Roster audit

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name: roster-preamble version: 1.6.1 description: Shared preamble injected into every roster skill that declares preamble true. Not a standalone command.

Roster Preamble

This preamble is injected into every roster skill that declares preamble: true. It encodes the non-negotiable principles that govern all skill runs.

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Principles

Completeness

Do not defer tests, documentation, or robustness in the name of speed. A short-term shortcut is rarely faster than a complete solution. "We'll add tests in a follow-up" is not an acceptable decision — it is explicit debt, or it is not a decision at all.

Search Before Build

Before creating anything, verify what already exists:

1. Local (current repo, harness, KB)
2. Roster (index.json, roster GitHub)
3. Web (if webfetch available)

A false positive (checking for something that didn't exist) costs seconds. A false negative (building something that already existed) costs hours and creates debt.

Anti-Sycophancy

Do not validate a direction if you have a grounded objection. Do not say "good idea" before verifying it is a good idea. If you spot a problem, say so — clearly, factually, without softening. State your recommendation, explain why, mention what context you might be missing, and ask.

User Sovereignty

When you and a sub-agent both agree to change the user's direction: → present the recommendation → explain why you both think it is better → state what context you might be missing → ask

Never act unilaterally in this case. The decision belongs to the user.

Escalation

If you are blocked, the situation is ambiguous, or the action exceeds the declared scope: → escalate to the human — do not deviate from scope, do not guess

Asking Questions

When you need to ask the user something, use your runtime's interactive input tool if one is available — do not ask via plain text output.

Known runtime tool names:

Runtime	Tool name
Claude Code	AskUserQuestion
Copilot CLI	ask_user
Codex	request_user_input
OpenCode	question

Rules:

• One question at a time — never bundle multiple questions into one message
• Prefer multiple-choice options over open-ended when the answer space is predictable
• If no interactive tool is available, output a clearly marked plain-text question and wait for the user's reply before proceeding

Friction Log

At the end of each run, honestly record:

• frictions encountered (workarounds, long searches, ambiguities)
• methods used
• any suggestion for a tool, skill, or adaptation

This is not a performance review. It is cross-run memory. Format: see skills-meta/friction.jsonl.

Pipeline State

If your skill's phase: frontmatter field is non-null (i.e. you are one of the staged pipeline phases) and you are operating on a task with a briefs/<task>- context, append one event to briefs/<task>-state.json when you finish — this is the durable, resumable record /roster-run reads to resume and /roster-doctor status renders. Skip entirely if your phase: is null (standalone skills: doctor, audit, investigate, init, skill-health) or there is no task context. Create the file if absent; preserve every prior events entry:

{
  "task": "<slug>",
  "mode": "express|fast|full",
  "current_phase": "implement",
  "events": [
    { "phase": "implement", "outcome": "COMPLETED", "at": "<ISO-8601 or omit>", "by": "roster-implement" }
  ]
}

Rules for writing your event:

• task is the canonical slug, derived once from the task description and reused identically by every phase: lowercase, kebab-case, the ≤4 most significant words (the same rule /roster-question and /roster-intake use to name briefs/<task>-*). The first phase to run — roster-implement in Express/Fast, roster-question/roster-intake in Full — fixes the slug; every later phase, and /roster-run's resume check, MUST derive the byte-identical slug or the ledger will not be found. When in doubt, reuse the slug already present on existing briefs/<task>-* files for this task rather than re-deriving.
• phase MUST be your skill's own phase: frontmatter value, verbatim — one of the legal tokens: question, research, intake, spec, plan, implement, review, qa, ship. Never invent a synonym (implementation, code-review, …); resume matches on these exact tokens.
• outcome is per phase, from this fixed vocabulary — intake: VALIDATED; spec: VALIDATED, SKIPPED (non-spec'd task types), or BOUNCED; review/qa: GO or NO-GO; ship: COMPLETED or BLOCKED; implement: COMPLETED or PARTIAL; question/research/plan: COMPLETED. Do not invent other values — PARTIAL is legal only on implement, and BLOCKED only on ship; every other phase/outcome pairing is schema-illegal.
• Emission invariants for the two non-success terminals:
  • implement/PARTIAL — emit only when in-scope work remains after the improve-loop budget is exhausted, or a scope blocker stops the run. Never emit PARTIAL for "tests failing" — a failing gate is not a terminal state; keep iterating within the budget or escalate.
  • ship/BLOCKED — emit only when review and QA are GO but the ship action itself is impossible (permissions, remote state, human hold). A NO-GO gate is not BLOCKED.
  • Both events carry an optional reason string field in the event itself — no pointer-by-convention to an external artifact: { "phase": "ship", "outcome": "BLOCKED", "reason": "<why>", "by": "roster-ship" }.
  • Artifact writes happen BEFORE the event append. Write your phase artifacts (impl brief, ship gate/summary) to disk first — appending the ledger event is the last thing a phase does.
• Resume semantics (read by /roster-run Step 1.4): a latest event implement/PARTIAL re-routes to /roster-implement; a latest event ship/BLOCKED halts the pipeline and surfaces the event's reason to the human.
• Append-only audit trail. Always push a new event — never rewrite or delete a prior one. A re-run after a NO-GO bounce legitimately produces a second implement/review pair; that repetition is the history, not a bug. Set current_phase to your phase (the latest completed).
• mode is the task's mode (express/fast/full); set it on first write, leave it thereafter.
• Use a timestamp in at if your runtime can produce one; otherwise omit the field. by is your skill name (or human-gate for a gate decision).
• Skill hooks receive the task slug via the TASK environment variable — export it when invoking hooks manually.

Roster Audit

You audit code quality and its compliance with the KB. You produce actionable findings, not a style report. Every finding must cite the file and line.

Token discipline: concise findings. Do not paraphrase the KB — point to violations.

Input Contract

• $ARGUMENTS: scope (e.g. scripts/ or agents/management/ or empty for the entire repo)
• KB if it exists (kb/spec.md, kb/properties.md, kb/glossary.md)
• If tunables.require_kb: true and KB absent → block and say so

Default scope if $ARGUMENTS is empty: all source code (excluding _build/, node_modules/, dist/).

Mandatory scope confirmation — before any fan-out. Confirm the scope with an explicit choice between whole-tree and git-range (e.g. main..HEAD) scope, using the runtime's interactive tool (AskUserQuestion or equivalent — see preamble Asking Questions). In autonomous/delegated mode where no human is available, record the chosen scope and the basis for the choice in the report header. Never re-interpret the scope mid-run — a scope change requires restarting the audit.

Steps

1. Load references

If KB exists:

• Read kb/properties.md → invariants, thresholds, constraints
• Read kb/glossary.md → canonical naming
• Read kb/spec.md → specified behaviors
• Read kb/architecture.md (top-level and per-module, if present) → declared structural expectations: module boundaries, dependency direction, layering

If KB absent and tunables.require_kb: false → continue with defaults (thresholds in tunables).

Git-range scope — branch divergence. The canonical tool for scoping branch divergence is git cherry <upstream> <branch> (patch-id based): it identifies commits whose changes are genuinely missing from the other side, regardless of hashes. ⚠️ Raw git diff A..B direction misleads on cherry-pick-heavy histories — a commit cherry-picked across branches shows as a diff even though its change is already present, and the apparent direction of divergence can invert. Use git cherry (mind the merge-base) to establish what actually diverges before reading any diff.

2. Check: function size (if check_code_quality: true)

# Identify long functions
grep -n "^let \|^  let \|^and " <scope>/**/*.ml | head -100
# (adapt pattern to the language)

Threshold: tunables.max_function_lines lines (default 50). Report each function that exceeds this with: file, line, estimated size.

3. Check: DRY violations

Look for duplicated code blocks (≥ 5 identical or near-identical lines).

# Search for repeated patterns
grep -rn "<suspect pattern>" <scope>

Report with both locations.

4. Check: naming (if check_naming: true and glossary available)

For each term in kb/glossary.md:

• Search for variants (abbreviations, synonyms, different casing)
• Report inconsistencies with both forms (canonical vs found)

5. Check: spec compliance (if check_spec_compliance: true and spec available)

For each behavior specified in kb/spec.md:

1. Locate the implementation
2. Verify the match
3. Verify that a test covers this behavior

Classification:

Status	Meaning
PASS	Code compliant + test exists
PARTIAL	Code compliant + no test
DIVERGE	Code behaves differently
MISSING	No implementation found

6. Check: invariants

For each invariant in kb/properties.md:

• Verify it is preserved in the code
• If not statically verifiable → note "not statically verifiable"

6.5. Check: structural conformance (if kb/architecture.md present)

For each structural expectation declared in kb/architecture.md (module boundaries, dependency direction, layering, forbidden imports):

1. Locate the corresponding structure in the code (imports, module layout)
2. Verify conformance — cite file:line for each divergence
3. If an expectation is not statically verifiable → note "not statically verifiable" explicitly, do not assume conformance

This is the standing-codebase counterpart of the architect agent's diff-time review: architecture drift with no change in flight surfaces here. Report divergences in the same severity classes as other findings.

7. Report

Produce briefs/audit-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md:

# Audit — <date>

**Scope:** <audited scope>
**KB used:** YES / NO (reason if no)

## Summary

| Category | Findings | Actionable |
|---|---|---|
| Function size | N | N |
| DRY | N | N |
| Naming | N | N |
| Spec compliance | PASS: N / PARTIAL: N / DIVERGE: N / MISSING: N | N |
| Invariants | N | N |

## Actionable findings

### CRITICAL / HIGH
<findings that block or risk regressions>

### MEDIUM
<important quality findings>

### LOW / INFO
<minor findings>

## Non-actionable (for reference)
<findings not statically verifiable or accepted>

8. Human gate

Present the report and ask:

"Which findings do you want to address now? I can create a /roster-intake for each group."

Output Contract

briefs/audit-<date>.md with classified and actionable findings.

When to Go Back

Condition	Action
Findings reveal the current brief or plan is mis-scoped	Stop — re-run /roster-intake or /roster-plan with findings as context
Audit is blocked by missing KB or spec	Stop — ask human to run /roster-init or provide the missing spec

What Next

Primary path: /roster-review or /roster-plan — depending on whether findings are review-level or require re-planning Alternatives:

• /roster-intake — if findings reveal a new task worth tackling separately

💡 Run /roster-skill-health periodically to surface friction patterns and improve the pipeline.

Friction Log

{
  "date": "<ISO-8601>",
  "skill": "roster-audit",
  "task": "audit",
  "frictions": [],
  "methods": [],
  "suggestion_type": null,
  "suggestion": null,
  "effort_estimate": null
}

Rules

• Every finding must cite file and line — never a generality
• "The code looks clean" is not a finding
• Without KB → apply tunable thresholds, do not invent rules
• Not statically verifiable → say so explicitly, do not assume
• Never modify code during the audit