maestro-improve

name	maestro-improve
description	Turn filed lessons into the smallest doctrine edit - group pending lessons by target, make one commit per target carrying their evidence ids, mark each lesson processed by that commit or answered with the reason it was rejected, and hand back for the challenge lane.
review-date	2026-11-29T00:00:00.000Z

maestro-improve

Use when the room relays "run the improver" on a target. The lane is one delivery lane; the target is its only parameter.

A correction that stays in a transcript is spent when that session ends. The lesson record is what survives, and doctrine is the only thing a future session actually reads. This lane is the one place the two are joined: it turns filed corrections into the smallest edit that would have prevented them.

The parameter

The target names the doctrine a lesson corrects: a recipe section, a rule in lane.md or lead.md, a room template, a skills/maestro-* file, or a repository's Workspace Protocol. Where each one lives, and what an edit to it costs, is in references/targets.md.

The loop

maestro lesson list --project <project>     # pending only, by design
maestro lesson show <id>                    # the gap, the expectation, the why

• Group the pending lessons by target. Two lessons on one rule are one edit, not two, and the second one is usually what tells you which reading of the rule was ambiguous.
• Per group, propose the smallest edit that would have prevented what happened. Doctrine is read under load, so a sentence that removes an ambiguity beats a paragraph that adds a procedure. If the existing text already says it, the lesson is a rejection, not an edit.
• One commit per target group, on a branch, with the evidence ids of every lesson in the group in the message. The ids are how a later reader gets from the rule back to the incident that shaped it.
• Mark each lesson processed by pointing at that commit:

maestro lesson process <id> --commit <sha>

The improver never deletes a lesson and never edits one. Processing is a pointer, so the record of what was corrected stays readable after the doctrine it corrected has changed again.

Rejecting a lesson

A lesson can be wrong: the rule already covers it, the correction misread it, or two lessons disagree and only one survives. Answer it where it lives and mark it processed in the same command:

maestro lesson process <id> --answer "<why this produced no edit>"

The answer is for whoever filed it. "Out of scope" is not an answer; name the text that already covers it, or the reading that was wrong.

The replay gate

Doctrine has golden scenarios: a script of maestro commands and the transcript it produced. In this repository they are tests/scenarios/<name>.script and <name>.golden, replayed by bun test tests/scenario-golden.test.ts.

Run the replay after every edit. An edit is accepted only when it still matches the golden set, or matches the change a lesson explicitly expected. A replay that drifts in a way no lesson asked for is a regression in the doctrine, not an improvement, and it goes back before the handback. When a lesson did ask for the change, re-record with MAESTRO_GOLDEN_UPDATE=1 bun test tests/scenario-golden.test.ts and put the new golden in the same commit, so the diff shows the behaviour that changed next to the sentence that changed it.

A doctrine edit no scenario covers is an edit nothing can falsify: add the scenario in the same commit rather than leaving the rule unwatched.

Filing new lessons

Reading a pile of corrections is the best moment to notice one nobody filed. File it (maestro lesson file) rather than folding it silently into an edit: the next improver run needs the same evidence trail this one had.

Handback

File one handback with the branch and the commits, the lessons processed, the lessons answered, and any lesson left pending with the reason. Name each of them on the handback itself with --lessons <lesson id>@<store path>, repeated once per lesson: a lesson living in another store is processed by whoever holds that store, reading this field rather than parsing your claim. Then stop: the challenge lane runs on a different model family, the Lead reconciles the two, and the room holds the gate. Improving the doctrine you then approve alone is the loop this lane exists to break.

Red flags

The thought	The reality
"While I am in this file I will also tidy..."	Every changed line traces to a lesson, or the challenge lane cannot tell an edit from an opinion.
"These five lessons all point at the same mess; I will rewrite the section"	A rewrite loses the reading that was ambiguous. Fix the ambiguity, keep the section.
"This lesson is wrong, I will just leave it pending"	Pending means unread. Answer it and mark it processed, so it stops counting toward the next threshold.
"The scenarios changed because my edit is better"	An unrequested replay drift is a regression until a lesson says otherwise.
"I will land the branch since it is obviously right"	The challenge lane and the room's gate are the point; a self-approved doctrine edit is one model marking its own work.