| name | harness-governor |
| description | Enforce harness governance phases, policy gates, budgets, and promotion rules. Use during execute, evaluate, merge, or when interpreting policy-gate / budget-guard messages. |
harness-governor
When to use
- Interpreting
harness-policy-violation, budget exhausted, or review-integrity blocks
- Deciding whether a run may proceed to merge or PR
- Wiring evaluator + Sentrux + drift gates
Workflow
- Read current phase from
/harness-policy-status or session harness-policy-state.
- Check governance policies: phase constitution, eval promotion rules, Sentrux requirements, drift handling, rules lifecycle, and AGT policy/security layers.
- Tool allow/deny is enforced by AGT
PolicyEngine + .pi/harness/policies/*.yaml (parent policy-gate, subprocess harness-subagent-governance). Disable with HARNESS_AGT_POLICY=0. Audit: .pi/harness/runs/<run_id>/agt-audit.jsonl.
- For promotion: require eval pass, no abort lock, debate consensus if escalated, Sentrux when
HARNESS_SENTRUX_REQUIRED=true (artifacts/sentrux-signal.yaml from /harness-run, not executor self-report).
- Intent vs observation: Sentrux manifest changes →
/harness-sentrux-steward + chair + formal decision record when material, then sentrux-rules-sync --force. Naming manifest changes → /harness-ls-lint-steward + chair, then ls-lint-rules-sync --force. CLI degradation after execute → fix paths or replan — do not tune manifest on a single noisy run.
- After approved Sentrux edits:
harness-sentrux-bootstrap.mjs --force or /harness-sentrux-sync; emit harness-architecture-changed. After naming edits: harness-ls-lint-bootstrap.mjs --force or /harness-ls-lint-sync; emit harness-naming-changed.
- Run
node "$UP_PKG/.pi/scripts/harness-verify.mjs" before claiming release readiness (includes AGT policy doctor).
Spec Distiller integration
When refining plans from noisy requirements:
- Distill user intent into acceptance criteria and non-goals (bullet list).
- Map criteria to
plan-packet fields and testable checks.
- When gates return
human_required or promotion is blocked, the orchestrator calls ask_user — do not guess scope.
- Reference graphify wiki or
graphify query for architecture constraints before execute.
Budgets
- Default:
HARNESS_BUDGET_ENFORCE off — token/debate caps are telemetry-only (harness-budget-telemetry, harness-budget-soft-limit). They do not block phases or debate lanes.
- Do not skip reconnaissance artifacts (
planning-context.yaml), debate rounds, or approve_plan because of soft budget hints in the widget.
- Re-enable hard caps only with
HARNESS_BUDGET_ENFORCE=1 and HARNESS_BUDGET_HARD_STOP / HARNESS_DEBATE_HARD_STOP.
Subagent artifacts
- Subagents call scoped
submit_* tools; parent verifies with harness_artifact_ready, not JSON parsing from finalOutput.
- Parent
write_harness_yaml is for merges (research-brief.yaml, plan shell) — not subagent payloads.
Rules
- Never auto-merge; harness-auto may open PR only when all gates pass (see release-readiness-report).
- Do not invoke posthog-analyst in Phase 2.
