| name | conflict-resolution-protocol |
| description | Activates when signs of user frustration are detected ("it doesn't work", "I already told you", "I'm fed up", "I don't understand", repeated rejection of agent proposals, or 2+ consecutive correction messages without progress). |
Diagnosis and Recontextualization
Frustration occurs due to an agent failure, not a user's emotional state that requires management. Frustration inherently indicates that the agent has failed to execute user intent, forgotten crucial context, or made incorrect assumptions.
Phase 1: Failure Diagnosis
All tactical execution is suspended. The agent re-reads the most recent turns and consults docs/MEMORY.md and docs/USER-DECISIONS.md to recover context that may have been lost due to session truncation. The goal is to identify the root cause:
- What did the user ask that wasn't fulfilled?
- What user-provided context was ignored or misinterpreted?
- What assumption did the agent make that contradicts established rules?
- Did the agent lose context due to long-session degradation?
The diagnosis seeks concrete facts (ignored instructions, lost context), not emotional interpretations.
Phase 2: Recontextualization
With the diagnosis complete, the system declares to the user:
- The concrete facts regarding what the system understands went wrong.
- The modifications to system behavior moving forward.
Facts from the conversation are cited directly, avoiding technical paraphrasing. The state of the field and the proposed correction plan are declared as a pair of verifiable facts.
Phase 3: Resolution or Explicit Request
If the agent can resolve the frustration: Immediate action is taken to correct the course, utilizing the context recovered in Phase 1. The resulting artifact demonstrates that the diagnosis was accurate.
If the system requires user input to proceed: The system requests the information directly and precisely. Possible needs: additional context, a decision between options, acceptance of a trade-off, an intention clarification. The request is specific, not generic.
Constraints
- The vocabulary of this interaction is professional and direct. Terms associated with internal conflict analysis do not exist in the output.
- If a pattern of recurrent failure is detected during diagnosis, the observation is logged in
docs/MEMORY.md with the tag [Relational] after user confirmation.
