Dogfooding `plan` + `implement` against a throwaway config surfaced one root
defect with many arms: the command templates treat consecutive fenced blocks as
one shell. They are not. Every ```bash fence runs as its own Bash call in its own
process, so a variable set in one block is empty in the next, and `$$` is a
different PID (measured: 21710 vs 22109).
The planner agent confirmed the sharpest arm at runtime, reporting that
`Mode: $RAW_FLAG` "arrived literally unsubstituted" — `--raw` was documented in
three command files while being functionally dead. A machine sweep found the same
root in 20 places across 9 files, well past the two the written fasit predicted:
- `$RAW_FLAG` read from non-shell agent prompts (analyze, plan, implement)
- `$TMPFILE` read across blocks (tokens, manifest, whats-active,
plugin-health) — each command could not read the file it had just written
- `$GLOBAL_FLAG` across blocks (fix)
- `$TODAY` never assigned in any block (campaign), passing
`--reference-date ""` to a write CLI in six places
- three `$$` temp paths handed to the Read tool (fix), which expands neither
All now follow the hardened drift.md pattern: a fixed literal path, or a
re-derivation inside each block that needs it.
Also fixed, all confirmed against ground truth rather than inferred:
- `implement` printed a rollback ID it never captured (the timestamp lived only
inside a command substitution) — the one message a user reads after a bad run
- `plan` reported "No analysis results found" for valid sessions, because Read
was pointed at a glob it cannot expand; now uses Glob and verifies the
analysis report exists before spawning the agent
- five phase commands wrote state.yaml with two of four required fields; since
the agent writes all four, a follow-up write silently deleted the rest
- `implement` promised rollback deletes created files; rollback deliberately
leaves them (M-BUG-26 still open) — the doc, not the engine, was wrong
- `implement` claimed a score delta with no pre-change measurement
- `verifier-agent` was told to write a report it has no tool to write
- dead `Task` tool name in always-loaded rule context; planner-agent template
demonstrated the inline file content its own line 110 forbids
The sweeps land as tests/commands/command-shell-state-shape.test.mjs, verified
red before the fix and proven able to fail by reintroducing the defect. Two
existing tests asserted the old bash-block mechanism rather than the intent and
were updated. Suite 1449/0; frozen v5.0.0 snapshots and all scanner code
untouched.
Not fixed, deliberately: neither command scope-gates its actions to the audit
target. The generated plan included an edit to a real file under ~/.claude,
outside the throwaway target, because the skill/agent scanners are machine-wide.
That is a design change, not a side fix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0195udHgCcFegzm7ecKku2Yc
Kjell Tore Guttormsen
09f817977c