feat(triage-bot): let every flow capture debug-journal findings

[springfall2008]

Why

The triage bot reads debug-journal.md before every investigation, but has never been able to maintain it. Sessions tried repeatedly across the last fortnight (#3078, #4804, #4840, #4845, #4931) and each reported the edit denied — but permissions were only half the story. sync_repo() runs git reset --hard origin/main and git clean -fd before every flow, so an edit inside the clone is destroyed before anything could pick it up. And no skill ever asked for a journal entry, so what upkeep happened was self-motivated and rare.

Capture

A queue directory outside the clone, writable by all five flows through one Edit grant in the shared base allowlist, plus JOURNAL_CAPTURE_PROMPT appended to every flow's system prompt. An appended system prompt is the only lever that reaches /code-review, whose SKILL.md this repo doesn't own — same reasoning as the existing GH_API_ENDPOINT_FIRST_PROMPT.

The prompt asks for what was verified and how, and explicitly asks for silence when a run learned nothing that generalises — an empty queue is the expected outcome for most runs.

Flush

Once a day, if anything is queued, /journal-update folds the queue in and opens a PR. It does two things:

1. Re-checks each candidate against current main before accepting it — fold in, rewrite, or drop with a reason.
2. Re-checks the existing journal against what has merged since.

The second half is the point. A file that only ever grows becomes wrong, and a wrong entry is worse than a missing one because every later run trusts it. Two entries were found stale this week; one asserted a credential leak that #4910 had already fixed, which would have had a triage run tell a reporter to rotate keys that never leaked.

Blast radius

The flush is the only flow that can both edit a file and push, so it's deliberately the narrowest:

• Edits only the journal and the cspell dictionary, named by exact path — not the clone.
• Cannot write the queue it reads (read access comes from --add-dir).
• Cannot push outside bot/debug-journal-*, so it cannot push to main even though that's where the file lives.
• Cannot merge its own PR. The human merge is the review gate.
• Force-push denials match the PR flow's.

Consumed candidates move to processed/ rather than being deleted: no rm grant needed anywhere, a re-run can't double-count, and a dropped finding stays auditable.

Tests

36 new, 190 total, tools/test_triage_daemon.py (pre-commit gated). Cover the queue living outside the clone, capture reaching all five flows, the once-a-day gate, the permission set's carve-outs, and archive-on-success / keep-on-failure.

Two pre-existing tests asserted the appended prompt was exactly GH_API_ENDPOINT_FIRST_PROMPT; it's now that plus the capture text, so they assert containment. The property they protect — the #4758 gh-api steer still reaching review and cleanup — is unchanged and now covered directly too.

Worth a look before merging

Edit(<clone>/**) has been granted since 2026-08-24 yet those sessions still reported Edit denied, which points at ** not crossing the .claude path segment. This PR sidesteps it (the queue is elsewhere, and the journal rule is an exact path rather than a glob), but I have not proved that hypothesis — the first real flush run will confirm whether the exact-path Edit rule fires. If it doesn't, that's the thing to look at.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The new queue archiving logic can silently overwrite already-archived findings with the same filename, which undermines the stated auditability of processed/dropped entries.

Once you've addressed the issues Copilot identified, you can request another Copilot review.

Pull request overview

This PR extends the triage-bot daemon to (1) append a system prompt that asks each flow to capture verified “debug journal” findings into a queue directory outside the repo clone, and (2) run a once-per-day /journal-update flow that folds queued entries into the debug journal via a PR with narrowly scoped edit/push permissions.

Changes:

• Add a shared journal-queue/ (outside the clone) and append JOURNAL_CAPTURE_PROMPT to all flows so findings survive sync_repo() resets.
• Add a daily gated flush_journal() path that runs /journal-update under a dedicated allow/deny set and archives consumed queue entries.
• Add the new /journal-update skill plus expanded unit tests for queue capture/gating/permissions; update the debug journal instructions and cspell dictionary.

File summaries

File	Description
tools/triage_daemon.py	Adds queue + capture prompt, journal flush flow, and a dedicated permission set for /journal-update.
tools/test_triage_daemon.py	Adds unit coverage for queue behavior, prompt propagation to all flows, daily flush gating, and permission carve-outs.
.claude/skills/journal-update/SKILL.md	Introduces the /journal-update skill contract (verify candidates, re-check journal, run pre-commit, open PR).
.claude/skills/issue-triage/references/debug-journal.md	Updates contributor guidance to write findings to the queue under the triage bot.
.cspell/custom-dictionary-workspace.txt	Adds “oneline” to satisfy cspell in new docs/instructions.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 5/5 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Lite

---

💡 Add a code-review agent skill or configure MCP servers for context-aware, tailored reviews. Learn more in the docs.