fix: strengthen orchestrator discipline — dispatch, branch verification, todo discipline, property patterns#163
Merged
Conversation
…h verification, todo discipline, property patterns for BDD examples Post-session analysis of cex-mm project revealed three systemic failures: 1. Orchestrator routinely bypasses owner dispatch and does work directly. The todo template had no Dispatch step — it jumped from Preparation to Load Skills, so the orchestrator never saw the instruction to dispatch. Fix: added explicit Dispatch step (#2) in todo template with MUST NOT do the work itself constraint and owner mapping table. 2. Branch discipline not enforced at state entry. Agents entered states declaring git:dev while on feature branches and vice versa. Fix: Preparation step now verifies branch matches attrs.git. Golden rule 7 now says 'Verify before starting'. New golden rule 8: feature branches must be merged back to dev before new work starts. 3. Todo list goes stale or disappears mid-state as agents focus on work. Fix: added Todo discipline paragraph requiring update after every step and regeneration if missing. 4. Review-gate skill loaded smell-catalogue at #key-takeaways but detecting violations needs the full document (per progressive knowledge loading rules in AGENTS.md). Fix: step 5 now loads full docs for detection, #key-takeaways only for recall. 5. No guidance for choosing Example vs Scenario Outline during BDD example creation. Agents either over-used Scenario Outlines or under-used them. Fix: added property-patterns knowledge file (Wlaschin, 2014) with seven patterns and a decision tree. Updated write-bdd-features skill step 4 to apply patterns systematically. Added research reference.
This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
1 participant
Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.This suggestion is invalid because no changes were made to the code.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is closed.Suggestions cannot be applied while viewing a subset of changes.Only one suggestion per line can be applied in a batch.Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.Applying suggestions on deleted lines is not supported.You must change the existing code in this line in order to create a valid suggestion.Outdated suggestions cannot be applied.This suggestion has been applied or marked resolved.Suggestions cannot be applied from pending reviews.Suggestions cannot be applied on multi-line comments.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is queued to merge.Suggestion cannot be applied right now. Please check back later.
Summary
Post-session analysis of cex-mm project revealed systemic failures in orchestrator discipline. Five fixes across 5 files:
attrs.git. Golden rule 7 strengthened. New golden rule 8: feature branches must be merged back to dev..opencode/skills/review-gate/SKILL.md): Step 5 now loads full docs for detection, not#key-takeawaysfragment.property-patternsknowledge file with seven Wlaschin (2014) patterns and a decision tree for Example vs Scenario Outline. Updatedwrite-bdd-featuresskill step 4.Files Changed
AGENTS.md.opencode/skills/review-gate/SKILL.md.opencode/skills/write-bdd-features/SKILL.md.opencode/knowledge/requirements/property-patterns.mddocs/research/software-engineering/quality/wlaschin_2014.mdTesting
Applied these changes during a live cex-mm session (configurable_rate_limit_buckets feature). The dispatch step, branch verification, and todo discipline prevented the three failure modes that triggered the post-mortem.