| name | orc-aftermath |
| description | Did the thing we shipped hold up. Use for "/orc-aftermath", "did that change stick", "what did we ship last month and how did it go", "which runs came back". Read-only and report-only: it grades past runs from the repository's own future — files rewritten soon after, a test we added deleted or skipped, the commit reverted, a promise that was HOLDING now BROKEN — all from git log, ORC's traces and the pact ledger. No vendor, no telemetry, no instrumentation. Churn is a SIGNAL, never a verdict: it reports the signal and its strength, never "this change was bad", and never a person's name.
|
ORC-AFTERMATH
The lane that measures — backwards. The missing half of ORC's flywheel.
/orc-retro measures the process: bands, downgrades, retries, gate bounces,
narration coverage. It cannot tell you whether any of it was any good. Aftermath
measures the result — and together the score→model table can finally be tuned
against what stuck instead of what ran smoothly.
The insight
Everyone reaches for production telemetry. For a large class of outcomes the
repository's own future is the grading signal, and it is free:
| Signal | What it suggests | Strength |
|---|
| The commit was reverted | obvious | 3 |
| A test we added no longer exists | our proof was rejected | 3 |
| A promise anchored in this change is BROKEN | the change leaked | 3 |
| A test we added now contains a skip | the proof was neutralised | 2 |
| 3+ shipped files rewritten inside the window | the change likely missed | 2 |
| 1–2 shipped files rewritten | weak — normal iteration looks like this | 1 |
All of it from git log + the trace corpus + .claude/orc/pact/ledger.json.
The rule that keeps it honest
Churn is a signal, not a verdict. A file being rewritten is a fact; why is not
knowable from git. Somebody may have fixed a real miss, or extended a good change,
or reformatted the file. The lane reports the signal and its strength and stops
there.
It never writes "this change was bad". It never names a person — git log knows who
committed and this lane never asks. It never edits anything: not the rubric, not
config, not code, not a run.
A run younger than 7 days is too recent to grade. That is an ANSWER, not a
gap, and it keeps its slot in the report. So does history too shallow when there
are no runs in the window at all.
Nothing to configure but the window
aftermath_window_days (default 30) is how far back it grades. That is the only key
this lane reads besides log_dir.
Phases
A0 preflight (silent) log_dir · git work tree · orc pact status --json
A1 scope a run slug · --since Nd · everything in the window
A2 grade orc aftermath status --json — the CLI computes; this RENDERS
A3 report orc-aftermath/<period>/aftermath.md + the /orc-retro block
A4 close one end-of-run trace packet
A0 opens the run properly. Write log_dir/.current =
run-aftermath-<slug>-<DDMMYY>-<HHMMSS>.txt AND touch the trace file of that
name in the SAME step. Both, or neither. A lane the protocol declares must be a
lane something OPENS, or every counting tool reports it as a permanent zero.
A2 does no grading of its own. orc aftermath status is the only engine — the
skill never re-derives a signal, a strength or a grade. Same rule as the wiki tier.
A3 — the report
Write orc-aftermath/<period>/aftermath.md at the project root, where <period> is
the window (last-30d) or the single run slug. Per run: what it promised
(acceptance criteria from the plan, plus any invariants it was told about) versus
what the repo now shows. Shape: references/report.md.
The report ends with a structured block /orc-retro aggregates — that is the whole
point of writing a file rather than only printing.
Every claim carries its evidence. A churn row names the files and the commits.
A revert row quotes the revert's subject line. A broken-promise row names the pact
id. An unevidenced signal is not reported at all.
Where this shows up in /orc
One line at preflight, and only when the area about to be touched has a recent
churn signal:
after : src/payments — 2 shipped files rewritten within 30 days of run store-credit
Never a line on a clean run. A preflight that reports "nothing to report" on
every run is a preflight people learn to skip, and this one has to be readable the
one time it matters.
At ship it feeds /orc-retro alongside orc budget actual.
Behavior trace (always on)
../_shared/phases/trace.md (core, at run start; orc lane phases names
the file and the layers). Lane token aftermath, tier Single-dispatch —
exactly ONE end-of-run packet, dispatched solo before .current is deleted.
At run start write log_dir/.current = run-aftermath-<slug>-<DDMMYY>-<HHMMSS>.txt AND
touch the trace file of that name in the SAME step.
Nothing else about the protocol is restated here; a phase that ends with
zero new trace lines is a protocol violation.
How this lane fails — and the rule that prevents each
| Failure | Prevention |
|---|
| It reads as blame | Signals with strengths, never a verdict; no names, ever |
| A normal follow-up commit looks like a failure | 1–2 files is strength 1 and is labelled weak |
| A fresh run is graded as clean | Under 7 days is too recent to grade, and it says so |
| It edits the rubric it is measuring | Report-only. It writes one markdown file and nothing else |
| A signal with no evidence | Every row names its files, commits or pact ids |
| It needs a vendor | git log + traces + the ledger. Nothing else |
| Noise on every preflight | The preflight line fires ONLY on a real churn signal |
Rules this lane always keeps
Report-only · never a verdict · never a person's name · never edit anything · every
signal carries its evidence · too recent is an answer · never compute what the CLI
computes.
Config
Resolve with orc lane config orc-aftermath --json and obey effective. Never merge
.claude/orc.config.yaml yourself, and never re-derive a precedence. Exit ≠ 0 →
say so and use ../_shared/config-precedence.md's documented defaults, out
loud. Nothing this lane reads is contested, gated or a stop, so it owes no
preflight line and has no gate to honour.
Calls
ONE catalogue, and it is not you: orc lane calls orc-aftermath --json names every
CLI call this lane makes, each with its exit-code contract, its cost, when to run
it, and what an EMPTY answer means. Never invent a spelling, never re-word an
exit code, and never re-derive a state word — the CLI's state words are the only
state words, and an exit code is an ANSWER wherever that contract says so, not
a failure. A call the answer does not name is a call this lane does not make.
Exit ≠ 0 from the catalogue itself → say the CLI is unavailable and name the
command you are about to run, out loud, before running it.
Waiting mid-run (/orc-wait)
Canonical: ../_shared/wait.md. a lane that waits without a hand-back has broken this contract.
Checkpoint none · safe point read-only, seconds long. Nothing here to checkpoint, so all three modes behave identically — say so rather than asking. Never begin a wait between a dispatch and its validated return, or before the smoke gate has reported.
