intent-drift

name	intent-drift
description	Detect scope creep — the operational form of "surgical changes" (dev-squad Rule 3). Compares the actual diff against the declared goal and flags everything the change touched that the task did not ask for: unrelated refactors, drive-by reformatting, speculative features, adjacent "while I'm here" edits. Use during Phase 5 review and before opening a PR, or when the user says "intent drift", "scope creep", "did this stay in scope", "is the PR doing too much", or "compare the diff to the goal".
license	MIT

Intent-drift — did the change stay in scope?

Rule 3 says touch only what you must. A diff drifts when it does more than the declared goal: a bugfix that also reformats a file, a feature that also "improves" adjacent code, a refactor that smuggles in a behavior change. Drift inflates review surface, hides the real change, and breaks things the task never meant to touch. This pass makes drift visible before it ships.

When this fires

Phase 5 (REVIEW) and pre-PR. It is a comparison pass: declared goal vs actual diff.

Step 1 — establish the declared goal

Read the intent from the most authoritative source available, in order:

1. .dev-squad/master-plan.md (the workflow's stated scope) or the current task/phase
2. The PR/issue description, or the branch name
3. If none exists: ask the coordinator/user for the one-line goal — do NOT infer silently, an unstated goal makes every change look in-scope.

State it explicitly: Declared goal: "".

Step 2 — map the diff against it

git diff --stat <base>...HEAD          # the surface
git diff <base>...HEAD                  # the hunks

Classify every changed file (and notable hunk) into exactly one bucket:

• In-scope — directly implements the declared goal.
• Supporting — required for in-scope to work (a new import, a type the feature needs, a test for the new code). Legitimate.
• DRIFT — not needed for the goal: unrelated refactor, formatting/whitespace churn, renamed-for-taste, speculative abstraction, an adjacent bug "fixed" along the way, dependency bumps the task did not require.

Step 3 — report and recommend

For each DRIFT item, recommend one: split into its own PR/commit, revert (out of scope, do later), or justify (genuinely required — explain why and reclassify). Do not auto-edit; this is a review verdict the author acts on.

Output

Declared goal: "<one line>"
In-scope: <n files>  Supporting: <n>  Drift: <n>
Drift findings:
- <file> (+/-LOC) — <what drifted> → recommend: split | revert | justify (<reason>)
Verdict: <SURGICAL — no drift | DRIFT — N items outside the goal>

If clean: Diff matches the declared goal. Surgical.

Note: a legitimately broad task (e.g. "rename X across the repo") is wide but not drift — width that the goal demands is in-scope. Drift is width the goal did not.