computeVerdict counted only the findings handed to it (reasoned.kept), so a
finding removed by Pass 2 or Pass 3, and a reviewer whose payload was thrown
away or never arrived, were arithmetically identical to a finding that never
existed. All three pushed the verdict toward ALLOW.
Measured before the fix (probes, 2026-09-01):
- a BLOCKER with a 101-character title -> ALLOW (Pass 2 succinctness)
- a payload with one ad-hoc rule_key is skipped WHOLE at ingest, taking a
valid BLOCKER sibling with it -> ALLOW
- a reviewer that never reported -> ALLOW
Pass 3's own no-citation / unknown-rule_key branches turned out unreachable
through runContract (validateFindings rejects those payloads first), so the
reachable exposure was Pass 2 plus the skipped/absent reviewer.
THE OPEN DESIGN DECISION, and why it went against the order's default.
The order proposed: indeterminate file-existence YES, plain succinctness NO
("a too-long finding is not an uncertain finding"). I kept the first and
overrode the second, on one principle:
A removal is `dropped` only when the test REFUTED the finding as a claim
about this codebase. Every other removal is `unverified`.
Succinctness and actionability read a `.length`. They never examine the claim,
so they cannot establish the finding is unreal - and dropping a BLOCKER for a
101-character title is precisely the fail-open shape being fixed. Three things
settled it:
1. Under the order's default the fix would have been almost inert. Pass 3's
drop branches are unreachable via runContract, so leaving Pass 2 out would
have left the only reachable finding-level exposure open.
2. Cost asymmetry, priced rather than asserted: the verdict is not a gate.
Handover 6 feeds `findings` filtered to BLOCKER+MAJOR into /trekplan
(commands/trekplan.md:218); `verdict` is optional metadata
(docs/HANDOVER-CONTRACTS.md:353). Nothing loops or re-plans on WARN. So a
false `unverified` costs WARN plus a printed reason; a false drop costs a
silent ALLOW over a live BLOCKER.
3. unknown-rule_key joins them for the same reason: an ad-hoc key is a real
defect wearing the wrong label, and v5.1.1 high-effort mode already KEEPS
those, normalised to PLAN_EXECUTE_DRIFT. Refuting them at normal effort
while keeping them at high effort would be incoherent.
no-citation stays a drop: a finding whose file is empty or whose line is
negative names no location, so it makes no checkable claim at all - the one
deterministic refutation, and what the Pass 3 prose already said it was.
Iron Law: tests/lib/coordinator-contract.test.mjs first, red (missing export +
the three measured ALLOWs), then production code. Two existing assertions were
updated AFTER implementation as contract changes, not to make the red pass.
A known-positive control pins that ALLOW is still reachable - without it,
"no ALLOW" is not a fail-closed contract, only a broken one.
lib/review/coordinator-contract.mjs
+ classifySuppression / REFUTING_REASONS / UNVERIFIED_REASONS - one
vocabulary owned by the lib, including the tokens only the LLM
coordinator emits (accuracy:refuted, file-existence:refuted/indeterminate),
so prose and lib cannot drift. Unclassified reasons default to unverified:
the default fails closed.
~ judgeFilter / reasonablenessFilter return {kept, dropped, unverified}
~ computeVerdict(findings, {unverified, missingReviewers}) -> + allow_blocked_by.
Never raises a verdict, only withholds ALLOW. Unverified findings are NOT
counted into a severity tier: their severity was never substantiated, and
counting it would be invention.
~ runContract(payloads, {expectedReviewers}) -> + unverified,
missing_reviewers, allow_blocked_by. `suppressed` stays the union of
dropped + unverified, so existing consumers (gold-eval) keep their meaning.
agents/review-coordinator.md - Pass 2/3 tables gain a fate column, new
"Suppression is two-valued" section, Pass 4 threshold table gains the two
fail-closed rows, Executive Summary must state a withheld ALLOW, Suppressed
Findings tags each line [dropped]/[unverified]. Pass 3's unknown-rule_key
bullet explicitly says high-effort does not reach that branch, so the same
input never has two documented fates.
commands/trekreview.md - Phase 5 "Reviewer accounting": the expected set is
written down before the spawn, a silent reviewer gets one re-ask and then
STOP. That extends the pattern already in the file (schema failure -> 2
bounded re-asks -> "do not feed unvalidated findings to the coordinator") to
the other two ways a reviewer goes missing, rather than softening it to WARN.
The lib's missing_reviewers stays as belt-and-braces for direct callers.
docs/agent-return-channel-defect.md - the "inferred, not observed" caveat on
the unnamed arm above 66 lines is struck: akashic-intelligence S27
(f168630) measured 2/2 unnamed agents returning against a 4370-line plan,
30449 B and 10989 B, both valid JSON. Recorded with akashic's own two
caveats intact - the measurer owns the finding, and byte-identity between
the returned string and the file on disk was not proven. The separate S25
named-arm figures are left standing; these are two measurements, not a
correction of one by the other.
No release, no version bump, no tag, no catalogue ref, no Workflow port.
Suite 1025 (1023/0/2) -> 1034 (1032/0/2), 0 failures.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
akashic-intelligence recovered its four S25 agents' on-disk final text against
the full 3730-line / 277 KB plan (commit e281a9d): 4/4 produced correct output,
delivery alone failed. That closes the size-dependent-work question the caveat
left open. It does not close the returning arm above 66 lines -- all four of
their cells were named -- so that stays stated as inferred, not observed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018w5KWrbxzmki5wdXULT8nU
The five mute teammates surfaced nine minutes after finishing - as
content-free idle notifications. That is akashic's "innholdslose idle-pings"
verbatim, and it arrived after the write-up was committed, so it is added
here as the field signature to recognise the defect by.
Two readable facts in it:
- `summary` is populated only for the teammate that called SendMessage; the
five tool-less ones carry no content at all, not even an error. Presence of
`summary` is the fastest mute-vs-delivering discriminator.
- The pings lag by minutes (ctrl-pong went idle 10s after spawn, notified ~9
min later), so "no ping yet" is not evidence of work in progress and the
ping is not a result. Judging liveness from these is how a finished run gets
re-prompted nine times.
Suite unchanged: 1013 (1011/0/2).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014MfB5Ecp8vvGyou8uFGxBV
akashic-intelligence lost /trekplan Phase 9 twice to reviewer agents that
never returned. Reproduced here and measured: the cause is the Agent tool's
`name` parameter, not the agent definitions.
Passing `name` does not label a subagent - it changes its kind. The spawn is
recorded as taskKind "in_process_teammate" (spawnDepth 0) instead of a real
subagent (spawnDepth 1). A teammate's final assistant text is not a return
value; it reaches the parent only if the teammate itself calls
SendMessage(to: "main"). plan-critic and scope-guardian declare
tools: [Read, Glob, Grep] - no SendMessage - so as teammates they are
structurally incapable of returning, whatever the prompt says.
Denominators: named 0/5 returned; named + explicit SendMessage 1/1; unnamed
3/3 (plan-critic and scope-guardian each returned full findings + the JSON
block in ~110s). Model override 2/2 non-returning, so the override is not
the variable. All 5 named agents produced correct final text in their
transcripts - only delivery failed, and that output is recoverable on disk.
The defect is a harness behaviour, so it is documented rather than silently
worked around: docs/agent-return-channel-defect.md carries the mechanism,
every denominator, the two broken queries that nearly became facts, the
unmeasured cells, and a recommended working shape for consumers (use agents,
drop `name`; do not fall back to inline review, which costs the dedup step).
Prevention is pinned, TDD red->green: the four spawning commands each state
the rule and name the mechanism, and doc-consistency derives the spawning set
from the command files so the pin cannot go vacuous.
Suite 1013 (1011/0/2), +5 from baseline 1008.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014MfB5Ecp8vvGyou8uFGxBV
