forge-beads-review

name	forge-beads-review
description	Stress-test beads for coverage, granularity, dependency correctness, and actionability using adversarial agent teams. Use this after forge-beads-generate when the beads workspace is populated.
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Bash, Agent

Use this after forge-beads-generate has emitted beads-manifest.json and created all beads via br.

Purpose

Find every remaining gap in the bead decomposition that could cause an engineer to make a judgment call the beads should have made for them. The full attack surface: missing spec claim coverage, wrong granularity, dependency errors, vague acceptance criteria, missing TDD test sketches.

Agent team allocation

Use agent teams (TeamCreate) as the primary organizing mechanism. The team persists across all rounds for context continuity.

Required agents

Coverage agent — checks every spec claim and acceptance criterion against beads-manifest.json. Flags anything not traced to a bead, or traced to a bead that does not actually address it. Primary input: unmapped_claims and unmapped_acceptance_criteria arrays.

Granularity agent — evaluates each bead: too coarse (multiple unrelated concerns, would need decomposition during implementation)? Too fine (trivially small, noise)? Proposes splits or merges.

Dependency agent — uses bv --robot-suggest for cycle detection, bv --robot-graph for structure analysis, bv --robot-insights for graph health. Checks for missing edges (bead A clearly depends on bead B but no dep exists) and false edges.

Actionability agent — plays literal implementer for each bead. Evaluates:

• could I implement this without asking questions?
• does it have clear acceptance criteria?
• can I write a failing test first? If the bead does not describe observable behavior or a verifiable outcome, it is not TDD-ready — flag it
• are test boundaries clear? Does the bead specify enough about inputs, outputs, and side effects to know what to assert against?
• beads that are inherently non-testable-first (pure refactors with no behavior change, infrastructure setup) get annotated as test-first: n/a with rationale

TDD test sketches

The actionability agent produces pseudocode test sketches per bead, specifying both the scenario and the test type. Choose the most appropriate type per bead from: unit, property, integration, contract, e2e.

A pure data transformation gets property tests. A boundary interaction gets contract or integration tests. A user-facing flow gets e2e. If the agent cannot write meaningful test sketches for a bead, that is itself a finding — the bead's acceptance criteria are too vague.

Test sketches are embedded in the bead description by default. Use br comments add only when the description would exceed a reasonable length.

Evidence sources

Agents must use br and bv --robot-* commands as evidence sources:

• br list --label forge:<subject> — list beads for this spec
• br show <id> — read bead details
• br dep list <id> — check dependencies
• br dep tree <id> — visualize dependency tree
• br dep cycles — detect cycles
• bv --robot-suggest — duplicates, dependency issues, label problems, cycles
• bv --robot-graph — dependency graph structure
• bv --robot-insights — graph analysis and health metrics
• bv --robot-plan — dependency-respecting execution order

Round structure

Every round MUST spawn the full agent team — all four agents (coverage, granularity, dependency, actionability). Do not spawn a subset, even if earlier findings were narrow. Do not predict convergence — run the round and observe the results. The point of subsequent rounds is to verify fixes did not introduce new issues and to catch things the previous round missed.

Each round:

1. all agents evaluate the current bead set independently
2. agents use br queries and bv --robot-* commands as evidence
3. findings collected, deduplicated, and classified:
   • critical — missing spec claim coverage, dependency cycle, bead with multiple valid interpretations → escalate to user
   • high — granularity problem, missing dependency edge, vague acceptance criteria → escalate to user
   • resolvable — answer is unambiguous from spec, codebase, or bv analysis → auto-resolve, log decision, flag for user visibility
4. resolutions applied:
   • br create (new beads)
   • br update (fix descriptions)
   • br dep add / br dep remove (rewire)
   • br delete (merge or remove)
5. beads-manifest.json updated with any changes
6. next round begins on the updated bead set

Convergence

• minimum: 2 rounds if round 1 produces findings. If round 1 produces zero material findings from all agents, 1 round is sufficient.
• maximum: 5 rounds (safety cap)
• exit: a round where ALL agents — all four — independently report zero material findings
• bias: toward running another round if any agent is uncertain. The cap is a safety valve, not a target.
• "material" defined broadly: anything that could cause an engineer to make a judgment call the beads should have made for them

Cap behavior

Hitting the cap (5 rounds without convergence) is NOT an acceptable exit. It triggers a decomposition signal:

• emit beads_review_status = decomposition_required as structured input to the orchestrator
• emit beads-decomposition-proposal.md explaining what is tangled and why

Decomposition can mean one of two things:

1. the implementation plan's workstreams are too tangled — the beads cannot be cleanly separated because the plan itself has unclear boundaries. Escalate back to the user with a proposal to revise the implementation plan.
2. the spec has gaps the beads review exposed — the act of decomposing into concrete work units revealed ambiguity that the spec adversarial review missed. Emit beads-escalation.json listing finding IDs, affected spec sections, and reopened blockers. The orchestrator passes this to forge-loop for a targeted re-entry round.

The user decides next steps based on the decomposition proposal.

Finding structure

Each finding must include:

• finding_id — stable identifier
• round — which review round
• agent_role — coverage, granularity, dependency, or actionability
• severity — critical, high, or resolvable
• bead_id — which bead (or null for cross-cutting findings)
• description — what the problem is
• evidence — what the agent observed (bv output, br query result, spec text, or codebase evidence)
• resolution — how it was resolved (user answer, auto-resolve, or pending)
• resolution_source — user, bv_analysis, codebase, or auto

Outputs

Emit as structured input to the orchestrator (do not write these directly):

• beads-review-log.md — all findings across all rounds with resolutions and provenance
• beads-review-round-N.json — structured findings per round
• updated beads-manifest.json
• structured beads review fields for manifest.json:
  • beads_review_rounds_completed
  • beads_review_status (converged | decomposition_required)
  • beads_coverage_score

On decomposition:

• beads-decomposition-proposal.md
• beads-escalation.json (on back-transition to forge-loop)

Epilogue bead exemptions

Epilogue beads (labeled epilogue) are meta-beads for post-implementation quality and learning. They require different treatment from each agent:

• Coverage agent: skip epilogue beads entirely. They have no spec claims or acceptance criteria to verify — spec_claims and acceptance_criteria are intentionally empty.
• Granularity agent: skip epilogue beads. Their scope is fixed by definition and not subject to split/merge proposals.
• Dependency agent: verify each epilogue bead depends on ALL implementation beads. Flag any implementation bead missing from an epilogue bead's dependency list. The Agent Guidance Review bead must also depend on the Learnings Retrospective bead. Disregard bv warnings about high fan-in on epilogue beads — this is expected and intentional.
• Actionability agent: evaluate epilogue beads for clarity of description and acceptance criteria, but mark test_first: n/a with rationale "epilogue meta-task". Do not require TDD test sketches — these are review/analysis tasks, not code-producing tasks.

Epilogue beads are listed in the epilogue_beads array of beads-manifest.json, not in the beads array. The unmapped_claims and unmapped_acceptance_criteria arrays do not apply to them.

Follow-up beads created by epilogues

Epilogue beads may create epilogue-followup labeled beads in the same epic to address their findings. Follow-up beads ARE subject to the normal review rules — they are implementation beads, not epilogue beads.

Hard rule: every follow-up bead MUST use --parent <epic-id> when created. A follow-up bead without a parent is an orphan invisible to br ready in the epic context. The dependency agent's checklist must include: verify every epilogue-followup bead is a child of the same epic (check via br show <followup-id> — parent field must equal the epic ID).

The dependency agent should also verify follow-up beads are wired correctly (each depends on the bead whose code it addresses). Follow-up beads appear in the followup_beads array of beads-manifest.json.

Hard rules

1. This skill does not write canon. It emits proposals. The orchestrator reduces.
2. Use br and bv CLI commands as evidence sources. Do not read .beads database files directly.
3. Zero material findings means zero. "Probably fine" is not zero.
4. The cap is a decomposition signal, not an acceptable exit.
5. beads_review_status has exactly two values: converged or decomposition_required. No middle ground. The field is absent until the review phase exits.
6. Agent teams are the required organizing mechanism. Do not use ad-hoc agent spawning.
7. Every bead must have a test_first annotation and test sketches (unless test-first: n/a with rationale). Missing test sketches is a finding.
8. Never predict convergence. Never skip a round because you believe it will converge. Spawn all agents, collect their findings, and only then determine whether findings are zero. "I'm confident round N will converge" is not a substitute for running round N.