| name | decision-watcher |
| description | Watches for architectural decisions during a bencium-harness session and nudges the user to log them via /bencium-decide. Triggers when the conversation involves picking between technical alternatives, choosing a library/framework, defining a data model, setting a policy, or making any choice that future-you would want to know the reason for. |
decision-watcher
When to invoke
Only when the project has a .harness/ folder (otherwise stay silent — this is not a bencium-harness project).
Trigger when the current conversation involves any of:
- Library/framework choice: "should we use X or Y?", "let's go with Z"
- Data model decisions: schema design, field naming conventions, normalization choices
- Architecture splits: monolith vs services, sync vs async, client vs server rendering
- Policy choices: auth model, caching strategy, error handling approach, naming conventions
- Tradeoffs: explicit "X over Y because Z" statements from the user or you
Do NOT trigger on:
- Implementation details that are obvious from the code (variable names, file layout)
- Choices already documented in
.harness/archive/ (check first via context-loader)
- Trivial decisions that have no downstream consequences (e.g., "let's use 2-space indent")
What to do
When you detect a decision moment:
-
Let the conversation reach a conclusion first — don't interrupt mid-discussion.
-
Once the choice is made, say (briefly):
"Worth logging? Run /bencium-decide \"<short title>\" and I'll capture the why + alternatives + consequences."
-
If the user agrees or asks you to run it, invoke /bencium-decide with a suggested title.
-
If the user says no or ignores the nudge, drop it. Don't re-prompt for the same decision.
Frequency cap
Nudge at most once per 10 conversation turns. If you've nudged recently and the user didn't act, wait. Better to miss a decision than to nag.
What NOT to do
- Do not auto-run
/bencium-decide without the user's go-ahead.
- Do not nudge for non-decisions (status updates, questions, debugging).
- Do not nudge if
.harness/archive/ already has a recent decision on the same topic — instead say "Already covered in archive/NNNN — want to update it?"
