Defame1297
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diagnose read its feedback-loops reference unconditionally, so every invocation paid for guidance most runs never used; the read is conditional again and the per-invocation cost drops from 1,278 to 831 words. Its HITL template moves to assets/ because it is copied out, not read as reference. prototype's two branch flows move into references/ for the same reason — only one branch is ever taken. research could not search the codebase it was asked to research without Grep and Glob. caveman's description had grown into a paragraph where one sentence carries the trigger. Four references pointed at things that do not exist: a to-prd skill, a /setup-matt-pocock-skills command, two cross-skill ../ links that only resolve in the source tree, and two places calling this project's Gitea host GitHub. Addresses #114.
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Judging a regression-test seam
Read this when Phase 5 leaves you unsure whether the seam available for the regression test is the correct one — either because the obvious seam looks shallow, or because there appears to be no seam at all.
What makes a seam correct
A correct seam is one where the test exercises the real bug pattern as it occurs at the call site: the same entry point, the same participants, the same ordering, and the same state the real caller holds when it goes wrong.
Seams that are too shallow
- A single-caller test when the bug only appears with multiple callers.
- A unit test that cannot replicate the chain of calls that triggered the bug.
- A test that reproduces the symptom by construction — asserting on a value the test itself set — rather than by driving the code path that produces it.
- A test that mocks out the collaborator the bug actually lives in.
A regression test at a shallow seam gives false confidence. It passes forever, including after a change reintroduces the bug at the real call site, and it will be read by the next maintainer as proof the bug is locked down.
When there is no correct seam
Do not force one, and do not settle for a shallow seam to have something green. Instead:
- Apply the fix and verify it against the Phase 1 loop directly.
- Write down which seams you considered and why each was too shallow.
- Carry that into Phase 6's "what would have prevented this bug" question. A missing seam is an architecture finding — tangled callers, hidden coupling, or a module with no testable boundary — and the handoff is the
improve-codebase-architectureskill, with those specifics attached.