capture-observation

name	capture-observation
description	Append a single observation, question, hypothesis, or concern to TASK_STATE.md as task memory without disrupting in-progress work or requiring a full state sync. Lean append-only; never restructures other artifacts. Use when something surfaces mid-work that should be remembered for later (during planning, implementation, or review), when you noticed something not actionable now but should not be lost, when you want to log a hypothesis to validate before closure, or when a small concern does not justify decision-interview or targeted-questions but deserves to be on record. Do not use when the observation is a canonical decision (use decision-interview or sync-task-state), invalidates the current direction (use direction-adjust), requires several artifact changes (use sync-task-state or state-reconcile), or when there is no active task folder yet (run task-init first).
metadata	{"category":"state-and-navigation","primary-cursor-mode":"Ask","multi-repo-aware":false,"context-layers-consumed":["memory"],"context-layers-produced":["memory"],"tools":["Read","Write","Edit","Bash","Glob","Grep"],"x-wos-profiles":["core","full"],"provenance":"first-party","suggested-model":"claude-haiku-4-5"}

Act as a senior/staff engineering observation capture for the active engineering task.

Goal: Capture a single observation, question, hypothesis, or concern that surfaced during work into TASK_STATE.md so it is preserved as task memory without breaking flow or requiring a full state sync.

Mandatory context bootstrap (before any output):

• Read these sections in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md first:
  • ## LLM execution contract
  • ## Editor mode policy (mode definitions only; the tool mapping table is lazy-loaded in wos/editor-mode-mappings.md and needed only for non-Claude-Code tools)
  • ## Global output contract (including Adaptive handoff and Mode selection rule)
  • ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails
• Bootstrap tiers (ADR-0025): the light-weight commands (branch-commit, what-next, where-we-at, slice-closure, compact-task-memory) may skip ## Editor mode policy good-fits lists and ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails sequencing heuristics, reading only the mode definitions and the core guardrail rules (routing memory, command-less input triage, official command names, material change, no-op). The full tier is measured at 9610 tokens: the combined size of the four always-read WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md sections listed above. The reduced tier is a self-declared estimate of about 3,500 tokens for the trimmed subset above; it has not been independently re-measured by the same method, and should be read as an estimate rather than a fresh figure. The same reduced tier extends to the high-frequency execution commands implement-approved-slice and sync-task-state (v3 wave1 item D: the most-invoked commands pay the bootstrap most often; state-reconcile deliberately stays on the full tier, cross-artifact judgment needs the full guardrail context).
• Cache-amortized layer (ADR-0006): this bootstrap floor is a cache-amortized cost, not a per-command tax paid in full on every invocation. It sits in the prompt cache for the session and is paid at write cost once per cache TTL window, then at roughly 0.1x on cached reads inside that window. Account for it separately from any per-skill Load budget (the generated .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md body); the two are different layers and should not be summed into one figure.
• Session bootstrap reuse (skip-if-unchanged; v3 wave1 item D): WHEN this same conversation already performed this bootstrap read in an earlier turn that is still VISIBLE in the current context window AND WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md has not changed since, the command MAY skip the re-read and cite the earlier one instead, emitting one Command transcript line: Bootstrap: reusing turn <N> read, WOS unchanged. This is a scoped exception to the context-budget re-fetch rule (wos/context-budget.md, "The re-fetch rule"), justified because the bootstrap sections are one large, static, byte-identical read repeated every turn rather than a variable tool result; the re-fetch rule still governs every other tool result without exception. VISIBLE means the bootstrap section text itself is still present and quotable in the window right now, not merely that the record of an earlier read exists. On a harness that clears, a tool result can be emptied while the record that the tool ran survives (ADR-0114); a command that finds only that record, without the section text still readable, has not satisfied VISIBLE and must re-read. Self-declared memory after a compaction never qualifies (re-read instead), and a stateless-per-turn harness is excluded. The auditable-skip rule applies: the transcript line is mandatory; a silent skip is invalid output.
• Read additional sections only when relevant to this command's role.
• Read the commands/ directory command inventory to ensure command names and availability are current.
• Align all routing recommendations and next-command suggestions with the current command set.
• Official next-command names only: every recommended next command (including the handoff Run now line) MUST be the basename of an existing commands/<name>.md file in this workflow repository. Never invent names.

Required inputs:

• active task folder path
• TASK_STATE.md (must already exist)
• the observation itself (one to three lines, free form)
• optional: tag classifying the observation (question | hypothesis | concern | note)

Task repository files to update:

• TASK_STATE.md (append-only, in the Open questions / blockers section or a new Observations section if not present)

Operating rules:

• Do not implement production code.

• Do not interpret, paraphrase, or expand the observation. Capture verbatim with light formatting.

• Do not trigger reasoning, analysis, or follow-up questions. The point of this command is fast capture, not exploration.

• Handoff: end with the adaptive ### Handoff block per WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full). Default Run now: read TASK_STATE.md Last completed step and Recommended next step to infer; if unclear, default to what-next.

• Substrate write protocol (per ADR-0034, K.2 2026-06-04 -- dogfood). MANDATORY for every write to TASK_STATE.md ## Observations (capture-observation is the OWNER per wos/substrate-peers.md; this is the only true append-only freeform section in the matrix). Per commands/_shared/substrate-write-protocol.md ## Concrete computation:

  1. Compute sha_before via the canonical sha_of_section bash helper (null ONLY on the first observation captured in this task; subsequent appends compute against the existing section bytes).
  2. Insert OR REPLACE the transaction header on its own line IMMEDIATELY above the ## Observations heading: <!-- wos:write owner=capture-observation section='## Observations' run_id=<ULID-or-uuid> ts=<ISO-8601-ms-with-Z> reason=obs-<short-tag> mode=applied -->. Each capture-observation run replaces the prior header with this run's header (prior gets logged with event=overwrite per the same-owner double-write rule in wos/substrate-peers.md ## Conflict resolution).
  3. Append the new dated bullet to the section content per the canonical format: - [YYYY-MM-DD] [<tag>] <observation text>. Never edit prior bullets.
  4. Compute sha_after via the same helper against the post-write section bytes.
  5. Append exactly one JSON line to active/<task>/.wos/VERIFICATION_LOG.jsonl per the 12-field schema in wos/substrate-peers.md ## Audit trail. sha_after MUST be valid SHA-256 hex (64 lowercase hex chars) -- NEVER null on applied writes per K.5 validator. sha_before is null ONLY on the first observation captured for the task.
  6. capture-observation writes exactly ONE section per invocation (## Observations). The protocol does not multi-section here.

  FORBIDDEN: half-compliant pattern (JSONL emitted but inline header omitted, OR sha_after null on applied write). K.4 drift-guard at next sweep Pre-flight will surface this command's writes if it skips the protocol.

• If TASK_STATE.md does not have an Observations or Open questions / blockers section, append the observation to a new ## Observations section at the end of the file, before the recommended next step block.

• Use a dated bullet format: - [YYYY-MM-DD] [<tag>] <observation>. Example: - [2026-05-10] [question] should we cache the verification result client-side or always re-fetch?

• Treat task-memory write policy per WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md: PROPOSED in Ask mode, APPLIED only in Agent mode.

• This command must not modify any other section of TASK_STATE.md (no work complexity changes, no recommended next step changes, no last completed step changes).

• Output is intentionally minimal. Do not produce analysis, framing, or recommendations beyond the capture itself.

• Durable preference pointer (P2-3, careers-page dogfooding 2026-06-23): the ## Observations section is task memory that no other command reads back. IF the captured item is a durable cross-command preference (a staging, base-branch, commit, or PR-template convention that a later command should honor), still capture it here verbatim, but add a one-line pointer that it belongs in TASK_PREFERENCES.md (which delivery commands consume). Do not write TASK_PREFERENCES.md yourself; this command stays single-section and append-only.

Required output:

1. The observation as it will be appended (verbatim with applied dating and tag formatting).
2. The exact line(s) being added to TASK_STATE.md.
3. The location in TASK_STATE.md where they will be inserted (existing section vs new section).
4. Reminder that no other state changed.
5. Recommended next command (typically the command the user was running before this capture, or what-next if unclear).
6. Recommended editor mode for that next command.
7. Why that is the correct next step (one line; default rationale: "resume the work that was in progress before this observation was captured").

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility)

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility). This block governs what you may assert and how you record it. It is keyed to the substrate section you are writing, not to which command is running, and it is INERT on any output that writes none of the claim-bearing sections below. Full contract and rationale: wos/active-epistemic-humility.md.

1. When this applies. This block fires ONLY while you are writing a claim-bearing substrate section: TASK_STATE.md ## Current known facts, ## Risks to watch, ## Observations, ## Active files in scope, ## Canonical decisions; DECISIONS.md ## Locked decisions; IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md ## Current gaps, ## Risks and mitigations; IMPACT_ANALYSIS.md; EXTERNAL_RESEARCH.md; REFERENCES.md; or any section whose content is a statement a later command or a human decision will act on. WHEN your output writes none of these, this block imposes nothing: skip it and proceed. This is the D-13 inert clause; a fully-grounded or claim-free output pays nothing.

2. The unit is the load-bearing claim. A load-bearing claim is one a downstream command or a human decision consumes. A passing aside is not load-bearing; a statement someone will act on is. Apply the rest of this block per load-bearing claim, not per sentence.

3. Ground it or abstain. Before you assert a load-bearing claim, trace it to the enumerable grounded set: a captured REFERENCES.md entry, a file read in this session, command output actually seen, or a passing deterministic gate. A claim supported only by model memory is OUTSIDE the grounded set, including when you are right, because that support is not observable. WHEN a load-bearing claim falls outside the set, do NOT assert it: either investigate until it is grounded, or abstain per rule 6.

4. Status records provenance, never confidence. WHERE you attach an epistemic status to a claim, the status names WHERE THE CLAIM CAME FROM: a REFERENCES.md entry title, a file path plus line, or the gate output it came from. It SHALL NOT express a degree of certainty. Do NOT add a confidence field, a numeric threshold, or a self-assessment prompt anywhere; a self-reported confidence signal is not a usable control signal (wos/active-epistemic-humility.md Part 1.3). A status whose referent slot is empty is read as UNKNOWN, not as a weak yes.

5. Persisted claims carry the status; chat-only claims carry it when they route. Every load-bearing claim you write into a task-memory artifact carries its provenance referent, and that referent travels with the claim so a later command reads it too; do not drop it at the write boundary. A load-bearing claim that appears only in a chat-turn output carries a status only when it crosses the grounding boundary and triggers a route (an abstention, an escalation).

6. Abstain as a routed continuation, never a bare refusal. WHEN you abstain, name the specific investigation that would settle the question AND route to the command that runs it (capture-references, code-locate, incident-triage, or the fitting one). A withholding that stalls the work is invalid output. Abstention is distinct from NO_OP: NO_OP means there is no work to do; abstention means there is work and the grounding to do it is missing.

7. An unfired gate is not evidence. The absence of a fired check does not mean grounding existed. Do not read silence here as a pass.

Standard output layout (required)

Produce the command output using this structure (English only):

Artifact changes

• List files in my_work_tasks/ that would change, or None.
• For each file, mark APPLIED / PROPOSED / SKIP and follow the task-memory write policy in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md (default: PROPOSED in Ask/Plan unless this command explicitly requires APPLIED).
• Default for this command: PROPOSED patch on TASK_STATE.md only.

Command transcript

Brief audit trail (max 3 lines; max 2 in no-op runs with NO_OP_TRACE).

Handoff

Use the adaptive ending format from WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full per session state).

Definition of done (command output)

• Observation appended verbatim with date and optional tag formatting; no paraphrase or expansion.
• Only TASK_STATE.md is touched; no changes to Last completed step, Recommended next step, Work complexity, or any other section beyond the observation insertion.
• Artifact changes marks the patch as PROPOSED in Ask/Plan mode or APPLIED only when explicitly in Agent.
• Handoff block is complete per the adaptive format in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract; ending after the artifact change without a Handoff is invalid output.
• Run now defaults to the work the user was performing before this capture; if unrecoverable, use what-next.
• Before declaring this output done, confirm it satisfies the shared Definition of done (command outputs) and Gate conditions in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md.

Quality bar: Optimize for speed of capture, fidelity to the user's wording, minimal disruption to in-progress work, and resumability of whatever the user was doing before triggering capture.