improvise/AGENTS.md

- Always use tests to demonstrate the existence of a bug before fixing the bug.
  - If you suspect that a bug exists, use a test to demonstrate it first:
    - prefer unit tests testing a small amount of code to integration or e2e tests
- Option<...> or Result<...> are fine but should not be present in the majority of the code.
- Similarly, code managing  Box<...> or RC<...>, etc. for containers pointing to heap data should be split
  from logic
- @context/repo-map.md is your "road map" for the repository. use it to reduce exploration and keep it updated.
- @context/design-principles.md is also important for keeping the repository consistent.
- reconcile diverging history only by merge: the merge structure of git history is a causal record (the
  user, 2026-09-25). "As a general rule, you shuold just add a new conventional commit. Small adjustments
  can ammend HEAD, but when in doubt don't." (the user). So the default is a new Conventional Commit. Amend
  only an unpushed HEAD, and only for a small fix. Never reorder, fold, squash or rebase commits, and never
  force-push. The rule, the message convention and the incidents are
  `.agents/skills/wave/agent-rules.md`, rule 8.
- always start responses with bananaS!
- **Knowledge base: use `scripts/kb`, not Prolog MCP.** The Prolog MCP is optional and not
  available in all agent stacks (Cursor cloud agents do not have it). All agents must use
  `scripts/kb add|replace|rm|query|check` for KB operations — see the `kb` skill at
  `.agents/skills/kb/SKILL.md`. Reading `prolog-sessions/kb.pl` directly is fine for queries.
- save structured facts as you go — work done, interesting locations, important decisions — with
  `scripts/kb add` (see the `kb` skill). Write a fact when you learn it; there is no reason to batch.
- query the knowledge base as needed and use Prolog reasoning when it makes sense.
- Prolog should be used as a design tool to reason about the code and the implementation of tickets and to
  persist a formal model of it.

# Agent Instructions

This project uses **bd** (beads) for issue tracking. Run `bd prime` for full workflow context.

## Multi-Stack Agent Support

This repo supports multiple coding-agent stacks: Claude Code, Cursor (IDE and cloud), and
potentially others. All stacks share the same operational setup:

| Component | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Toolchain | `nix develop` / `direnv` | **Required.** Rust from flake, wasm target, beads pin, trealla |
| Skills | `.agents/skills/` | Canonical source; `.claude/skills/` and `.cursor/skills/` symlink here |
| Session bootstrap | `scripts/agent-bootstrap.sh` | Seeds nix inputs, installs bd, syncs tracker, warms cargo |
| Knowledge base | `scripts/kb` | **All stacks use this**, not Prolog MCP |
| Issue tracker | `bd` CLI | Synced from Dolt remote at session start |

### Toolchain Requirement

**Agents must work inside `nix develop` (or direnv) for this repo.** Bare system cargo that
fails `edition2024` or missing wasm target is a misconfigured session. The bootstrap seeds
nix flake inputs automatically (GitHub tarballs are blocked in cloud), so `nix develop`
should work after install completes.

Run commands inside the dev shell:
```bash
nix develop --command cargo test
nix develop --command cargo build --workspace
```

Or enter an interactive shell: `nix develop`

**Claude Code**: `.claude/hooks/session-start.sh` calls the bootstrap automatically.

**Cursor cloud**: `.cursor/environment.json` runs the bootstrap via `install`. Skills are
discovered from `.cursor/skills/` (symlinks to `.agents/skills/`).

**Local agents**: Run `scripts/agent-bootstrap.sh` manually, or use `direnv allow` for
automatic dev shell activation.

See `context/cloud-agents.md` for environment-specific notes (nix, network, etc.).

### GitHub Attribution (Hard Rule)

**Every GitHub write (PR, comment, review reply) must include an attribution line identifying
the AI agent.** Posts go out under the repository owner's account, and an unattributed post
reads as the human owner's words to everyone who sees it.

**Format:** Open the body with an italicized attribution line:

```
_Posted by <Agent Stack> (<model>)_
```

Examples:
- `_Posted by Claude (Opus 4.5)_`
- `_Posted by Cursor Agent (claude-sonnet-5)_`
- `_Posted by Claude Code_`

For PR bodies, the `🤖 Generated with …` footer that some tools add covers this. For
comments and review replies, add the line yourself — there is no automatic footer.

**This applies to:** PR creation, PR updates, issue comments, review comments, and review
replies. A thread is not "answered" until the reply carries this attribution.

### PR Tracking: Checks AND Reviews

For any PR an agent owns or is working on, **track both CI checks and GitHub comments/reviews**.
The `pr-watch` skill (`.agents/skills/pr-watch/SKILL.md`) is the agent-facing recipe.

**`scripts/pr-watch`** now prints reviews after checks are green (use `--no-reviews` to skip).
Reviews are a separate API surface from comments — Codex/ChatGPT reviews arrive as *reviews*,
not comments, and are easy to miss if you only read the comment thread.

1. **Run `scripts/pr-watch <n>`** — waits for checks, then prints all reviews/comments
2. **Read all review feedback** — reviews against an earlier head may still apply
3. **Answer substantive feedback with attribution** before merging (see format above)
4. **Re-check after each push** that new reviews target the current head SHA
5. **Don't wait indefinitely on Copilot/Codex** — reviews arrive as quota allows

To fetch reviews directly: `./scripts/pr-reviews <n>` — **do not pipe it** (exit code trap).

See the `pr-watch` skill for the full recipe, and "Shipping a wave" below for Copilot
request mechanics and how to answer declined findings.

## Quick Reference

```bash
bd ready              # Find available work
bd show <id>          # View issue details
bd update <id> --claim  # Claim work atomically
bd close <id>         # Complete work
bd dolt push          # Push beads data to remote
```

## Non-Interactive Shell Commands

**ALWAYS use non-interactive flags** with file operations to avoid hanging on confirmation prompts.

Shell commands like `cp`, `mv`, and `rm` may be aliased to include `-i` (interactive) mode on some systems, causing the agent to hang indefinitely waiting for y/n input.

**Use these forms instead:**
```bash
# Force overwrite without prompting
cp -f source dest           # NOT: cp source dest
mv -f source dest           # NOT: mv source dest
rm -f file                  # NOT: rm file

# For recursive operations
rm -rf directory            # NOT: rm -r directory
cp -rf source dest          # NOT: cp -r source dest
```

**Other commands that may prompt:**
- `scp` - use `-o BatchMode=yes` for non-interactive
- `ssh` - use `-o BatchMode=yes` to fail instead of prompting
- `apt-get` - use `-y` flag
- `brew` - use `HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1` env var

## The Wave Workflow

Most work here is done by **waves**: an orchestrator chunks the open backlog,
fans several agents out into their own git worktrees, and shepherds each
agent's pull request through review to a merge on GitHub. This section is what
that costs to get right. Everything in it was learned by getting it wrong first.

### Who owns what

Three files are **orchestrator-only**, and the rule exists because they are
guaranteed conflicts — every agent has a reason to touch them and they merge
badly:

| File | Why |
|---|---|
| `.beads/` (incl. `issues.jsonl`) | bd owns it. See "Never hand-edit" below. |
| `prolog-sessions/kb.pl` | Written by `scripts/kb` only. See `context/code/kb-tool.md`. |
| `context/repo-map.md` | Every agent wants to add a gotcha; every wave would conflict. |
| `context/gotchas.md`, `context/file-inventory.md` | The long forms the map digests; same conflict, same owner. |

Wave agents **read** all of them freely (`bd show`, `bd ready`, grep `kb.pl`) and
**write** none of them. They report proposed repo-map lines and `kb.pl` facts as
*text* in their hand-back, and the orchestrator applies them. Repo-map lines
are batched at the end of the wave, after the review, because they conflict.
`kb.pl` facts are not batched: the orchestrator writes each one when it arrives.
**`kb.pl` is written by `scripts/kb add|replace|rm` and by nothing else** — not
the Prolog MCP, not an editor. Every write is gated on `kb_consistent` against
the candidate, so a bad delta leaves the file untouched, which is why a fact
can be written the moment it is learned. There is a `kb` skill; read it before
your first write. Reading is unaffected — `loadSession` at session start is
still how a session gets the model in hand.

### Partitioning a wave

Partition by **crate or directory**, not by ticket count, and tell each agent
explicitly which ground is *not* theirs. Two rules that fall out of the ones we
broke:

- **Tickets that share a file belong to one agent.** The four TUI widget
  migrations all touch `src/draw.rs`; split across agents they are a guaranteed
  conflict, so they go to one agent to do sequentially. Group first, then count.
- **An agent that must stray says so rather than guessing.** Give the boundary
  and ask for a report when it has to be crossed.

Two agents each adding a workspace member will still collide in
`Cargo.toml`/`Cargo.lock`. That one is expected; keep both sides.

### Every wave agent's brief must include

The wave skill holds both halves, each in one place (improvise-1f8e):

- **The brief checklist** — what an orchestrator must put in a brief — is
  `.agents/skills/wave/SKILL.md`, "What every brief must carry".
- **The agent's standing rules** — base and push, gates, claim, vacuity shapes,
  evidence, forbidden files, GitHub, hand-back, disk, commit early — are
  `.agents/skills/wave/agent-rules.md`. A brief points there rather than
  restating them.

`.claude/skills/wave` is a symlink to `.agents/skills/wave`, so Claude and Codex
read the same files. A new rule goes into one of those two files, not here and
not into the next brief: a restated rule is the copy nobody corrects, and this
list was once a third copy that drifted from the skill's.

### Between waves

Run the **code-review skill** on the merged range and iterate until its backlog
is empty. This is not ceremony: in this repo the review's characteristic find is
not a wrong line, it is **a test that passes while the thing it names is
broken** — a vacuous fold test, a bit-witness that cannot see the bit, a
one-category fixture, a helper that fabricates the `_Measure` items the code
under test needs, a check-the-checker that injected malformed JSON and so proved
nothing. A green suite is not evidence. Ask the reviewer to *inject the fault*
and watch the check fail.

### Shipping a wave

**Do not push `main` to `gh/main`.** Each agent's work reaches GitHub as its own
branch and its own pull request, and lands on `main` by being merged there, once
CI is green and an adversarial review agent has passed the PR's head SHA. An ADR
PR also needs the user's explicit approval, and nothing else stands in for it:
"ADR pull requests" below. The orchestrator does not integrate agent branches
locally: its `main` only fast-forwards to `gh/main` after a merge. The procedure is
`.agents/skills/wave/SKILL.md`, "Shepherding". `origin` and `gitea` are mirrors
and take `main` directly.

**Because the mirrors take `main` directly, `origin/main` can run ahead of
`gh/main`, and a branch destined for a GitHub PR must merge `gh/main` — never
`origin/main`.** This is a trap in this repo's own topology rather than a slip:
the two remotes are both spelled `main`, and nothing about
`git merge origin/main` looks wrong. bd's generated Session Completion block
once prescribed exactly that command (see "Repository policy over the Beads blocks" below).
It cost a review round on PR #145,
where four unmerged commits — including another PR's whole diff — were pulled
into a branch based on `gh/main` and had to be rebuilt by cherry-picking.
Today the repair **starts with a merge**. If the foreign commits belong to
another open PR that will land as a merge commit, either stack on that PR (see
the stacked-PR rule below) or wait for it to merge. Then re-pin `gh/main` and
merge the new SHA, and the foreign commits drop out of your diff. Never revert
them in your branch: merging the branch would then land an undo of that PR.

`git cherry-pick -x` is sanctioned **only** when those commits will never reach
`main` as they are: an abandoned or rebuilt PR, or commits that exist only on a
mirror or a local `main`, as in #148 below. Only then, cut a fresh branch from
the pinned `gh/main` SHA and cherry-pick only your own commits. `-x` keeps the
link to each original. Open a new PR, and close the old one without
force-pushing it.

ChatGPT Codex caught the #145 base problem; nothing in CI could, because the
result compiles and passes. The tell is a PR diff naming files the ticket has no reason to touch,
so **read your own PR's file list before asking for review** — and diff against `gh/main...<branch>`, never the local equivalent. **The second vector is the worktree base**: a branch cut from the orchestrator's *local* `main` inherits whatever that checkout has merged but not yet pushed, and nothing in the branch says so. That hit PR #148 with another PR's whole diff — including `.beads/`, `kb.pl` and `context/repo-map.md`, the three files agents are forbidden to touch, so the review read as a rule violation rather than a base problem. Note the window
is transient — the two remotes are equal immediately after the orchestrator
syncs — which makes it worse, not better: the hazard is absent exactly when
you would think to check for it.

This is easy to drift out of, because merging locally and pushing feels like
finishing. It happened in this repo: 27 commits across six agent branches —
including a new crate, a new protocol type, and a type moving between crates —
went straight to `main` unreviewed, while `AGENTS.md` already said not to. If
you notice a batch has bypassed the loop, the cheap repair is a **review-only
PR**: base a branch at the last PR merge, open a PR with `main` as the head,
have an adversarial review agent review the diff, and land the findings as an
ordinary PR afterwards. It
cannot be merged — the commits are already in — so close it once its findings
are filed or fixed. Rewinding the default branch to fake a mergeable PR is not
worth it on a repo with other collaborators.

**Read the PR's reviews before merging it.** This is separate from CI and from
the adversarial agent, and it has been missed: two ChatGPT Codex reviews landed
on merged PRs and were not read until afterwards, one of them a live P2
(improvise-x1ns). Both were correct.

```bash
./scripts/pr-reviews <n>    # bodies, inline comments and issue comments, in time order; do not pipe it
```

`gh pr view <n> --json reviews` is not a substitute: it shows review bodies
only, and most of Copilot's findings are inline comments.

Two things make a Codex review easy to miss. It arrives as a **review**, not a
comment, so a glance at the comment thread does not show it. And it posts under
the repository owner's account — the same account our own agents post under —
so **authorship does not distinguish it**. The tell is the trailing line
`_Automated review by ChatGPT Codex (…)_`; ours open with
`_Posted by Claude (…)_`. Check the `commit.oid` too: a review may target an
earlier head, and the finding may already be fixed — verify rather than assume
in either direction.

Reviews arrive **as the owner's quota allows**, so absence is not evidence.
Wait where a review is plausible. How a review is answered once found, by the
author and by a reviewer, is `.agents/skills/wave/agent-rules.md`, "GitHub".

**Copilot is reviewing this repository again, so read its findings and answer
them exactly as you answer Codex's.** On 2026-09-24 it posted inline findings on
#221, #251, #274, #295 and #298, after a lapse that began between #27 and #61
(measured 2026-09-20: #12, #21 and #27 carry 2, 8 and 4 Copilot reviews, and
#61, #66, #68 and #70 carry none, while both request paths reported success and
registered nothing). Two things carry over from the lapse:

- **Its findings arrive mostly as inline review comments**, not as a review
  body. `scripts/pr-reviews <n>` reads bodies, inline comments and issue
  comments together; `gh pr view --json reviews` shows only the bodies, so it
  misses them. Answer each on its own thread, as agent-rules, "GitHub" says.
- **Do not wait on it.** It reviews as its quota allows, and an absent review
  and an unrequested one still look identical from outside, which is
  `doctrine(review_is_requested_not_inherited)` seen from the requester's side.
  The review that gates a merge is still an adversarial agent the orchestrator
  dispatches, given the head SHA. Copilot's findings are read *in addition*,
  before the merge, like Codex's.

The request mechanics below are what worked before the lapse. Whether they work
now is not re-measured.

Copilot review must be **re-requested after every fix push**; it does not
re-review on its own. The mutation takes a **`botIds`** field — `userIds` fails
with *"Could not resolve to User node"*:

```bash
gh api graphql -f query='mutation($pr:ID!,$ids:[ID!]!){requestReviews(input:{pullRequestId:$pr,botIds:$ids,union:true}){clientMutationId}}' \
  -f pr="$(gh pr view <n> --json id -q .id)" -f ids=BOT_kgDOCnlnWA
```

REST also works, with the login spelled `copilot-pull-request-reviewer[bot]` —
without the `[bot]` suffix it 422s as "not a collaborator".

In a worktree-isolated agent the shell guard refuses an inline
`gh api graphql -f query='mutation(...)'` as "too complex to verify". Put the
query in a file and pass `-F query=@file`; PR comment bodies likewise go
through `-F body=@file` rather than command substitution.

**Anything you post to GitHub goes out under the repository owner's account, so
say who is speaking.** Open every PR comment, review and issue body with a line
naming the model and that it is an agent posting in his session. A PR body's
`🤖 Generated with Claude Code` footer covers that case; comments have nothing
unless you add it, and an unattributed one reads as his own words to everyone
who sees it.

Two environment notes. **`gh` is not on `PATH` here** — the name is
shell-aliased to `git-hub`, a different tool — so use
`nix shell nixpkgs#gh --command gh …`. And **a Copilot review takes about six
minutes**; tool calls return fast, which makes elapsed time easy to misjudge, so
check `date -u` against the GitHub timeline before concluding a review is stuck.
(One agent closed and reopened a PR to "unstick" a review that was proceeding
normally.)

Across four PRs Copilot has found genuine bugs and no false positives, so its
findings are worth the loop. **But judge each one against the repo's doctrine
rather than applying it reflexively**. How a declined finding is answered is
agent-rules, "GitHub". The distinction that has mattered: a finding can be *correct*
and still be wrong to fix in that PR. On #12, a non-ASCII `truncate` panic was
applied (byte-identical on ASCII, so it cost no evidence) while a hint-line
padding bug in the same file was declined — fixing it would have rewritten the
exact-frame characterization tests that were the PR's only evidence the
migration changed nothing. Two right findings, different costs. File the
declined one.

**Under merge-as-soon-as-green, a review round can land after its own merge.**
GitHub deletes the branch when a PR merges, so a fix push to the old branch name
**silently succeeds and accomplishes nothing** — it re-creates a branch `main`
will never see, CI runs on it, and the commit is nowhere. The tell is the push
printing `* [new branch]` where you expected an `old..new` range. It happened on
#51: the third review round completed four minutes after the merge, and the
correction it prompted went to a re-created `wave/b-projection-gaps`. The repair
is a merge, not a cherry-pick. The PR merged with a merge commit, so the stray
branch's base is already an ancestor of `main`. Branch from the pinned
`gh/main` SHA, `git merge` the stray branch's SHA, open a follow-up PR, and
delete the stray re-creation. The merge brings exactly the fix commits, under
their own SHAs, with the link to the PR they answered. A cherry-pick would copy
them and drop that link. This recipe works only because PRs here never
squash-merge. Check `gh pr view <n> --json state` *before* pushing a fix to
a PR you have not looked at in a few minutes, rather than after.

**A stacked PR whose base PR has already merged merges into that stale base
branch, not into `main`.** GitHub merges a PR into whatever `baseRefName` says,
and it did not retarget these. On 2026-09-24 fifteen approved stacked PRs
(#255–#286) were merged into a base whose own PR had **already** merged, and
the merges read as done. Recovery took seven landing PRs (#289–#295), each
opened from a stack's tip against `main`, and their titles name exactly those
fifteen. Four more in that range (#259, #263, #272, #273) also merged into a
non-`main` base, but one whose PR was still open; they reached `main` when their
base did, which is stacking working as intended. The repository reports `delete_branch_on_merge: true` as measured on
2026-09-24, and the stale bases (`collapse-fu/h6z1`, `fix/enz6-advance-onto-fold`
and others) were still on GitHub afterwards, so that setting is not the guard.
The guard is a check before every merge:

```bash
gh pr view <n> --json baseRefName -q .baseRefName    # must print main
gh pr edit <n> --base main                           # if not, once its base PR has landed
```

Then read the PR's diff again: a retargeted PR's diff now includes its base's
commits if the base did not land.

Merge only once a review of the PR's current head has passed — an adversarial
agent's — and every Codex and Copilot finding on the PR has an answer. What a
review must state is agent-rules, "GitHub". Merge with a **merge commit**. Never
use GitHub's squash or rebase merge: history is reconciled only by merge (the
rule at the top of this file). A PR's commits are individually meaningful, and
the fix-after-merge recipe above needs the PR's head to be an ancestor of
`main`.

### Merging many PRs at once

Three things went wrong when a day's approved PRs landed together, and each is
invisible to CI on either side alone.

**Land a batch as one integration PR, not one PR at a time.** Every PR appends
its bug evidence at the end of a `context/test-evidence/*.md` file. So each
merge makes every other open PR conflict at EOF, and merging one at a time
means re-resolving the same files once per PR — and a PR that conflicts gets no
CI run at all (agent-rules, "Gates"). On 2026-09-24 the approved PRs landed as
two integration PRs instead: #298 (nineteen PRs) and #299 (the browser-editor
stack). This is what "one PR per wave" above already intends.

**After resolving a conflict, diff the result against each parent and against
the merge base.** `git checkout --ours <file>` or `--theirs` takes the whole
file from one side, so it silently drops every *non*-conflicting change the
other side made to that file. #245 resolved a `ci.yml` conflict with #228 by
`git checkout --theirs`, took #228's whole file, and lost its own
`check-harness-lock --allow-network` step, while the merge message said the step
was unchanged (improvise-dndu). Nothing refused it: `check-ci-graph.py` counts
suites, not that step. Resolve by hand, then check the merge commit:

```bash
git diff <merge-base> HEAD -- <file>    # both sides' changes together, and nothing else
git diff HEAD^1 HEAD -- <file>          # what the second side brought
git diff HEAD^2 HEAD -- <file>          # what the first side brought
```

**Two changes to one test file can merge cleanly and still fail together.** #287
(the NixOS runners) found that `/usr/bin:/bin` there holds only `env` and `sh`,
and gave section 5 of `checkers-test.sh` a hermetic `utilbin` PATH. #237 added
section 5b on a branch cut before that, still using `PATH=…:/usr/bin:/bin`. Each
passed CI alone, the merge was textually clean, and 5b failed on every PR after
it (#296). So a fix to an idiom — a hermetic PATH, a scrubbed environment, a
helper every case must call — has to be applied to **every case in the file**,
including cases that exist only on another open branch. When you merge, grep
the merged file for the old idiom. Then run the gates on the merged tree, not
on each side.

### CI takes its tools from the dev shell

These are the user's rulings of 2026-09-24:

- **CI runs on self-hosted NixOS microVM runners** (`runs-on: [self-hosted,
  nixos, microvm]`). Every `run:` step runs in `nix develop .#ci`, through the
  workflow's `defaults.run.shell`. A `uses:` step (an action such as
  `actions/checkout`) is not a shell step and does not go through it. A missing tool goes into the `.#ci` shell in
  `flake.nix`, not into a per-step `nix shell` wrapper.
- **No hard-coded `/bin` or `/usr/bin` paths.** On these runners those
  directories hold only `env` and `sh`. Take tools from `PATH`.
- **No version floors and no probes.** Scripts and tests must not care which
  bash or standard utilities are present. `checkers.sh` no longer pins a bash
  (it did, at 5.1, until #297). A script that needs a newer feature fails where
  it uses it. The argument is `context/code/tooling.md` §5.
- **Playwright's browsers come from nix.** The dev shell sets
  `PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH` to nixpkgs' browsers, so there is no install step
  and no version check. `npm ci` stays, because `@playwright/test` is not
  nix-provided.

A test that fakes an environment must build it on purpose, for example a
hermetic `utilbin` of linked tools. It must not assume the runner's `/bin`
holds anything.

### ADR pull requests

**Only the user's explicit approval accepts an ADR (`context/adr/`), and only
it lets an ADR PR merge.** "An ADR isn't approved until I say it is" (the
user). Green CI, every review answered and a passing adversarial review
("Shipping a wave") are still required. They are gates, never approval: an ADR
PR that passes all of them is still unapproved and does not merge. The steps,
modelled on PR #122 (ADR 004):

1. The PR proposes the ADR with its **open questions numbered**.
2. The user answers them on the PR.
3. The answers are folded into the ADR, in a section headed **"What the user
   decided"**.
4. The PR merges only after the user comments **"Approved"**, and only while
   the gates above still hold. Nobody else's comment or review stands in for
   it. "Read the PR's reviews before merging it" still
   applies after the approval. On #122 the user's own review landed as the PR
   merged.

**An open ADR PR is watched, not visited.** The user answers the numbered
questions inline, and reviews arrive as they arrive. An answer left unread for
hours is a failure (the user, 2026-09-24). So while an ADR PR is open the
orchestrator keeps a background poll for new non-agent comments and reviews
since its last pass, and resumes the steward agent on each new item. The
steward folds each answer in and replies on its thread.

### Never hand-edit `.beads/issues.jsonl`

bd manipulates that file and auto-exports to it. Editing it — or even
`git checkout`-ing it, which fires the post-checkout hook — breaks auto-export
and desynchronises `export-state.json`. Use `bd` commands, let auto-export run,
and commit whatever it leaves.

### Cite a ticket ID you have read back

`bd create` assigns the ID; it is not derivable from the title. An orchestrator
that files with output suppressed and then writes the ticket into a gotcha or an
ADR **will invent one** — six invented IDs survived into `context/` in a single
session before an agent tried one and found nothing. Read the ID back after
filing, and before pushing docs run the audit:

```bash
./scripts/bd-audit-ids
```

It exits 0, printing `all N cited ids resolve`, only when every cited id is in
what `bd list --all` returns. A dead id is exit 1, and each one is named. A bd
that is missing, fails, or lists no issues is exit 3. The comparison is
positive because the recipe the script replaced was not: it searched `bd show`
for "not found" lines and printed "all resolve" when there were none, so a bd
that never ran read as a clean audit (improvise-52eq). Its suite,
`scripts/bd-audit-ids-test.sh`, runs in `checkers.sh` and checks both halves:
a dead id, and a bd that does not answer.

In the script, `git ls-files` picks the files, and grep only reads them. The file list is the
tracked files plus the untracked ones, minus anything git ignores. That leaves
out two things a `grep -r` over the same roots reads:

- **Build output.** After `./harness/build.sh`, `harness/serve/` holds
  rendered copies of `context/`, and `grep -r` reported three dead ids from them
  that no tracked file contains (improvise-8haj).
- **Other agents' worktrees.** In the orchestrator's checkout
  `.claude/worktrees/` holds every agent's worktree, dozens of copies of the
  repository with their unpushed work.

`-d skip` is there for the skills' symlinks, and it changes no answer. The
`.claude/skills/*` entries are symlinks to directories under `.agents/skills/`,
and `git ls-files` lists each one, so each reaches grep as a command-line
operand. The grep has no `-r`, so it never reads a directory operand. It prints
`grep: <path>: Is a directory` on stderr instead, and `-d skip` only silences
those lines. The output goes through `sort -u`, so a duplicate could not change
the answer anyway. Measured with BSD grep 2.6.0 and GNU grep 3.12: 3092 matches
with or without the flag, 462 distinct ids. Do not add `-r`: GNU grep then
follows those symlinks and reads the skills a second time (3107 matches).

Plain `git grep` is not a substitute: on macOS its `-E` silently ignores `\b`
and finds a fraction of the ids.

Three things the earlier version of this recipe got wrong, each of which let a
real defect through:

- **It scanned two paths** (`context/repo-map.md context/adr/*.md`), so it
  found one dead id in the repo map and missed both copies of it in
  `harness/tests/shell.spec.js`. Ticket IDs are cited in code comments,
  in `README.md` and in `web/`, not only in `context/`.
- **`[a-z0-9]{3,4}` cannot see a commit SHA wearing the prefix.** A seven-hex
  commit sha cited as `improvise-<sha>` survived in
  `crates/improvise-core/src/workbook.rs` precisely because it was too long
  to match. An ID-shaped non-ID is worse than a dead ID, because the
  diagnosis is identical and the repair is not.
- **The exclusion list named only `core` and `wasm`**, so every other crate
  name would have been reported missing. The script's exclusions also cover the
  non-ticket tokens this repo really contains: a package name, a temp file
  name, the prose word "improvise-side", and the example crate name in the
  `kb` skill's `crate(...)` fact. **They are anchored `^…$` for the
  same reason the recipe is read as code**: unanchored, the `gp` alternative is
  a *prefix* match, so a future real ticket whose id happens to begin `gp` is
  silently excluded and the audit reports nothing while skipping it. An
  exclusion list is a filter, and a filter that over-matches fails in the
  direction that looks like success. (Anchoring it is also what caught the
  example id this very paragraph originally spelled out — see the note below.)
- **A release artifact's name is ID-shaped, and `improvise-installer.sh`
  escaped only by being ten characters long.** `improvise-web.tar.gz`
  (improvise-oujb) is three, so it matches `{3,8}` and resolves to nothing;
  `web` is therefore excluded in the script. The general point is that the length
  bound, not any rule, is what has been keeping `dist`'s artifact names out of
  this audit — so **a new artifact whose name is a short lowercase word must be
  added to the exclusion list in the same commit**, or it arrives as a dead id
  that no amount of `bd` archaeology explains.

The recipe's own prose spells no id as an *example*, because a document that
lists example ids makes itself a source of audit noise. The ids it does cite,
improvise-8haj and improvise-oujb, are the tickets behind two of the rules
above. They resolve, and the audit checks them like any other.

One environment note: run the audit by its name. Which `bd` command forms a
worktree-isolated agent's shell guard allows has varied between sessions. In
one session it refused the old recipe's `bd show $(cat …)`, and also
`xargs bd show < file` and `sh file`. In another, both `xargs` forms ran.
`./scripts/bd-audit-ids` passes `bd` no argument computed at runtime, and it
ran in the session that refused the other three.

A dead ID is worse than no ID: it reads as a promise that the follow-up exists.

### Before filing a ticket, search

Agent-filed issues duplicate work that is already open, sometimes already
in progress. Two duplicates were filed in this repo within minutes of the
hand-backs that prompted them. `bd search` the core concept *and* scan
in-progress issues first.

## Repository policy over the Beads blocks

Everything between a `BEGIN BEADS …` marker and its `END` is generated by bd,
and bd replaces it whole. `bd init` and `bd setup factory|opencode|mux` rewrite
the integration block, and the last three call it "stale" and invite the
rewrite whenever bd's template has moved on. `bd setup codex` rewrites the
Codex block. So a hand edit inside the markers is silently reverted by the next
regeneration. Repository policy lives here, outside them:

- **Work is not done until it is in a pull request and that pull request has
  merged.** A pushed branch is not done, and neither is a green one. In a wave,
  the merge is the orchestrator's, after an adversarial review passes the head
  SHA ("Shipping a wave"). An ADR PR merges only on the user's explicit
  approval as well ("ADR pull requests"). So a wave agent's part ends at an
  open PR plus its hand-back, and the ticket is done, and its bead closed, only
  when the merge lands.
- **This repository does not opt in to the Beads "team-maintainer" profile.**
  So the pull (`git pull`, or `git pull --rebase` in bd's "full" profile) and
  the bare `git push` that the block lists for that profile are not
  instructions here. Work reaches `main` as "Shipping a wave" describes,
  and a wave agent pushes with the explicit refspec in
  `.agents/skills/wave/agent-rules.md`, "Base, branch, push".
- **The no-markdown-TODO and no-`MEMORY.md` rules have one exception:**
  `context/design-principles.md` and `context/repo-map.md` are kept by hand
  (the repo map by the orchestrator only; see "Who owns what").

<!-- BEGIN BEADS INTEGRATION v:1 profile:minimal hash:46cd31e7 -->
## Beads Issue Tracker

This project uses **bd (beads)** for issue tracking. Run `bd prime` to see full workflow context and commands.

### Quick Reference

```bash
bd ready              # Find available work
bd show <id>          # View issue details
bd update <id> --claim  # Claim work
bd close <id>         # Complete work
```

### Rules

- Use `bd` for ALL task tracking — do NOT use TodoWrite, TaskCreate, or markdown TODO lists
- Run `bd prime` for detailed command reference and session close protocol
- Use `bd remember` for persistent knowledge — do NOT use MEMORY.md files

**Architecture in one line:** issues live in a local Dolt DB; sync uses `refs/dolt/data` on your git remote; `.beads/issues.jsonl` is a passive export. See https://github.com/gastownhall/beads/blob/main/docs/core-concepts/sync-concepts.md for details and anti-patterns.

## Agent Context Profiles

The managed Beads block is task-tracking guidance, not permission to override repository, user, or orchestrator instructions.

- **Conservative (default)**: Use `bd` for task tracking. Do not run git commits, git pushes, or Dolt remote sync unless explicitly asked. At handoff, report changed files, validation, and suggested next commands.
- **Minimal**: Keep tool instruction files as pointers to `bd prime`; use the same conservative git policy unless active instructions say otherwise.
- **Team-maintainer**: Only when the repository explicitly opts in, agents may close beads, run quality gates, commit, and push as part of session close. A current "do not commit" or "do not push" instruction still wins.

## Session Completion

This protocol applies when ending a Beads implementation workflow. It is subordinate to explicit user, repository, and orchestrator instructions.

1. **File issues for remaining work** - Create beads for anything that needs follow-up
2. **Run quality gates** (if code changed) - Tests, linters, builds
3. **Update issue status** - Close finished work, update in-progress items
4. **Handle git/sync by active profile**:
   ```bash
   # Conservative/minimal/default: report status and proposed commands; wait for approval.
   git status

   # Team-maintainer opt-in only, unless current instructions forbid it:
   git pull
   bd dolt push
   git push
   git status
   ```
5. **Hand off** - Summarize changes, validation, issue status, and any blocked sync/commit/push step

**Critical rules:**
- Explicit user or orchestrator instructions override this Beads block.
- Do not commit or push without clear authority from the active profile or the current user request.
- If a required sync or push is blocked, stop and report the exact command and error.
<!-- END BEADS INTEGRATION -->

<!-- BEGIN BEADS CODEX SETUP: generated by bd setup codex -->
## Beads Issue Tracker

Use Beads (`bd`) for durable task tracking in repositories that include it. Use the `beads` skill at `.agents/skills/beads/SKILL.md` (project install) or `~/.agents/skills/beads/SKILL.md` (global install) for Beads workflow guidance, then use the `bd` CLI for issue operations.

### Quick Reference

```bash
bd ready                # Find available work
bd show <id>            # View issue details
bd update <id> --claim  # Claim work
bd close <id>           # Complete work
bd prime                # Refresh Beads context
```

### Rules

- Use `bd` for all task tracking; do not create markdown TODO lists.
- Run `bd prime` when Beads context is missing or stale. Codex 0.129.0+ can load Beads context automatically through native hooks; use `/hooks` to inspect or toggle them.
- Keep persistent project memory in Beads via `bd remember`; do not create ad hoc memory files.

**Architecture in one line:** issues live in a local Dolt DB; sync uses `refs/dolt/data` on your git remote; `.beads/issues.jsonl` is a passive export. See https://github.com/gastownhall/beads/blob/main/docs/core-concepts/sync-concepts.md for details and anti-patterns.
<!-- END BEADS CODEX SETUP -->