Dos Unstick

dos-unstick — the recurring-blocker remediation sweep

Stop the cause, not the instance. A one-off unblock fixes today's stall; /dos-unstick asks the different question — what keeps blocking progress across runs, and what one change would unblock it? It mines the run archive, normalizes every blocker to a canonical cause key, clusters the recurring ones, ranks by recurrence × measured stall-cost, and proposes a structural fix per cluster. Read-only; it writes no code and surfaces findings, never acts.

The shape: mine the trail → key each blocker → cluster the recurring ones → rank → propose a structural fix → surface. The recurrence fold is the kernel's (recurring_wedge); the cause TAXONOMY is [reasons] data — a host adds a cause by declaring a reason, never by editing this skill.

Inputs

• --runs <N> (optional) — how many most-recent runs to sweep (default: a recent window). --since <Nd|Nh> overrides with a time window.
• --min-recurrence <N> (optional) — a cause is "recurring" at N+ distinct runs (default 2 — the recurring_wedge DEFAULT_MIN_RECURRENCE).

Step 0 — Discover the layout + the cause taxonomy

dos doctor --workspace . --json

Read paths.runs (the run-archive dir to sweep) and run dos man wedge to read the closed reason vocabulary — the canonical cause keys this workspace knows. Use these; never hardcode a run path or a cause string. A cause the workspace cares about is a declared [reasons] entry, surfaced by dos man wedge.

dos man wedge

Step 1 — Mine the run-archive trail

Read the run records under paths.runs (read each once, sequentially — no tailing/polling, the very anti-pattern this sweep exists to surface). For each run that STOPPED on a BLOCKED / DRAIN / STALLED outcome, capture: the run id, the iteration, the blocker text, and the measured stall cost ($/wall) if recorded.

No host evidence reader is wired by default. A host that curates a postmortem stream or a hand-ranked next-hits file can expose it as a dos.evidence_sources driver hook; the generic sweep reads only the run-archive verdicts. log a one-line note when a host evidence source is not consulted — no silent gap (the /dos-dispatch-loop discipline).

Step 2 — Key each blocker to a canonical cause

Normalize each blocker text to ONE cause key from the declared [reasons] vocabulary (the host's cue table maps an Outcome-cell string to a key — the same kernel-catalog ↔ host-cue split dos man wedge documents). A blocker that maps to no declared cause is keyed UNCATEGORIZED (surfaced as a gap, never dropped).

Step 3 — Cluster the recurring causes (the kernel fold)

Feed the keyed blockers to the recurrence fold. It clusters by cause key, ranks by recurrence (dominant) × stall-cost (the tie-break), and tells you whether the cause the CURRENT sweep hit spans >= min-recurrence distinct runs:

The fold is recurring_wedge.classify_recurring_wedge — pure, frozen-data-in, verdict-out. A cluster spanning ≥ min-recurrence runs is recurring (worth a structural fix); a one-off is noise the sweep cannot help.

Step 4 — Propose ONE structural fix per recurring cluster

For each recurring cluster, propose a structural change — a contract edit, an oracle rung, a preflight check — that would stop the cause RECURRING, not a one-off unblock of today's instance. Rank the proposals by the cluster's stall-score (recurrence × cost). The cause→fix mapping is the host's [reasons] fix-sketch (the reason's documented remediation), not a literal in this skill.

Step 5 — Surface, don't act

Route each proposal to the operator-decision queue:

dos decisions add  # the routing surface; the proposal is a finding, not an edit

This skill is read-only: it writes no code, edits no plan, takes no lease. A recurring cause is a finding for a human (or a follow-up plan), not an auto-applied change — the structural fix is a real engineering decision.

What this skill deliberately does NOT do (no silent gap)

• No auto-unblock. It proposes the structural fix; a human applies it. A loop that auto-unblocks would paper over the recurring cause, the exact failure mode.
• No curated postmortem / next-hits ingestion unless a host wires a dos.evidence_sources hook. log when it is not consulting one.
• No trajectory mining by default (the heavier read) — the run-archive verdicts are the generic floor.

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Proposing a one-off unblock for a 3-run recurring cause — that is the bug this skill exists to replace. Recurring ⇒ structural.
• ❌ Hardcoding a cause string or a run path — read the vocabulary from dos man wedge and the path from dos doctor --json.
• ❌ Tailing/polling the run dir — read each record once; polling is the waste this sweep surfaces in others.