| name | brooks-harness |
| description | Maintenance orchestrator for the brooks-lint plugin itself. Runs a sequential subagent pipeline — author → eval → QA → trigger-audit → release — to add or edit a skill, refresh the eval suite, keep the four manifests + README + CHANGELOG + AGENTS/GEMINI in sync, audit trigger boundaries, and cut releases. Drives the five agents in .claude/agents/ (skill-author, eval-curator, consistency-qa, trigger-boundary-auditor, release-manager). Triggers when the maintainer asks to work ON brooks-lint itself: "add a new skill", "edit the brooks-debt guide", "update the eval suite", "fix the trigger descriptions", "make this change and validate it", "release brooks-lint", "bump and publish", and follow-ups: "re-run", "re-validate", "update that skill", "redo the audit", "do the X part again". Do NOT trigger for: USING the brooks-lint analysis skills on some target codebase (that's brooks-review / brooks-audit / brooks-debt / brooks-test / brooks-health / brooks-sweep); generic questions about brooks-lint that don't ask to change it; or maintenance of a different plugin.
|
| disable-model-invocation | false |
brooks-lint — Maintenance Harness (Orchestrator)
This skill orchestrates work on the brooks-lint repo itself. It runs a sequential
subagent pipeline: each stage is a dedicated agent defined in .claude/agents/. Spawn
each with the Agent tool, subagent_type set to the agent name, and always
model: "opus". Stages depend on each other in order, so this is a pipeline, not a
parallel team.
Pipeline
[orchestrator]
Phase 0 context check
Phase 1 classify request → select stages
Phase 2 run selected stages in order, with a QA loop-back:
skill-author → eval-curator → consistency-qa ─(FAIL)→ back to author
│ PASS
▼
trigger-boundary-auditor (only if a description changed)
▼
release-manager (only if release requested)
Phase 3 report + collect feedback
Phase 0 — Context check
Determine the run mode before doing anything:
_workspace/brooks-harness/ exists + maintainer asks to redo part of a prior run →
partial re-run: invoke only the affected stage(s), reusing prior notes._workspace/brooks-harness/ exists + a fresh request → new run: move the old
folder to _workspace/brooks-harness_prev/, start clean.- No
_workspace/brooks-harness/ → initial run: create it.
Run notes and the QA report live under _workspace/brooks-harness/. The real
artifacts are the repo files themselves — agents edit skills/, evals/, manifests
directly; _workspace/ only holds the run's notes and the PASS/FAIL verdict for audit.
Phase 1 — Classify the request
Pick the minimal set of stages. The QA stage is never skipped — every change is
gated.
| Request | author | eval | QA | trigger-audit | release |
|---|
| Add a new skill | ✓ (via new-skill scaffold) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Edit skill / guide content | ✓ | if codes changed | ✓ | if description changed | — |
Edit _shared/ framework | ✓ | if risk defs changed | ✓ | — | — |
| Eval suite only | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Fix trigger descriptions | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Release | — | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Full: change + release | ✓ | as needed | ✓ | if applicable | ✓ |
Phase 2 — Run the pipeline
Spawn each selected stage as a subagent in order. Pass each agent (a) the task
contract and (b) the previous stage's summary. Agents write their summaries to
_workspace/brooks-harness/; read them between stages.
- skill-author — creates/edits the content. For a brand-new skill it invokes the
new-skill scaffold. Returns the list of files touched + convention-relevant
choices (new risk codes, new Step numbers, changed description trigger phrases).
- eval-curator — if
skill-author reported new/changed risk codes or modes, adds
the paired happy-path + false-positive scenarios and runs npm run evals.
- consistency-qa (gate — never skipped) — runs
npm run validate + npm test +
npm run evals, then the cross-document sync checks (manifests, README badge,
CHANGELOG, AGENTS/GEMINI book count, eval count). Writes a PASS/FAIL verdict.
On FAIL: loop back to the agent named in the verdict (author or eval-curator),
fix, then re-run QA. Repeat once; if it still fails, stop and report to the
maintainer.
- trigger-boundary-auditor — run only if a
description field changed. It
read-only audits the six shipped skills' trigger surfaces for false-triggering and
routing collisions. Surface its findings; if it flags a real collision, loop back to
skill-author.
- release-manager — run only if a release was requested, and only after QA
PASS. Cuts the release via the
release skill.
Phase 3 — Report & feedback
Report: stages run, files changed, QA verdict, trigger-audit findings (if any), and the
release URL (if any). Then offer the maintainer a feedback opening: "Anything to adjust
in the result, the agent roles, or the pipeline order?" Record accepted changes in the
CLAUDE.md harness change-log table.
Conventions this harness enforces
- All
Agent calls use model: "opus" — harness quality tracks agent reasoning.
- consistency-qa must be
general-purpose (it runs npm scripts); the
trigger-boundary-auditor is read-only.
- No slash commands are created — short forms are auto-installed by the
session-start hook.
- Direct-to-main: changes push to
main without a PR (per repo CLAUDE.md); the
global simplify→review→commit gate still applies to non-doc edits, but skill/guide
content is markdown and follows the validate gate instead.
Error handling
- A stage that fails once is retried once with its error as input; a second failure
stops the pipeline and reports to the maintainer (no silent skip).
- QA FAIL never proceeds to release.
- Conflicting data is reported with provenance, not deleted.
- High-risk git ops (
--no-verify, --force, history rewrites) require explicit
maintainer authorization — release-manager stops and asks.
Test scenarios
Normal flow — "add a brooks-security skill": Phase 1 selects author+eval+QA+audit.
skill-author runs new-skill brooks-security, creates SKILL.md (with a sibling-carving
"Do NOT trigger for:" clause) + guide; eval-curator adds an S-code happy-path + a
false-positive scenario; consistency-qa runs the gate → PASS; trigger-boundary-auditor
confirms no collision with brooks-review/audit. Report lists files + PASS.
Error flow — QA FAIL on book-count drift: maintainer adds a thirteenth book but
edits only source-coverage.md. consistency-qa's cross-doc check finds README still
says "twelve" → FAIL, attributed to skill-author. Orchestrator loops back; skill-author
updates README/AGENTS/GEMINI wording; QA re-runs → PASS. No release was requested, so
the pipeline ends at Phase 3.
