Tribunal

tribunal

The deepest, most expensive review codeArbiter offers — convened rarely, on demand, never as a gate. Routed to when the user invokes $ca-tribunal. Eleven specialist lenses judge the codebase; every finding persists to its own file (plus append-only triage/run logs) under a run dir that survives compaction and disconnects, so the run resumes from disk.

Pre-flight

Read these, or STOP and surface the gap — never guess a command or a path:

• <project-root>/.codearbiter/tech-stack.md — stack, async model, concurrency primitives, test/lint/secrets commands, and, when documented, the tracker command. Stop if the test/lint/secrets commands are missing; do not guess.
• <project-root>/.codearbiter/CONTEXT.md — the stage: maturity value and domain vocabulary.
• <project-root>/.codearbiter/coding-standards.md — the conventions lenses judge against.
• <project-root>/.codearbiter/security-controls.md — trust boundaries, approved crypto/secret stores; feeds the appsec and secrets lenses. Absent on some repos — proceed without the security lenses' control-file checks if so.
• A git repository must be present.
• The reference set under ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/routines/tribunal/references/ — each is cited at its phase, loaded on demand. Do not preload them.

Phase 0 — Cost, model & resume · gate: STOP

This lane is expensive. Orient and get explicit go-ahead before dispatching anything.

• Resume check. Scan .codearbiter/reports/ for the most recent run dir matching the current scope-slug, any date — never just today's. If none, skip to sizing. If found, check completion: incomplete (no report-written event in its run.jsonl) means either resumable or stale, judged by that run dir's latest run.jsonl timestamp. A run whose run.jsonl carries run-aborted is terminal — never offered for resume; a fresh run starts. Younger than 7 days → recover position with the cheap cursor scan in references/schemas.md (grep the last wave-triaged, do not read finding bodies) and offer to resume at the first un-triaged wave instead of restarting; skip the estimate. Older than 7 days → STOP and ask the user to resume anyway or start fresh — the codebase may have drifted under the findings, and stale-tree findings must not silently merge with fresh ones. Complete → start a fresh run.
• Abandon. If the user tells the orchestrator to abandon the run, log a run-aborted event to run.jsonl before stopping.
• Cost acknowledgment. Size the job, compute the token band, recommend the model (highest-reasoning available, high effort), and offer the cost-control levers. Present the band plainly; nothing dispatches until the user acknowledges it and confirms the model.
• Establish RUN_ID = <UTC-date>-<scope-slug> on a fresh run; create .codearbiter/reports/<run-id>/; open run.jsonl. On resume, reuse the existing RUN_ID as-is — the date is the run's creation date and never changes on resume.
• Procedure: references/cost-and-models.md — load now.

Gate: the user has acknowledged the estimated cost and confirmed the model. An unacknowledged run does not pass.

Phase 1 — Map + judgment overlay · gate: BLOCK

Map before reviewing; the map decides what gets scrutiny.

• Produce the inventory (inline, or on a large repo dispatch the optional cheap mappers per references/cost-and-models.md): file tree, language breakdown, entry points/routes, core-logic and shared-utility locations, dependency and integration surface. Write inventory.md.
• Apply the judgment overlay in references/ai-markers.md: risk-rank directories (untrusted input, money, auth, PII, churn = highest), mark trust boundaries, record AI-authorship markers and an iteration-depth estimate. High-marker / high-iteration areas carry a scrutiny boost and a small severity prior.
• Choose the active lenses — the full roster minus any whose concern is absent from scope (no migrations → drop the migration lens). Record launched/skipped as run.jsonl events.
• Choose the wave partition — the default in references/cost-and-models.md, or a repartition for cause — and record it in the run-started event (references/schemas.md); resume reads this recorded partition, never re-derives it.

Gate: inventory.md written with the risk/boundary/marker overlay, and the active-lens set recorded.

Phase 2 — Roster dispatch (dual output: finding files + summary) · gate: BLOCK

Dispatch the active lenses in the wave partition recorded at Phase 1 (default in references/cost-and-models.md) at the concurrency from references/cost-and-models.md (≤5 in flight). Give each agent only its scope slice, on the model/effort from references/cost-and-models.md; the agent itself reads its own mandate (references/lenses/<lens>.md) and the finding contract (references/finding-record.md), and loads neither the other lenses' mandates nor the orchestrator schemas. The orchestrator reads references/finding-record.md to read findings at triage, and consults a lens mandate only to adjudicate that lens's finding.

• Each tribunal-* agent writes each finding to its own file findings/<lens>/<finding-id>.json the moment it is found — one file per finding, never a batched write at the end (write contract: references/finding-record.md).
• Evidence-or-drop. Every finding cites a concrete path:line and the minimal snippet. An absence claim — "no handler", "no teardown", "missing validation" — requires reading the whole unit, never a truncated window.
• Specialists never dispatch further subagents. Update each wave's status in run.jsonl as it flushes.
• When a lens's summary returns, record a lens-completed event in run.jsonl with surface_seen/findings/model taken from the agent's summary, plus tokens when the orchestrator can observe that lens's spend.
• Codex usage receipt. If the current host has no subagent dispatch capability and a lens must run inline, record tokens_status: unavailable and tokens_reason: host-usage-unsupported. If dispatch succeeds but returns no usable thread ID, record tokens_status: unavailable and tokens_reason: host-result-missing. Otherwise capture the returned agent thread ID on the lens-launched event. After that lens completes, resolve the installed plugin root from this routine's own loaded SKILL.md path (ordinary shell calls do not inherit a plugin-root environment variable) and run hooks/tribunal-usage.py observe --thread-id <agent-thread-id>. The helper reads only metadata and cumulative token-count events from the exact agent session. On status: observed, copy its integer tokens and component token_usage, set tokens_status: observed, and copy source as tokens_source into lens-completed. On status: unavailable, omit tokens, set tokens_status: unavailable, and copy reason as tokens_reason; never turn a parser or capability failure into an unexplained omission. Codex session JSONL is explicitly not a stable extension interface, so this recovery remains best-effort and every changed-format path must degrade to a reason, not block the tribunal.

Gate: every active lens has flushed its findings/<lens>/ files, and each wave's status is recorded.

Phase 3 — Triage & per-wave planning · gate: BLOCK

Triage per wave from disk as soon as it flushes; do not wait for the whole run.

• Calibrate independently. Set final_severity/final_confidence from the evidence yourself — the lens's values are provisional input; every critical/high carries a counter_argument.
• Decide per finding, logged. Each finding gets one decision from the vocabulary, appended as one line to triage.jsonl. Below the confidence gate after calibration → investigate (medium/low) or decision-required (critical/high) — never dropped silently.
• Plan the wave. Write plans/phase-<n>.md for its kept (keep/combine) work.
• Procedure: references/triage.md — load now.

Gate: every wave's findings triaged into triage.jsonl and a plans/phase-<n>.md written for its kept work.

Phase 4 — Report · gate: BLOCK

Regenerate report.md and manifest.yaml from the two logs per references/report.md — projections, never hand-authored. Task-list-structured (not prose): findings grouped by calibrated severity then type, each with id, path:line, one-line description, remediation shape, triage decision, and a link to its phase plan; decision-required in its own section; a launched/skipped-lens summary; an investigate appendix. Apply ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/includes/anti-slop-design/ (core + medium-documents) to the prose.

State plainly that critical/high are blocking-severity findings — work that should block shipping the affected code — but that this lane is not itself a gate and blocks nothing.

Gate: report.md regenerated from the logs and presented. No issues created.

Phase 5 — Approval & issue filing · gate: BLOCK

Findings become GitHub issues only on explicit selection and authorization. Silence or ambiguity → file nothing; "looks good" is not authorization.

• Dedup first. Skip findings already carrying an issue_ref in triage.jsonl, then dedup against the tracker — this lane reruns over time and will re-find the same issues.
• Default is hand-off. Write and print issue-commands.sh; execute only on explicit approval, writing each issue_ref back into triage.jsonl.
• Findings file as GitHub issues, never open-tasks.md — a periodic-review finding must survive PR abandonment.
• Procedure: references/issue-filing.md — load now.

Gate: either issue-commands.sh written and printed, or — on approval — issues filed with the id→result table and issue_ref recorded. Nothing filed without explicit selection; no duplicates against the tracker.

Phase 6 — Telemetry · gate: STOP

Optional, opt-in KPI feedback to refine the skill and the estimator — off by default, sent only on explicit per-run authorization.

• Scrub. The payload is aggregates and per-lens exposure counts only — no code, paths, or finding text; no repo identity unless the user adds --tag.
• Show before send. Write the payload to the run dir and show it in full; state plainly that it posts publicly to the codeArbiter repo. Default: hand the user the ready command; post only on explicit approval.
• Procedure: references/telemetry.md — load now.

Gate: the payload is shown, and it is either handed to the user as a command or — on approval — posted. No telemetry leaves without per-run authorization.

Hard rules

• MUST NOT proceed past Phase 0 without the user acknowledging the estimated token cost — this lane can cost millions of tokens.
• MUST NOT edit, refactor, format, or commit project code — writes are confined to .codearbiter/reports/<run-id>/ until the filing gate.
• MUST NOT act as a required gate or block a merge, commit, or other workflow — critical/high are blocking-severity findings, not a pipeline halt.
• MUST NOT record a finding without a concrete path:line and a minimal evidence snippet.
• MUST NOT assert an absence without reading the whole relevant unit — partial-window absence claims do not pass.
• MUST NOT let a lens's provisional severity/confidence stand as final — calibrate at triage; every critical/high carries a counter_argument.
• MUST NOT mutate the append-only logs — manifest.yaml, report.md, and plans/ are regenerated from them, never hand-edited.
• MUST NOT file an issue below the confidence gate or without explicit selection and authorization; findings file as GitHub issues, never open-tasks.md.
• MUST NOT create a duplicate issue — skip findings carrying an issue_ref, and dedup against the tracker by dedup_key/title before filing.
• MUST NOT author or scaffold an ADR — decision-required findings file as a discussion issue; ADRs are authored only via $ca-adr with user attribution.
• MUST NOT send telemetry without explicit per-run authorization, and MUST NOT include code, file paths, finding text, or repo identity (absent an explicit --tag) in the payload — KPI aggregates only.
• MUST NOT guess the test, lint, or secrets-scan command — read tech-stack.md or STOP. For the tracker: use tech-stack.md if it documents one; else default to gh issue create on a GitHub origin; else STOP.
• MUST NOT dispatch a subagent from within a dispatched specialist — only the orchestrator dispatches.