| name | recovery |
| description | Load on strike 3, a tangled run, or a contradiction that cannot be localized. Do not load for first failures, ordinary test red/green loops, or known environment outages. |
Recovery
Extend charter §3 (escalation) when the next edit would be guesswork. Stop edits until the contradiction is classified.
Diagnosis Table
| Failure class | Symptom | Cheapest discriminating check |
|---|
| Theory wrong | Patch is coherent but outcome contradicts prediction | Build a minimal reproducer or oracle that isolates the claimed rule. |
| Edit wrong | Theory still fits, but implementation changed the wrong surface | Inspect diff against task.md; trace caller/callee or file ownership. |
| Test wrong | Product behavior is stable, assertion encodes stale or impossible rule | Compare test premise to docs, fixtures, and live behavior. |
| Environment wrong | Same inputs vary by shell, path, service, time, cache, or dependency state | Re-run in a clean env; print versions, paths, env keys, and fixture state. |
Counterexample-First Procedure
- Stop editing.
- Write one JSONL entry in
counterexamples.jsonl: hypothesis, case, failure, lesson, next_check.
- Re-read
task.md, state-map.md, and the latest diff.
- Choose one row from the diagnosis table.
- Run the cheapest discriminating check.
- If the check rejects the row, update the counterexample and choose the next row.
- Resume edits only after a row is supported and the next patch is local.
Git Revert Criteria
Use revert as escalation only. Do not use it to escape uncertainty.
| Revert when | Do not revert when |
|---|
The tree no longer matches state-map.md and re-deriving is cheaper than repair. | A single file or hunk can be inspected and corrected. |
| Edits cross the agreed scope fence and cannot be separated reliably. | Tests fail but the failure is localized. |
| Generated or bulk changes obscure the causal patch. | The user or another worker has unrelated changes in the tree. |
Before any git state change, pause for user approval unless the user explicitly authorized it.
Escalation Format
Attempted:
Evidence shows:
Decision needed:
Ask for one decision or one missing fact. Include the smallest command, file, or artifact that would unblock the run.
