Operationalizes the "pre-flight council validation against stale inherited
scope" pattern that caught the na-h61 M8 estimate inflation in the same
session. Five items from the summary table in today's retrospective.
## New flags
/council --evidence (alias --tdd)
Every finding must include 2+ test_assertions (grep, stat, go test, ...)
that would mechanically prove the finding is real. Consolidation clamps
verdict to WARN if any finding lacks assertions. Schema version bumps
3 → 4. See skills/council/references/evidence-mode.md for the full
schema, judge prompt additions, and a worked example.
/council --commit-ready
Also writes the consolidated report to docs/council-log/YYYY-MM-DD-
<mode>-<target-slug>.md (in addition to the transient .agents/council/
path). Use when the verdict is load-bearing for a merged commit and
the provenance should survive rebases. See docs/council-log/README.md.
/rpi --from=implementation --discovery-artifact=<path>
Explicit "external discovery" entry point. When discovery has already
been done by an upstream /council --evidence run (or a hand-written
plan), pass the path and /rpi validates the artifact, extracts scope
into an execution packet, and proceeds straight to /crank. See
skills/rpi/references/discovery-artifact-mode.md. Formalizes the
improvised pattern used in the na-h61 session earlier today.
## New planning rule
skills/plan/references/stale-scope-validation.md
"Re-validate inherited scope estimates against HEAD before acting on
deferred beads, handoff docs, or prior-session plans." Referenced from
skills/plan/SKILL.md and skills/pre-mortem/SKILL.md. Includes the
concrete na-h61 case study (395 LOC estimate collapsed to ~300 LOC
once the council verified the staging infra already existed).
## New committable council artifact path
docs/council-log/
README.md documents the convention and retention policy.
2026-04-11-validate-m8-assumption-validation.md is the canonical
example — the consolidation that caught the na-h61 scope inflation,
now in git history so any future session can re-verify the reasoning.
## Files
skills/council/SKILL.md (+3 lines — new flags)
skills/council/references/evidence-mode.md (new, ~180 lines)
skills/rpi/SKILL.md (+3 lines — new flag)
skills/rpi/references/discovery-artifact-mode.md (new, ~130 lines)
skills/plan/SKILL.md (+1 line — rule ref)
skills/plan/references/stale-scope-validation.md (new, ~100 lines)
skills/pre-mortem/SKILL.md (+1 line — rule ref)
docs/council-log/README.md (new, ~90 lines)
docs/council-log/2026-04-11-validate-m8-... (new, canonical example)
Follows the same-session retrospective request from the user after
closing na-h61. The CLI half (ao beads verify|lint|harvest) ships in a
separate commit.
Council parity: skills-codex/{council,rpi,plan,pre-mortem}/ exists and
is now drifted. Sync deferred per the CLAUDE.md deprecation note on
sync-codex-native-skills.sh — manual edit required, tracked as a
follow-up. Skill-lint remains pre-existing RED on main (unchanged by
this commit).
Boden Fuller