still fails it — both
701
+ re-measured by mutating `scripts/merge-wave.sh` and watching the assertions fire.
702
+ - **A red run's kept logs now leave with the sandbox.** They were being written to the machine's
703
+ tmpdir and never removed — 1300 `mw-*` directories had accumulated there by the time #95 was
704
+ filed, including the one it tripped on.
705
+
706
+ - **A story's first attempt is dispatched at what the plan priced it, not at that figure halved
707
+ again (#91).** `03-plan/budget.yml` has been read since 2026-08-30, but the price it carries was
708
+ divided by the worst case ONE story can be asked for — `MAX_ATTEMPTS × (1 + REVIEWER_SHARE)` =
709
+ 2.5 — before a single attempt had run. Measured on run `260901-leaderboard-v2` (finding F-4):
710
+ Delivery priced S2 at $2.10 of a $3.85 Build stage and the developer was dispatched under
711
+ **$0.84**. A deliberately-atomic large story starved on the one attempt that mattered while
712
+ trivial ones carried slack, and the plan's own measured pricing — the whole point of writing the
713
+ file — was thrown away in the arithmetic that read it.
714
+ - **`developerPriceDivisor(attempt)`** now decides it. Attempt 1 is the pass Delivery priced and
715
+ gets `price / (1 + REVIEWER_SHARE)` — the whole price less the reviewer's derived quarter, so
716
+ S2's ceiling goes $0.84 → **$1.68**. Attempt 2 is a contingency nobody priced and keeps the
717
+ pre-#91 figure, `price / (MAX_ATTEMPTS × (1 + REVIEWER_SHARE))`. No attempt is ever handed less
718
+ than it was handed before.
719
+ - **The even split is untouched.** A plan with no `budget.yml`, one that does not validate, one
720
+ priced in `host-tokens`, and any story the plan did not name all still get
721
+ `stage / (stories × attempts × 1.25)`, pinned by tests that were green before this change and
722
+ are green after it.
723
+ - **What this costs, stated.** The worst case one PRICED story can be asked for goes from
724
+ `0.8 × price` to `1.2 × price`. The phase ceiling is metered once, at stage entry —
725
+ `runNext.runExecutor` skips the brake while a stage is `running` — so nothing re-checks the
726
+ envelope between two spawns of the same headless `runAll`; that is the window
727
+ `REVIEWER_FLOOR_USD` already opens by design. `priceScale` still holds the sum of the declared
728
+ prices inside the stage, and `remainingWork` still clamps the brake's estimate to the stage's
729
+ own price, so the brake can never refuse more often than it used to. The measured REMAINDER of
730
+ a story's price would be tighter on the second attempt, and is recoverable (`agent.result`
731
+ carries `key` = the story id and a row-level `cost_usd`) — it is not read, because the
732
+ budget-gate hook's `remainingWork` would have to read the same ledger on its hot path to stay
733
+ in step, and the worst case is `0.8 + 0.4` either way.
734
+ - **`remainingWork` mirrors the schedule, turn by turn.** `RemainingStory` gains
735
+ `developerCapsUsd` — one cap per turn still to dispatch, in the order they run — because
736
+ `cap × turns` stopped being the truth. The turns still to run are the LAST of the story's run
737
+ of attempts, so a story with one attempt behind it is priced as the attempt 2 it is about to
738
+ become. `renderRemainingWork` prints `dev $1.20 ×2` while the turns cost the same and
739
+ `dev $3.60 + $1.80` once they do not, so the total on the line still adds up. A test asserts
740
+ the mirrored divisor equals the executor's own, as it already did for the three constants.
741
+
742
+ - **The merge lock now has something to say about raw git in the shared checkout (#89).** The
743
+ lock serialises merge-wave INVOCATIONS; it never serialised git. Measured 2026-09-02: while
744
+ agent A's gates were running, agent B typed `git reset --hard origin/main` into the same
745
+ shared checkout — reflog `reset: moving to origin/main` — and A's merge commit stopped being
746
+ reachable from `main` mid-gate. #44's gated-HEAD assertion fired for the first time in anger
747
+ and refused to push. The aftermath was caught; the damage was not prevented.
748
+ - **`scripts/merge-guard.sh`, installed as a `reference-transaction` hook on every
749
+ merge-wave run.** That is the only hook git will let abort work in progress: it fires for
750
+ every reference update and, in its `prepared` state alone, aborts the whole transaction on
751
+ a non-zero exit. Measured on git 2.50.1 with the guard refusing — `git reset --hard`,
752
+ `git checkout -B main`, `git merge --no-ff`, `git commit` (including `--no-verify`, which
753
+ does **not** bypass it) and `git update-ref` all exit 128 with `fatal: ref updates aborted
754
+ by hook`, and **the ref does not move**. There is no pre-reset, pre-checkout or
755
+ pre-merge-anything hook; this is the strongest mechanism git offers without a daemon.
756
+ - **Where the line honestly lies, because it is not where it looks.** `git reset --hard`
757
+ writes the WORKING TREE before it opens any ref transaction — measured: the file content
758
+ had already changed to the target commit's while HEAD still pointed at the old one. So the
759
+ guard saves the **commit**, which is what #89 lost, and cannot save the checked-out files;
760
+ a wave whose worktree is clobbered mid-gate still gates a tree nobody meant it to, and its
761
+ gated-HEAD assertion will not fire, because HEAD is exactly where it left it. `git merge`
762
+ is the better case — refused before the worktree is touched at all. And a hook in a
763
+ checkout is bypassable by anyone willing to: `git -c core.hooksPath=…`, deleting the hook,
764
+ or exporting `MW_LOCK_TOKEN`. It is built against accidents, not intent.
765
+ - **The lock is the sentinel; the marker is what that lock looks like to a human.**
766
+ `merge-wave.sh` writes `.MERGE-WAVE-IN-PROGRESS` at the root of the shared checkout naming
767
+ the branch, the owning pid and host, and the way back in. Gitignored, so a wave cannot trip
768
+ its own dirty-tree guard; removed by `release()` on every path out, INT and TERM traps
769
+ included. The guard keys on the LOCK rather than on the marker, because only the lock
770
+ carries an owner and only an owner can be tested for death — a SIGKILLed wave must not
771
+ leave a file behind that wedges the checkout.
772
+ - **Scope, so an agent's own work is never in the way.** In the shared checkout every ref
773
+ update is refused while a foreign wave holds the lock. From a linked worktree only
774
+ `refs/heads/main` is — refs live in the common dir, so `git update-ref refs/heads/main`
775
+ typed in a worktree destroys the wave just as thoroughly (measured: it succeeds, unguarded).
776
+ The holder's own git is recognised by an exported token written inside the lock, so
777
+ merge-wave cannot deadlock itself, and a lock whose owner is dead is ignored exactly as the
778
+ waiting loop already ignores it — `scripts/merge-lock.sh` is that one vocabulary, shared by
779
+ writer and guard so the two cannot drift apart.
780
+ - **The state name git passes is not portable, and assuming it was shipped a red CI.** macOS
781
+ git 2.50.1 calls the abortable state `prepared`; the Linux runner's git calls it something
782
+ else (`fatal: in 'preparing' phase, update aborted by the reference-transaction hook`, run
783
+ 33589554234 on `e0e76a2`). The guard's `*)` arm printed a usage error and exited 2, so on
784
+ that machine every ref update in every sandbox was refused and the whole merge-wave suite
785
+ went red at once while macOS stayed green — #49's failure shape exactly. It now recognises
786
+ `committed` and `aborted` and treats **everything else** as the prepare state, which cannot
787
+ repeat the blanket refusal: git honours the exit code in the prepare state only, so an
788
+ unrecognised name is either handled correctly or ignored. The test asks git which states it
789
+ passes rather than hardcoding them, and additionally probes the names this machine does NOT
790
+ use — the only way the portability property is testable anywhere.
791
+
792
+ - **And the convention it only approximates is now written down**, verbatim and identically,
793
+ in `CONTRIBUTING.md` and `CLAUDE.md`: agents touch the shared checkout ONLY through
794
+ `scripts/merge-wave.sh`, every other piece of work happens in their own worktree, and never
795
+ `git reset --hard` or `git checkout -B main` in the shared checkout. A test asserts both
796
+ files still say it.
797
+
798
+ - **A cancelled run is no longer told to retry itself (#86).** `tldrx run cancel` is the way to
799
+ close a run whose stage FAILED — that is the case `run.cancelled` exists for, and it is a
800
+ run-level field precisely so the stages keep their failure, "which is history, not state".
801
+ `deriveRunStatus` read that decision first; `waitingFor` could not read it at all. It is typed
802
+ against `WaitingRun`, the smallest shape both `RunFile` and the dashboard's tolerantly-read
803
+ `RunDocument` satisfy, and that shape had `cursor` and `phases` and nothing else — so the answer
804
+ came from the status of the stage at the cursor, which a cancellation deliberately leaves
805
+ `failed`. A run somebody had closed reported `waiting.kind: failed` and
806
+ `"… FAILED — retry: \`tldrx next\`"`, counted as movable, and could wear `← next` on the
807
+ dashboard. Both screens, because both have read the same derivation since #60.
808
+ - `WaitingRun` grows an optional `cancelled`, `RunDocument` projects it, and `waitingFor` reads
809
+ it FIRST — before the cursor checks, in the same order and for the same reason
810
+ `deriveRunStatus` does. A ninth waiting kind, `cancelled`, joins `WAITING_KINDS`; it is not in
811
+ `MOVABLE_KINDS`, so `tldrx status` stops offering the run and the dashboard raises no card.
812
+ - The message names **who closed it, when, and their note** — three facts that were dropped
813
+ everywhere, on the one screen that exists to say what a run needs. It offers no command:
814
+ `tldrx next` on a cancelled run already advances nothing, and printing it is what made an
815
+ operator think there was something left to do.
816
+
817
+ - **An out-of-order `--commit` no longer leaves a `stage.started` behind (#87).** `runExecutor`
818
+ stamped the stage `running` and appended `stage.started` on its way in, before the executor had
819
+ had a chance to say anything. #82 restores the stage's STATUS when that executor turns out to be
820
+ refusing a sequencing mistake, so `run.yml` comes back byte for byte — but `events.jsonl` is
821
+ append-only truth and the line could not be unwritten. The live run `260901-leaderboard-v2` left
822
+ one at 2026-09-02T00:36:37Z: a `stage.started` with no matching `stage.done` or `stage.failed`,
823
+ which `renderReplay` and anything counting starts read as a start. A `--commit` never STARTS a
824
+ stage — it settles a cycle a `--prepare` started, and on the ordinary commit the stage is
825
+ already `running` and no event was emitted anyway — so it no longer emits one at all. The
826
+ `markRunning` STAMP stays, keeping the original `started_at`, so a `--commit` that does settle a
827
+ cycle on a stage something demoted still finishes through. The refusal now precedes the event by
828
+ construction: there is no event. Pinned by measuring the WHOLE log, not a `stage.started` count.
829
+
830
+ - **An unreadable `result.json` is refused like an absent one, loudly (#88).** Owner decision,
831
+ 2026-09-02. #82 split `PendingError` into `absent` (the host has not written the file) and
832
+ `unreadable` (the host wrote it and got it wrong), and left the second failing the stage. But
833
+ nothing was attempted there either — no sub-agent ran, no cent moved, no branch changed — and
834
+ the fix is the same single command: rewrite the file, run `tldrx next --commit` again. Failing
835
+ it actively OBSTRUCTED that fix, because it demoted the stage out of `running`, and the
836
+ phase-budget gate is skipped exactly when a stage is `running` — which is how #82's live run
837
+ took a `budget.blocked` it had not earned. A host that fat-fingers its JSON paid the same tax.
838
+ It is #79's model — FORM never costs an attempt, CONTENT/WORK always does — applied to run
839
+ state.
840
+ - Corruption does not pass silently. Both call sites in `build.ts` now go through one door that
841
+ appends a typed **`result.unreadable`** event naming the run-dir-relative path, the parser's
842
+ own message, the role (`developer` or `reviewer`) and the story, and the refusal line says
843
+ which file to rewrite and which command to run. It is the only thing a sequencing refusal ever
844
+ writes; `run.yml` still comes back byte for byte, and `tldrx replay` renders the line.
845
+ - `parseReview`'s fail-closed rule is untouched and is a different, harsher contract: it governs
846
+ an envelope that PARSES and is not a valid verdict (unreadable ⇒ `changes`, never `approve`).
847
+ A file that does not parse at all never reaches it.
848
+
849
+ - **Watch READS the branch it diffs off `run.yml`; it used to derive one (#90).** The watch stage
850
+ diffed `feature.epic?.branch` — the `branch:` an epic file DECLARES, written at Plan time before a
851
+ line of code exists. Under the integration branch model (#57) the Build executor deliberately
852
+ ignores that value: every epic's stories merge into one `epic/<run-slug>` branch and the epic
853
+ stays in the plan as a label. So on `260901-leaderboard-v2` the prompt told BOTH watchers,
854
+ verbatim, that `epic/leaderboard-v2-api` *"does not resolve in scavtopia-workflows. Treat this
855
+ feature's code as UNSEEN — cite `absent:` rather than guessing at what it emits"* — about a branch
856
+ nothing had ever cut, while `build.epic_branch` recorded the real one three lines away in the same
857
+ run. An obedient watcher would have written an all-`absent:` card, and **that card PASSES
858
+ `claim-sources`**, because an `absent:` citation resolves by construction. Confident, validated,
859
+ useless coverage; caught only because the host's brief carried the real branch independently.
860
+ - **The branch now comes from the run's record and nowhere else** (`core/watch/recordedBranch.ts`).
861
+ `branch_model: integration` → the run's one recorded branch, for every feature. `per-epic`, and
862
+ every run written before `branch_model` existed → the recorded LIST, with the epic's declaration
863
+ used *only as a key into it*. A declaration is never returned as a branch: either it is in the
864
+ record and the record's entry is what is returned, or the answer is "unrecorded".
865
+ - **A branch the record CLAIMS and the repo cannot find is now a refusal**, not an instruction.
866
+ It is the run contradicting itself, so the stage refuses before anything spawns (`refused`, so
867
+ the stage goes back to `ready`), naming the recorded value, the feature and the repo, and saying
868
+ what fixes it. The treat-as-UNSEEN instruction survives for the one honest case — the record
869
+ names no branch at all — where the prompt now cites `build.epic_branch` rather than a name it
870
+ made up. The two absences used to render as the same sentence.
871
+ - Thirteen tests, red first (6 red / 6 green before, 13 green after): the derivation reproduced
872
+ under both branch models (the prompt's branch lines asserted byte for byte against
873
+ `build.epic_branch`), the loud path in both `headless` and `--prepare`, `--commit` deliberately
874
+ NOT refusing a turn that is already paid for, and the honest absence.
875
+
876
+ - **A recorded `default_branch` that does not resolve is incoherent state too (#92).** #90 taught
877
+ Watch to tell a run that recorded NO branch (honest) from a branch its own `build.epic_branch`
878
+ claims and the repo cannot find (incoherent, refused). It left the third case alone: the BASE of
879
+ the same diff. `.tldrx/workspace.yml` declares `default_branch: main` for a repo where `main` does
880
+ not resolve, and the prompt rendered *"`main`, the `default_branch` of api, does not resolve
881
+ there. Treat this feature's code as UNSEEN — cite `absent:` rather than guessing at what it
882
+ emits"* — inviting the same all-`absent:` card that passes `claim-sources` and covers nothing.
883
+ Narrower blast radius than #90 (a misdetected or renamed default branch, not an every-run
884
+ derivation), same shape: **a value the workspace RECORDS that the repo cannot find.**
885
+ - **Watch refuses at `--prepare` and headless**, naming the repo, the recorded value and
886
+ `.tldrx/workspace.yml`, and saying that the value was DETECTED from that repo — so a repo with
887
+ no such branch means the record has gone stale (a rename, a fresh clone with only remote
888
+ branches, a misdetection). `epicDiff` carries it as `baseMissing`, the sibling of #90's
889
+ `branchMissing`, and checks the base FIRST: a base that is not there voids every diff in that
890
+ repo rather than emptying one, so there is nothing to learn by asking about the branch. On
891
+ `--commit` it stays tolerant, the same call #90 made — those cards are already paid for.
892
+ - **`tldrx doctor` reports it**, which is where the issue asked whether it belonged, and the
893
+ answer is yes: this is a workspace RECORDING something false, and `doctor` is the one command
894
+ whose job is what this machine and this workspace actually have. One
895
+ `git rev-parse --verify --quiet` per declared repo, nothing fetched or written. A **warning**
896
+ that never moves the exit code — `healthy` is about the TOOLS this machine has, and a repo can
897
+ legitimately be mid-clone or mid-rename on a developer's box; a `doctor` that exits 1 for that
898
+ is a `doctor` people stop running. A repo that is not on disk, has no `default_branch` recorded,
899
+ or is not a git repo is reported as SKIPPED with its reason, never folded into "all resolve".
900
+ - **`boundary` has the gap and deliberately keeps its verdict — measured, not assumed.** It does
901
+ diff `<default_branch>...<epic_branch>` (`boundary.ts`, `base:` read from `workspace.yml`;
902
+ changing the record from `main` to `trunk` changes the target's `base` byte for byte), and an
903
+ unresolvable base came back `{ok: true, detail: "n/a (nothing could be diffed: \`trunk\` does not
904
+ resolve in app)"}` — the gate passes GREEN and stops measuring for as long as the record is
905
+ wrong. It is **not** made to refuse: it spawns nothing and writes nothing, so the fault costs it
906
+ a measurement rather than producing a false one, and `boundary.ts`'s own contract is that it
907
+ "must not refuse a gate for a reason that has nothing to do with the boundary" — one stale
908
+ record would otherwise brick every Build gate in the workspace. What changed is the WORDING: its
909
+ two absences used to be the same sentence (`` `<ref>` does not resolve in <repo> ``), so a
910
+ merged-and-deleted epic branch (nothing to fix) read exactly like a stale `default_branch`
911
+ (`n/a` until someone fixes it). The base's reason now names the record and points at
912
+ `tldrx doctor`; the branch's is untouched.
913
+ - `.tldrx/workspace.yml` is spelled once, in `paths.ts`, now that three operator-facing messages
914
+ tell someone to go and edit it.
915
+ - Fifteen tests, red first (8 red / 7 green before, 15 green after), including the verbatim
916
+ pre-fix string captured off the real prompt, the `--commit` tolerance, doctor's warning level
917
+ asserted through `runDoctor` end to end, and the boundary determination pinned on all four
918
+ counts — that it reads `default_branch`, that it stays `ok`, that its reason now names the
919
+ record, and that a missing epic branch keeps its own wording.
920
+
921
+ - **The dashboard says the framework's CURRENT vocabulary, not 0.2.0's.** The live page
922
+ shipped in 0.2.0 and has had one change since; the framework has had a great many. An audit of
923
+ `src/core/dashboard/` against today's `run.yml` and `waiting.ts` found seven words the files use
924
+ and the page dropped. A page that drops a word does not look wrong — it looks finished, which is
925
+ worse, and every one of these was measured on a rendered fixture before it was fixed.
926
+ - **`prepared` and `running` rendered as "nothing".** `waitingFor` has had eight kinds since the
927
+ 2026-08-29 audit; the WAITING ON column named five and fell through to `nothing — <status>` for
928
+ the rest. So a host-attended run with a `--prepare` bundle on disk — the entire attended loop —
929
+ said it was waiting on nothing while `isMovable` had it wearing `← next` on the same row. Every
930
+ kind now prints `waiting.message`, which is the sentence the CLI already prints, and `prepared`
931
+ joins gate/answer/failed as a card: it is a run waiting on a person.
932
+ - **An `agent` gate was counted as a human one.** The execution-path eyebrow read
933
+ `N human, M auto`, so a run opened `--gates what:agent,plan:agent,build:agent` reported as
934
+ all-human — the exact opposite of what it was set up to do, in the one number that eyebrow
935
+ exists to give. It now counts all three, the same arithmetic `renderGates` does.
936
+ - **Nothing showed what an agent gate was signed over.** `run.yml` records the verdict, the
937
+ sample, what resolved and what was refuted, and the run-relative path of the COMMITTED evidence
938
+ note; the model dropped the whole block, so `agent by reviewer` and `human by alan` read as the
939
+ same kind of fact. A human signature is a name and a person accountable for it. An agent's is a
940
+ name and nothing, unless what it checked is beside it. Now `path[].gateEvidence`, printed under
941
+ the signer — the path as text, never a link.
942
+ - **`$0.00 spent` on a run whose turns a host session paid for.** `spentUsd` is metered dollars
943
+ and the meter drew it as the whole story: the exact failure `unmeteredNote` exists to stop the
944
+ CLI making, made in a progress bar. `attendedBy`, `unmeteredTasks` and `hostTokens` now ride the
945
+ model, the card prints `attended: host` in the CLI's own words, and the two currencies are shown
946
+ side by side and never added — there is no exchange rate between a metered dollar and a host token.
947
+ - **`build.branch_model` (#57) and the epic branches were invisible** in a section headed
948
+ *Plan & build*. A chained plan on one integration branch and independent per-epic branches drew
949
+ the identical table. A null model is reported as unrecorded, never guessed at as `per-epic`.
950
+ - **A `stale` stage looked finished.** A stage left behind by `tldrx reject --stage` wears
951
+ `done` with its outputs still on disk, derived from a decision that has been withdrawn. It now
952
+ wears a `stale` chip too.
953
+ - **The page claimed it read `events.jsonl`.** It never has (measured: nothing in `model.ts` or
954
+ `loadPhaseArtefacts` opens the ledger). That sentence is why a reader could not tell an empty
955
+ ledger from an unread one, so the *How to use it* tab now says which files it reads, that the
956
+ ledger is not among them, and which commands do read it. The Watchers tab, which existed
957
+ precisely to be honest about a gap, printed an invented card shape whose field names matched
958
+ none of the seven `Watcher` actually carries; it now prints the real one and names
959
+ `tldrx watch list`.
960
+ - **`review` was grey.** A `PLAN_STATUSES` value the page's tone function had never heard of, so
961
+ a story in review landed in the same colour as one nobody had started.
962
+ - **The test that should have caught all of this asserted the opposite.** `WAITING_KINDS` is now a
963
+ value rather than a bare type union, and the chain fixture's coverage test names the three kinds
964
+ it cannot hold instead of claiming it covers every kind — the claim that let `prepared` go
965
+ unrendered for months. `modelVersion` stays at `3`: every model change here is an ADDITION, and
966
+ the rule in `model.ts` is that only a removal or a change of meaning bumps it.
967
+ - **What the same audit found and did NOT fix is #85**, because each of it is a decision rather
968
+ than a patch: reading `events.jsonl` (operator notes, story attempts and reopens), reading
969
+ `budget.yml` (per-phase ceilings, `on_exceed`, whether `next` is affordable), reading the
970
+ watcher cards, and surfacing a preflight refusal. #86 is a separate bug the audit turned up in
971
+ `run/waiting.ts` — a cancelled run is offered a retry — which both screens share.
972
+
973
+ - **The #80 guard's kind sweep could not tell a regex literal in CODE from one quoted in a
974
+ COMMENT (#83).** The marker half of that guard has a discriminator and says why: a `[` inside a
975
+ regex opens a character class, so code that matches the `[src:` marker must spell it `\[src`
976
+ while prose writes `[src: …]` bare. The kind half had no equivalent, because prose quoting a
977
+ regex LITERAL copies it character for character — there is no signature inside `/^F\d{3,6}$/`
978
+ that a real production has and a quoted one lacks. #81 paid the tax: the doc comment explaining
979
+ which two literals had just been DELETED tripped the sweep in the very file that had stopped
980
+ classifying, and had to be reworded to name the shapes without writing them.
981
+ - **The discriminator is the line's ROLE, not its characters.** A line that is comment prose —
982
+ a whole-line `//`, a block opener, or one of its `*` continuation lines — is not a
983
+ classification, and the sweep now reads the file with those lines removed.
984
+ - **Line-local, holding no state, and that is the design rather than a shortcut.** #80's own
985
+ first attempt reached for a lexer and was bitten twice: eleven offenders that were all doc
986
+ comments, then five more that were template literals nested inside interpolations once
987
+ comments and strings were stripped. This predicate never looks inside a string, so an
988
+ unclosed `/**` in a prompt cannot unbalance it and blind the sweep to the code below —
989
+ asserted, not assumed. What it cannot lex it keeps: a shape quoted in a trailing comment
990
+ after code is still read as code, so this half still fails CLOSED.
991
+ - **Measured in both directions on the real tree, not only on fixtures.** Re-injecting #81's
992
+ exact doc comment into `validateFactsFile.ts` leaves the sweep green; injecting two real
993
+ productions as CODE into the same file turns it red with `validateFactsFile.ts classifies
994
+ answer, fact` — the identical message #81 saw for prose. The sweep is also no longer
995
+ vacuous by assumption: a test pins the kinds the canonical grammar itself trips
996
+ (`answer`, `cmd`, `fact`) and the six productions the deleted `core/map/srcToken.ts`
997
+ carried, so a production that stops matching anything becomes visible rather than silent.
998
+ - **What it removed, measured over the tree.** 28 files matched at least one production
999
+ before, 20 after; the 8 that stopped matching were doc comments mentioning `→ exit` and
1000
+ nothing else — each one production away from #81's surprise red. No file lost a
1001
+ classification: the most kinds any file decides is still 3, and it is still `srcToken.ts`.
1002
+
1003
+ - **A handshake called in the wrong ORDER no longer fails the stage and the run (#82).** On the
1004
+ live run `260901-leaderboard-v2` (2026-09-02T00:36Z) the driver ran `tldrx next --commit
1005
+ --review` while no reviewer bundle was out. The framework said exactly the right thing — "no
1006
+ reviewer bundle is out — run `tldrx next --prepare --review` first" — and then emitted
1007
+ `stage.failed` twice and flipped the run to `status: failed`, so a mistyped command needed an
1008
+ explicit recovery. Nothing had been attempted: no spawn, no cent, no branch, no story moved.
1009
+ Same family as #78/#79 (form vs work), applied to state transitions instead of attempts.
1010
+ - **Five refusals are reclassified**, all of them the handshake asked for by the wrong end:
1011
+ `--commit --review` with no reviewer bundle out; `--commit` with no story `in_progress`;
1012
+ `--prepare --review` over a story whose developer half has not run; and either `--commit`
1013
+ before its `result.json` has been written. Each now exits `1`, names the command that fixes
1014
+ it, and leaves `run.yml` byte for byte as it was — no `stage.failed`, no status moved, no
1015
+ task recorded, no cent metered.
1016
+ - **This is the behaviour the framework already had one layer over.** A single-agent stage sent
1017
+ `--commit` before its `--prepare` has always returned exit `1` and touched nothing
1018
+ (`commitStage`). Build was the outlier because Build owns its own middle, so its refusals came
1019
+ back as `ok: false` and `runNext` could only read that as a failed stage. The fix gives Build
1020
+ the same door rather than inventing a second contract.
1021
+ - **`sequencing` is a second flag, not a widening of `refused`.** `refused` sends the stage back
1022
+ to `ready`, which is right for a precondition an operator must go and fix — a dirty repo, a
1023
+ red base tree — because the cycle cannot continue. A sequencing refusal is a cycle that is
1024
+ perfectly fine, held by the wrong end: the bundle is still out and sending the stage back to
1025
+ `ready` would throw away the state the next command needs. Honoured only when the outcome
1026
+ carries no tasks, no cost and no epic claim, so a refusal that spent something still records
1027
+ it; defaulting to "record it" is the direction a mistake here is recoverable in.
1028
+ - **The bug had a price, and it was the budget brake.** `runExecutor` skips the phase-budget
1029
+ gate exactly when a stage is already `running`, because a Build stage hands out one story per
1030
+ `--prepare`/`--commit` cycle. Failing the stage demoted it out of `running`, so the next
1031
+ `--prepare` was priced as a fresh stage start: on the live run that was a `budget.blocked`
1032
+ ten seconds after the refusal, $2.66 left against a re-charged $4.32 estimate, for money
1033
+ already partly spent. Reproduced in the fixture and pinned.
1034
+ - **`PendingError` carries a typed `kind`** — `absent` (the file was never written; a step of
1035
+ the handshake) vs `unreadable` (somebody wrote it and got it wrong; still a failure). Typed
1036
+ rather than matched on the message, for the reason #79 gave: a caller reading the words breaks
1037
+ the moment the message improves.
1038
+ - Genuine failures are untouched and pinned: a red Definition of Done still blocks its story, a
1039
+ reviewer that dies is still recorded as a failed check, and a plan that cannot be loaded is
1040
+ still `stage.failed` with a `failed` run. Two existing pins moved deliberately, both of them
1041
+ asserting the old exit `5` of a pure sequencing refusal.
1042
+
1043
+ - **`facts.yml` ids and citable ids were two spellings of one shape; now they are one constant
1044
+ (#81).** `src/core/facts/validateFactsFile.ts` defined its own `F` and `Q` id patterns, agreeing
1045
+ with `SRC_PATTERNS.fact` / `.answer` character for character, with nothing asserting that they
1046
+ must. Found while fixing #80 and filed rather than fixed there, because it is not #80's defect:
1047
+ the `[src: …]` token grammar has exactly one reader now, and what was duplicated here is the id
1048
+ SHAPE that grammar happens to share with the facts file, reached by a different reader answering
1049
+ a different question — which is why #80's kind sweep allowlisted the file rather than folding it in.
1050
+ - **They must agree, and the DIRECTION is what makes it load-bearing.** One string makes one
1051
+ trip: `formatFactId` mints `F102`, `validateFactsFile` admits it into `.tldrx/memory/facts.yml`,
1052
+ and `classifySrc` reads that same `F102` back out of a `[src: F102]` token for `knowledgeFile`
1053
+ to resolve against the store. So every id the facts file accepts must be citable, or a fact
1054
+ exists that cannot be cited and is invisible to every reader downstream of it. Nothing in that
1055
+ pipeline ever runs both readers on the same string, so the drift would have been silent. (The
1056
+ other direction is merely untidy: a citable id no facts file holds is caught later, as a
1057
+ citation that resolves to nothing.)
1058
+ - **Derived, not merely asserted.** `validateFactsFile.ts` imports `SRC_PATTERNS.fact` and
1059
+ `.answer` — the same publication surface `srcGrammarContract.ts` already generates the
1060
+ documented grammar from — so there is one spelling rather than two that match. The #80
1061
+ allowlist entry is deleted along with the need for it, and that sweep now covers the file like
1062
+ any other; an exemption that has stopped being needed is one that will some day cover something
1063
+ it was never granted for.
1064
+ - **A behavioural guard too, because sharing a constant only holds while nobody re-types a
1065
+ literal.** The kind sweep needs TWO productions in one file before it fires, so a single
1066
+ respelled `F` shape slips straight past it — measured by sabotage, not assumed.
1067
+ `test/map-citations.test.ts` now runs both readers over a table of ids spanning both digit
1068
+ boundaries and compares their verdicts; loosening either shape by one digit turns it red with
1069
+ `F12: facts.yml holds it but the grammar refuses it`.
1070
+ - **One drift had already happened, in prose.** The `source.q` refusal read `expected ^Q\d+$ or
1071
+ null` while the reader ran `^Q\d{1,6}$` — the shape's third spelling, telling an author a
1072
+ seven-digit question id was acceptable and then refusing it. Both refusal messages are now
1073
+ generated from the pattern they enforce, so neither can drift from its reader again.
1074
+ - **The docs site said 0.3.1, named a flag that does not exist, and told readers to hand-write
1075
+ a mandate the CLI now prints.** A cold read of every page against `tldrx <cmd> --help`, EN and
1076
+ ES. Three claims were false rather than merely stale: the version, printed on six pages, was two
1077
+ releases behind what `npm i -g tldr-experts` installs; `--max-budget-usd` was named as a `tldrx
1078
+ next` flag in both budget pages, but it is what tldrx passes down to `claude` and `tldrx next
1079
+ --max-budget-usd 3` exits `1` on an unknown flag; and `guides/driving` said "there is no keyword
1080
+ for the third part — the mandate is prose you write" three weeks after `tldrx drive
1081
+ --attended|--unattended` shipped to print exactly that, versioned with the package. Also
1082
+ corrected: the hero claimed a gate you own at the end of *each* stage, where `feature` ships two
1083
+ `auto` ones; the quickstart said "five role experts" one line under output reading `experts 6
1084
+ seeded`, and reported `$0.31 of $4.00` on a run opened at `$5.00` without saying the second
1085
+ figure is the stage's ceiling.
1086
+ - **The site covered none of the last release's commands, and the Spanish mirror had fallen a
1087
+ release behind the English one.** Added across both languages: `story reopen --for-fix`,
1088
+ `questions lint`, `retro --all --json`, `watch check --execute`, `update_check: off`, `seed
1089
+ answer`, exit `130`, `budget.yml`'s `ceiling_host_tokens` / `on_host_tokens_exceed` (the host
1090
+ economy was documented as unboundable), the integration-branch model for chained epics (#57),
1091
+ a FAQ entry for `tldrx update` and the version notice, and a link to `CONTRIBUTING.md`. The ES
1092
+ CLI reference was additionally missing `update`, `drive`, `retro --all` and `plan schema`
1093
+ outright. `reference/cli` no longer pins a version number that goes stale every release. The
1094
+ Spanish pages' code comments were half-translated; terminal output stays English, the docs
1095
+ author's own `#` comments do not.
1096
+
1097
+ - **`tldrx map --check` ran a SECOND, divergent `[src: …]` grammar; there is one grammar now
1098
+ (#80).** `src/core/map/srcToken.ts` was not a thin wrapper over the claim-sources reader — it was
1099
+ a parallel set of regexes, and they disagreed on five axes: its `file` pattern
1100
+ (`[^\s:]+`) refused a path containing a colon, its answer pattern (`^Q\d+$`) had no digit cap,
1101
+ its token pattern was **global** so a citation written mid-sentence counted as one, it stripped no
1102
+ trailing backtick or full stop before matching, and it had never heard of `aidlc:`. So a citation
1103
+ `claim-sources` accepted could be reported by `map --check` as a problem, and one it refused could
1104
+ be reported as fine — the "two readers of one question drift, and the looser one wins the argument
1105
+ at the wrong moment" hazard `core/text/handoff.ts` is written against. It also carried #77's
1106
+ defect on its own path, printing the symptoms `bullet has no [src: …] token` and
1107
+ `unparseable src token` and nothing else.
1108
+ - **The parser is deleted, not wrapped.** `checkCitations` calls `parseSrcToken`,
1109
+ `diagnoseSrcToken` and `describeSrcFailure` from `src/core/text/srcToken.ts`, so every `map
1110
+ --check` grammar failure gets the #77 treatment by construction: the rule id, the rule in its
1111
+ own words, the line as written, and a line that would have passed. `CitationProblem` gained a
1112
+ `rule` field, so a caller can tell "you wrote it wrong" from "it has drifted" without parsing
1113
+ prose. `srcToken(srcs)` — the BUILDER, which had no equivalent on the canonical side — moved
1114
+ across rather than went, and now joins on the same `SRC_SEPARATOR` the reader splits on.
1115
+ `isBullet` stayed behind in `checkCitations.ts`: it is about DOCUMENTS, and mixing the two is
1116
+ what the deleted file got wrong.
1117
+ - **The migration hazard was measured before the switch, not asserted after it.** Both grammars
1118
+ were run over every `.tldrx/map/**` document and init handoff in the two real workspaces
1119
+ available — **39 documents, 692 lines, 435 of them carrying a citation** — and they disagreed on
1120
+ **zero** lines: no multi-token line, no non-bullet citation, and not one token that failed to end
1121
+ its line. The axes where they *would* differ are pinned as a table in
1122
+ `test/map-citations.test.ts`. Unification is **stricter** on six shapes (a mid-line token, a
1123
+ `..` in a path, a 7-digit `Q`, a 4-digit exit code, a backwards line range, a line number of
1124
+ zero) and **looser** on five that the old reader wrongly refused (a path containing a colon, an
1125
+ `aidlc:…#Q<n>` src, a `cmd` whose command holds a backtick, an `absent:` path with a space, a
1126
+ token wrapped in backticks). An `aidlc:` citation used to be misread as repo `aidlc` and
1127
+ reported as an unknown repo; it is a kind now.
1128
+ - **A guard makes re-adding a copy go red** (#48's lesson: deleting one file does not stop a
1129
+ second). Two halves, both on the SHAPE rather than the file name — no file outside the canonical
1130
+ grammar and two documented non-parsers may hold a regex that matches the `[src:` marker, and no
1131
+ file outside it may classify two or more src KINDS. The guard is proven against the deleted
1132
+ file's own two regexes rather than assumed. It also turned up a real second copy of the fact and
1133
+ question id shapes in `validateFactsFile.ts`, filed as #81 rather than fixed here.
1134
+ - **`map --check`'s summary counts the two failures separately.** A citation that does not parse
1135
+ never reached the filesystem, so folding it into "N of M citations do not resolve" reported a
1136
+ denominator it was never in — and, when every problem was a grammar one, printed "3 of 0".
1137
+
1138
+ - **A `[src: …]` rejection now states the RULE it enforced, and the grammar is published where the
1139
+ writers read it (#77).** Run `260830-ordering-inventory` lost **three story attempts** to one
1140
+ message. Three review envelopes were refused with "no `[src: …]`" — the SYMPTOM — while all three
1141
+ carried a citation. The host guessed the grammar twice, got it wrong twice, and finally opened
1142
+ `dist/tldrx.js` to extract three rules that were written down nowhere a writer could read them:
1143
+ the token must END its line (`TRAILING_TOKEN_RE` is anchored), a `]` **inside** the token
1144
+ truncates the match (`[^\]]*`), and a `cmd` source needs the real `→`, never ASCII `->`.
1145
+ - **Every rejection on the path names its rule, quotes the line, and shows a corrected one.**
1146
+ `SRC_RULES` (`src/core/text/srcToken.ts`) is fifteen rules, each with the pattern that enforces
1147
+ it and a worked `bad`/`good` pair; `diagnoseSrcToken` maps a failure onto exactly one. The hook
1148
+ denies, the gate's `claim-sources` detail, `parseFixFindings`' `refuted` refusal and every
1149
+ `classifySrc` error now carry the id. The deny messages take the document text and quote the
1150
+ offending line back — naming `L14` and stopping there is what sent the host looking.
1151
+ - **The grammar is GENERATED and spliced into the prompt** (`renderSrcGrammarContract`), following
1152
+ the #35 precedent: kinds from `SRC_KINDS`, patterns from `SRC_PATTERNS` printed `.source` and
1153
+ all, rules and examples from `SRC_RULES`, the four-section rules from the same constants
1154
+ `handoff.ts` enforces. It reaches the writers through the check-contracts registry (every stage
1155
+ declaring `claim-sources` over a `.md` output), the Watch executor — which read `stage.md`
1156
+ raw and so was the one writer never given any contract — and the reviewer prompt, whose
1157
+ `refuted` verdict is held to this grammar and was never told what it is.
1158
+ - **The trap is behavioural, not textual.** `test/src-grammar.test.ts` pushes every documented
1159
+ `bad` back through `diagnoseSrcToken` and every `good` through `parseSrcToken`. Loosen a regex
1160
+ without updating its rule and the suite goes red; a doc that has stopped being true cannot ship
1161
+ quietly. It caught one bug on its first run: `RegExp.source` re-escapes non-ASCII, so
1162
+ `CMD_RE.source` spells the arrow as a `\u`-escape — the contract would have documented "use the
1163
+ real `→`" with the arrow itself written as an escape sequence. `readableSource` decodes it.
1164
+ - Not changed: what the parser ACCEPTS. Tolerating `->` is a product decision and stays open
1165
+ as #77's item 3.
1166
+ - **A grammar-rejected review envelope no longer consumes a story ATTEMPT (#78).** Measured on run
1167
+ `260830-ordering-inventory` (2026-09-01): stories S2, S3 and S5 each recorded
1168
+ `check: review · verdict: changes · attempt: 1` over a summary beginning *"I would sign this:
1169
+ every named acceptance criterion is met"*. Those were `fixlist` envelopes refused by the
1170
+ **claim-sources** check — a `refuted` finding whose `[src: …]` sat mid-line, where §2.8's
1171
+ end-anchored parser cannot see it — and each was charged to the story as a failure of its WORK.
1172
+ Three of the run's attempts went on formatting. A malformed envelope is a fault in the reviewer's
1173
+ *report*; conflating the instrument with the result is what this fixes.
1174
+ - **The framework asks again, for free.** A refusal the claim-sources check raised re-prompts the
1175
+ same reviewer for a corrected envelope, carrying what was refused verbatim under
1176
+ `## Your previous envelope was REFUSED`. **Bounded at two** per envelope round (owner decision,
1177
+ 2026-09-01): the third refusal is recorded as the ordinary `changes` and costs the attempt, so a
1178
+ reviewer that cannot write the grammar at all still settles instead of looping free. The bound
1179
+ resets when a verdict is finally counted — it is per envelope round, not per story.
1180
+ - **Both doors, one rule.** A spawned reviewer re-prompts itself in-process;
1181
+ `tldrx next --commit --review` leaves the bundle out with the refusal spliced into its
1182
+ `prompt.md`, bins the refused `result.json` and settles nothing. Attempt accounting must not
1183
+ depend on which door a verdict came through, so both go through the same predicate.
1184
+ - **Auditable, because it is bookkeeping.** Each free round appends one `story.review_retried`
1185
+ (§2.9) carrying the story, the attempt it did **not** spend, which retry it was, the bound, and
1186
+ the refusal. `readReviewLedger` counts them, which is how the bound survives a fresh
1187
+ `tldrx next` and the one-envelope-per-process host handshake alike. Each re-prompt is a real
1188
+ metered turn and gets its own task row: it costs the story no attempt, never no money.
1189
+ - **Scope guard, pinned by test.** Only the claim-sources grammar — *widened to every
1190
+ envelope-FORMAT refusal by #79 below, in the same release.* A verdict's CONTENT and a red DoD
1191
+ keep exactly the cost they had.
1192
+ - **The message is #77's, inherited rather than copied.** The re-prompt carries the refusals
1193
+ verbatim and points at the `Citation grammar` section #77 splices into the
1194
+ same prompt, so the reviewer is told which rule it broke, on which line, with a corrected
1195
+ example — and there is no second copy of the grammar to keep in step. The classifier
1196
+ is a typed INDEX over `problems`, not a second list, precisely so #78 could not end up
1197
+ string-matching the text #77 was rewriting.
1198
+
1199
+ - **Every envelope-FORMAT refusal gets that same free round, not just the citation (#79).** #78 drew
1200
+ its scope at the claim-sources check because that is what the evidence named, and filed the rest.
1201
+ But `parseFixFindings` refuses an envelope for five other shapes — a `fixlist` that is missing,
1202
+ not an array or empty; a row that is not an object; a row with no `finding` text; a row with no
1203
+ valid `disposition` — and `parseReview` refuses a sixth, a verdict WORD outside the enum (#36).
1204
+ Every one of them is a fault in how the reviewer wrote its *report*, exactly the argument #78 made,
1205
+ and every one of them still cost the story an attempt. Owner decision (2026-09-01, on the issue):
1206
+ all of it, **one mental model — FORM never costs an attempt, CONTENT/WORK always does.**
1207
+ - **Nothing about the mechanism changed.** Same bound (two per envelope round, the third is the
1208
+ ordinary `changes`), same counter, same `story.review_retried` event, same two doors, same
1209
+ per-turn metering. #79 widened *what earns a correction* and touched nothing else.
1210
+ - **The verdict WORD (#36) is now free too, and #36's message is unchanged.** A reviewer that
1211
+ writes `sign` — the gate vocabulary — said nothing wrong about the diff; it reached for a word
1212
+ the story enum does not have. It is told so, by name, and asked again. `Review.formatProblems`
1213
+ is the union of the fix-list index and that verdict fault, because it is also what the corrected
1214
+ envelope's prompt is rendered from: a refusal missing from it is one the reviewer is never told
1215
+ about.
1216
+ - **The guard is the INDEX, which is what survives the next widening.** `ParsedFixlist.format`
1217
+ stays a typed subset of `problems`, built one push site at a time through a single
1218
+ `refuseFormat` helper — never a second list of strings, and never "everything `parseFixFindings`
1219
+ said". The free round is granted only when the index claims **every** reason the envelope was
1220
+ refused, so a refusal about the WORK added later costs the attempt until somebody deliberately
1221
+ indexes it as form. Defaulting to *costs* is the direction a mistake is recoverable in.
1222
+ - **A non-empty `findings[]` is deliberately NOT the content signal**, though it is the obvious
1223
+ candidate. Measured across the nine `aparece-v2` runs (2026-09-01): all 25 recorded review logs
1224
+ carry a non-empty `findings[]` and all 25 are `approve` — the one verdict whose own prompt line
1225
+ says *"Empty on `approve`"*. Reviewers use it as a narrative evidence log whatever the verdict,
1226
+ so gating on it would have made the free round almost never fire and quietly narrowed #78 as
1227
+ well. A judgement about the work is caught where it is actually stated: a declared `changes`
1228
+ raises no format refusal at all, so it costs its attempt.
1229
+ - **Nine tests red first**, each newly-free class proven to re-prompt without spending an attempt
1230
+ and to record the event, plus the bound re-proven on a shape refusal. #78's CONTENT and DoD pins
1231
+ are unchanged and still green.
1232
+
1233
+ - **`merge-wave.sh` no longer leaves a conflicted tree behind, wedging every queued sibling (#76).**
1234
+ On a merge conflict the script exited `2` **without** `git merge --abort`, and the `EXIT` trap
1235
+ then released the lock. The conflicted index survived that handover, so the next queued
1236
+ invocation acquired the lock, failed its dirty-tree guard and exited `1` `FAIL dirty tree` having
1237
+ merged nothing — and so did every one after it, until a human ran the abort by hand. Observed
1238
+ live 2026-09-01 by two agents: a sibling's abandoned merge left `UU CHANGELOG.md` plus 14 staged
1239
+ paths in the shared checkout, and cluster L's first merge-wave returned `1` with nothing merged.
1240
+ Under the concurrent multi-cluster pattern, one conflict wedged every other cluster.
1241
+ - **Collect, then abort** — the order `mergeNoFf` already uses one directory over
1242
+ (`src/core/build/git.ts:314-326`). The agent still learns exactly which files conflicted and
1243
+ still has to rebase and retry; the checkout it hands back is the one it was given. This is the
1244
+ same class of hazard the lock was written for: state from one invocation leaking into the next.
1245
+ - **The refusal now names what is dirty.** `FAIL dirty tree` alone accused the caller of leaving
1246
+ junk in their own checkout when, inside the lock, the likeliest cause is another run's residue
1247
+ in the shared one. It now says so and lists the paths.
1248
+ - Proved by a repro that runs the real script against a real conflicting merge and asserts
1249
+ `git status --porcelain` is empty afterwards, `MERGE_HEAD` is gone, `HEAD` has not moved, the
1250
+ lock is released, and a second invocation merges instead of being refused.
1251
+
1252
+ - **The built-CLI dashboard test no longer gates a stale `dist/` (#73).** `beforeAll` read
1253
+ `if (existsSync(DIST)) return`, so the tests ran against whatever `dist/tldrx.js` happened to be
1254
+ lying around — locally, a build from before the working-tree changes the run was checking.
1255
+ Measured 2026-09-01 while fixing #60: the guard served a binary built at 14:43, and the model
1256
+ version assertion read `Expected: 3, Received: 2`. That is the lucky direction; the same staleness
1257
+ hiding a regression is silent, and `bun run build` is a separate later step in both
1258
+ `scripts/merge-wave.sh` and CI. CI was safe only by accident — a fresh checkout has no `dist/` —
1259
+ which means the guard only ever applied where it did harm.
1260
+ - **Always rebuild, and the number is the reason.** `bun scripts/build.ts` costs 199 ms cold and
1261
+ 55–59 ms warm on the reference machine (3 runs, 2026-09-01) against a ~420 s suite: under 0.05%.
1262
+ A stamp of `src/` would cost more to keep honest than it saves, and `test/build.test.ts:78`
1263
+ already built unconditionally — this file was the exception.
1264
+ - A new assertion pins the property rather than the mechanism: `dist/tldrx.js` may not predate the
1265
+ newest file under `src/`, `scripts/build.ts` or `package.json`.
1266
+
1267
+ - **`tldrx drive` fills the mandate's `<run>` in (#75).** The mandate's every command read
1268
+ `tldrx next --prepare <run>`, and the header told the reader to find-replace — 7 occurrences
1269
+ unattended, 5 attended (measured; the issue estimated ~8), by hand, at the exact moment somebody
1270
+ is trying to start a run. One occurrence missed sends a session at the wrong run.
1271
+ - **An id, or the one open run.** `tldrx drive --unattended <run>` or `--run <id>` (the positional
1272
+ wins, `ship`'s order) substitutes **textually and never validates** — an id naming no run is the
1273
+ operator's typo to notice, and the command stays the one thing in the CLI that runs anywhere.
1274
+ With no id, the ONE open run of the current workspace is used.
1275
+ - **It refuses to guess between two.** Where `RunStore.resolve` would call it ambiguous, drive
1276
+ declines to substitute, leaves `<run>` standing and names the ids on stderr — a mandate silently
1277
+ aimed at the wrong run is the bug being fixed, not a smaller version of it. No workspace, no
1278
+ runs, an unreadable `tldrx-work/`: all keep the placeholder and still exit `0`.
1279
+
1280
+ - **`tldrx status` no longer calls a RUNNING run "cannot start yet" (#60).** Verbatim from
1281
+ aparece-v2, 2026-09-01: `run 260830-ordering-inventory (…) cannot start yet — it was proposed to
1282
+ follow money-and-payments` / `at 04-build / build · run status running · waiting: prepared` /
1283
+ `blocked by money-and-payments — it is pending`. The run was building, with S1 verified minutes
1284
+ earlier. `triage.depends_on` is an order a split PROPOSED before either run existed, and it was
1285
+ out-ranking what the run was observably doing.
1286
+ - **Observed state outranks proposed order.** One rule, in the resolver both screens read
1287
+ (`src/core/run/dependencies.ts`): a run that has left `pending` has started, and a proposal
1288
+ cannot un-start it. `hasStarted` is the one definition — `pending` is the only status a run that
1289
+ has never run a stage can wear, because runs are created with every stage `pending` and every
1290
+ path to any other value goes through a stage that was `running`.
1291
+ - **The proposal becomes a footnote, not the headline.** A started run renders its own cursor and
1292
+ waiting kind, gains back the command it was denied, and carries
1293
+ `proposed to follow <run> — started anyway` as a secondary line. `blocked by` is now reserved
1294
+ for a run that really cannot move — one that has not started. A run that has NOT started is
1295
+ unchanged: same words, same withheld command.
1296
+ - **It gets the `← next` slot back.** The ordering hint had demoted the only run with work in
1297
+ flight and pointed the owner at the sibling that had not begun. `runnable` is now
1298
+ `movable && (started || nothing outstanding)`.
1299
+ - **`prepared` and `running` get their own summary lines.** Both used to fall through to
1300
+ "is blocked at <phase>/<stage>" — the same wrong word, one layer down.
1301
+ - **The dashboard was making the identical claim** about the same shape and is fixed with it:
1302
+ fixture run `charlie` is `awaiting_gate` behind a `pending` sibling, and the page said
1303
+ "blocked by bravo" while suppressing the gate alert for a signature a person could give right
1304
+ then. `DASHBOARD_MODEL_VERSION` → **3**: `blockedBy` is unchanged and still records the
1305
+ proposal, the new `runs[].started` says whether it still holds anything back, and `runnable`
1306
+ reads `true` for that one shape where it read `false`.
1307
+
1308
+ - **A cost/token declaration on a story commit now attaches to the build task (#68).** Measured on
1309
+ two live runs: the leaderboard host declared $2.25 on a story commit and `tldrx cost` kept
1310
+ 04-build at $0.00 — "the declaration didn't attach to the build task the way it did for
1311
+ what/how/plan" — and ordering 260830 showed the same shape. The run's recorded build spend was a
1312
+ floor, budget arithmetic ran blind on the most expensive phase, and ~8M host tokens were invisible.
1313
+ - **The seam, not the accounting.** `ExecutorContext` never carried `--cost-usd`/`--tokens`, so
1314
+ Build's `commit()` could only read the envelope's own `cost_usd` and wrote
1315
+ `round2(result.cost_usd ?? 0)` — a METERED `$0.00`. It now resolves
1316
+ `options.costUsd ?? result.cost_usd`, which is exactly what `commitStage` does for what/how/plan,
1317
+ and the declared tokens ride onto the task row and the `agent.result` payload the cost report
1318
+ reads. The reviewer half (`--commit --review`) takes the same precedence.
1319
+ - **Nothing declared is UNMETERED, not $0.00.** `cost_usd: null` + `metered: false`, the spelling
1320
+ every other host turn already gets, because `$0.00` is a measurement and a false one.
1321
+ - **Backward-safe.** A declaration is never allowed to overwrite a measurement — an envelope that
1322
+ reports its own cost still wins over nothing declared — and no recorded zero is rewritten. Only
1323
+ new declarations attach.
1324
+
1325
+ - **`onStderrLine` on the runtime seam, so progress prints before the verdict it produced (#67).**
1326
+ `SpawnOptions` had `onStdoutLine` and nothing for the other stream, so stderr — where every tldrx
1327
+ UI writes its progress — could only be handed back as one string at exit. `tldrx learn` printed
1328
+ `01-what/what done — $0.31 of $4.00` and only THEN the `[00:00] writing …` lines that produced it.
1329
+ - Implemented in **both** `bunRuntime.ts` and `nodeRuntime.ts`, with the same contract
1330
+ `onStdoutLine` already has: the full text still accumulates in `SpawnResult.stderr`, a trailing
1331
+ partial line is delivered at close, and omitting the callback leaves the buffered path
1332
+ byte-for-byte as it was. Node gets its own `LineSplitter` per stream — one shared buffer would
1333
+ splice a half-written stdout line onto the front of a stderr line.
1334
+ - **The learn workaround is deleted**, per the instructions it carried since phase 1:
1335
+ `realStepRunner` passes the callback and `playChapter` no longer writes `result.stderr` after the
1336
+ step. Measured by playing chapter 2 by hand on both checkouts: the summary was at line 107 with
1337
+ its progress lines at 109-124, and is now at 123 with them at 105-121.
1338
+ - The tests turn on TIMING, not content: a buffered implementation could hand the same lines to the
1339
+ same callback by splitting at exit, so the line is required to arrive while the spawn's promise
1340
+ is still pending.
1341
+
1342
+ - **`tldrx plan` has a section in the CLI reference (#55).** `docs/guide/08-cli-reference.md` had no
1343
+ `## tldrx plan` heading at all, so `sync-dod` — the one mechanical repair for stories whose dod
1344
+ block a `workspace.yml` edit orphaned — was undocumented. The section states the four per-line
1345
+ outcomes, the git-history ancestry, the `.md.bak`, and that it runs no agent and moves no cursor.
1346
+ The #54 docs-coverage test is widened from `run` to `run` and `plan`, and now also asserts the
1347
+ heading rather than a passing mention. It is still a scoped list rather than a generalisation over
1348
+ every command: `hook`'s seven scripts are a deliberate spelling, and `note` and `ship` have the
1349
+ same gap #55 was about (filed separately).
1350
+
1351
+ - **`tldrx update`, and a one-line notice when a newer version exists (#62, owner decision
1352
+ 2026-09-01: on by default, with an opt-out).** The owner installed 0.4.0 on a second machine and
1353
+ found there was no way to ask the tool to update itself, and no way to be told a newer one existed.
1354
+ - **`tldrx update` is `npm i -g tldr-experts@latest`, run for you**, plus the part a wrapper does
1355
+ not give you: the CHANGELOG between the version you had and the version you now have.
1356
+ - **The new version is READ BACK from what npm installed** —
1357
+ `$(npm root -g)/tldr-experts/package.json`, with the delta taken from the `CHANGELOG.md` beside
1358
+ it. The process printing that line is the OLD build and cannot know what the new one is; when the
1359
+ read-back fails it says so and prints no changelog rather than inventing one.
1360
+ - **The notice never touches the network on the hot path.** A command reads
1361
+ `~/.tldrx/version-check.json` and nothing else. The registry call happens in a DETACHED child
1362
+ (`stdio: "ignore"`, `unref()`) spawned after the output is written, and its answer is for the
1363
+ NEXT invocation. Cached for 24 h; silent on any network failure, on a body that is not the JSON
1364
+ it asked for, and on a home directory it cannot write.
1365
+ - **Never in `--json`, never during a hook, never off a terminal.** `tldrx hook` and
1366
+ `tldrx statusline` are suppressed by name (spec §0: a hook is deterministic), `--json` anywhere
1367
+ in argv is suppressed, a non-TTY stdout is suppressed, and so is CI. The line itself goes to
1368
+ stderr, so no command's stdout changes shape.
1369
+ - One line, in the issue's own wording: `tldr-experts 0.5.0 available (you have 0.4.0) — tldrx
1370
+ update`. Asserted as an exact string, because "roughly this sentence" is how one line becomes
1371
+ three.
1372
+ - **Opt out** with `TLDRX_UPDATE_CHECK=off` for a shell (spelled like `TLDRX_UI` and
1373
+ `TLDRX_CLAUDE_BIN`; `0`, `false`, `no` and `never` also work), or `update_check: off` in
1374
+ `~/.tldrx/config.yml` for the machine. A config file that does not parse is not an opt-out and
1375
+ not a crash.
1376
+
1377
+ - **`budget.yml` no longer adds host tokens to dollars (#61, owner decision 2026-09-01).**
1378
+ `validateRunBudget` summed EVERY phase ceiling and compared the total to `ceiling_usd` — but since
1379
+ the `economy:` label landed, a phase priced in `host-tokens` carries a host-session token allowance
1380
+ and not money. A realistic allowance therefore made a valid file invalid
1381
+ (`phase ceilings sum to 200018 > ceiling_usd 25`), and it did so in the one check that fails
1382
+ **closed**: `RunStore.open` threw, and the budget-gate hook then denied every spawn on the run.
1383
+ - **Separate ceilings, per economy.** `ceiling_usd` stays dollars-only and a new optional
1384
+ `ceiling_host_tokens` — at the run level and per phase — is the host-token allowance. The two are
1385
+ never added and never converted: there is no exchange rate here, and inventing one would be a
1386
+ guess about a price, which is the whole reason the label exists.
1387
+ - **The sum runs once per economy.** Σ the `metered-usd` phases against `ceiling_usd`; Σ the
1388
+ `host-tokens` phases against `ceiling_host_tokens`. The dollar half is byte-identical arithmetic
1389
+ with the same refusal in the same words.
1390
+ - **Additive, and absence changes nothing.** With no `ceiling_host_tokens` declared, the token sum
1391
+ has nothing to compare against and is not checked — deliberately the lax side, since the only
1392
+ other number on the run is dollars. The compat bar is the live `260830-ordering-inventory`
1393
+ budget.yml, mid-Build in another workspace while this was written and asserted verbatim in
1394
+ `test/economy.test.ts`: it validates, its phase sum of exactly 62.00 against a 62.00 ceiling still
1395
+ passes, one cent more is still refused in the same words, and every phase still reads
1396
+ `metered-usd` with no token ceiling.
1397
+ - `hostTokenCeiling` (f353d8d, #22b) prefers the new field and **still falls back to `ceiling_usd`**,
1398
+ because the files written before it existed put the allowance in that one unlabelled scalar and
1399
+ they are still on disk. The emitter round-trips both, so `budget raise` cannot erase a token
1400
+ ceiling it rewrites past.
1401
+ - The workaround the issue documented is gone: `test/hooks.test.ts` and `test/economy.test.ts` no
1402
+ longer raise the run ceiling to `60000`/`100000` — dollar figures that meant nothing — to let a
1403
+ token phase validate.
1404
+ - **`RunStore.ceilingsToWrite` now carries a phase's `economy` and `ceiling_host_tokens` from disk**
1405
+ beside its `ceiling_usd`. That seam re-reads CEILINGS before every save so a raise landing
1406
+ mid-stage is not clobbered by the copy the process opened with — and a phase's ceiling is three
1407
+ fields, not one. Preserving the number without the label would have been the worse half of both:
1408
+ a token allowance kept on a phase this reader had been told is priced in dollars, where
1409
+ `hostTokenCeiling` can no longer see it. For a file with no labels and no token ceilings — every
1410
+ budget.yml on disk today, the live one included — all three are identical on both sides and the
1411
+ save writes exactly what it always wrote.
1412
+
1413
+ ### Removed
1414
+
1415
+ - **`templates/story.md` and `templates/epic.md` are deleted (#48, owner decision 2026-09-01,
1416
+ option (a)).** They stated the Plan front-matter schema, shipped in the npm package, and
1417
+ `grep -rn 'story\.md' src/` found nothing that read either one. Since 3ae0ce9 the live copy is
1418
+ generated: `src/core/plan/schemaContract.ts` builds the story, the epic and `waves.yml` from
1419
+ `STORY_KEYS` / `EPIC_KEYS` / `PLAN_STATUSES` / the `MAX_*` constants and splices them into the Plan
1420
+ prompt. The drift guard 7ac298c added held the two files to that contract; deleting them removes
1421
+ the second copy instead of maintaining it.
1422
+ - **The consumers were tests, and they now generate.** `test/plan.test.ts` and
1423
+ `test/plan-schema-contract.test.ts` were the only readers; both take the story and the epic from
1424
+ `planContractExamples()`. Nothing in `src/`, `stages/`, `workflows/`, `plugin/` or `docs/` read
1425
+ either file, and `run new` never copied them.
1426
+ - **`templates` stays in `package.json` → `files`.** The directory still ships eleven templates
1427
+ that ARE read at runtime — `templates/expert.md` and `templates/experts/<role>.md` are read by
1428
+ `createExpert.ts` and `roleExperts.ts` in an installed package — so removing the entry would
1429
+ break `tldrx expert create` to delete two files that no longer exist.
1430
+ - **The drift guard changed meaning and kept its teeth.** It now asserts the GENERATED story and
1431
+ epic validate through `validateStoryFile` / `validateEpicFile` with keys equal to `STORY_KEYS` /
1432
+ `EPIC_KEYS` in order, that neither file is back on disk, and that no OTHER shipped template has
1433
+ grown the same front matter under a new name. Proven, not assumed: setting the example's
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+ `status:` to `wip` turns 4 tests red, and renaming `test_plan` in the generator turns 6 red.
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+
3
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  ## 0.4.0 — 2026-09-01
4
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5
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  ### Changed