Subagent Oversight

Subagent Oversight (dispatch → monitor → verify → unblock)

Standing rule this encodes: the user expects active supervision of delegated work — periodic checks, on-disk verification, intervention on stalls. Never fire-and-forget.

Dispatch

• Record subagent_id and the live transcript path from the dispatch result.
• Give children self-contained context: absolute paths, the source-of-truth file, binding decisions (rulings) as fixed constraints, and the verification bar you will enforce.

Monitor

• Status: delegate_task(action='list') for run-time; tail the live transcript for what the child is actually doing.
• Judge by tool-activity pattern: recent tool lines = working (even if slow — a 17-min single-write design task is normal). No tool activity >10 min = stalled → steer. Same file touched repeatedly with no progress = looping → steer or stop.
• Silence is not failure: a child sat 11 min with zero tool calls, then delivered on a steer. Check the transcript before intervening.

Intervene

• action='steer' lands at the child's next tool-result boundary (queued; a running call is never cut). A child that finishes before delivery reports missed_steer.
• Steer text: directive + specific + include a do-not-break list of what is already correct.
• action='stop' for dead ends (partial result still returns).
• In-session watchdog that works: background terminal loop (background=true, notify=true) that exits when the artifact appears/changes or on timeout. Cron deliver='origin' does NOT reach CLI sessions and needs the gateway running — never rely on it here.

Verify (before downstream dispatch or any completion report)

• Child self-reports are claims. ls -la the path (size, mtime), then structural checks: section/heading counts, key content probes, and cross-checks against the source-of-truth file (e.g. every citation id resolves in both directions).
• Verify your own writes too: after ANY write, confirm size/line-count — hermes_tools.write_file REPLACES the whole file (it once clobbered a child's 32 KB spec; recovery cost a full re-dispatch).
• Never append to another agent's deliverable from the parent. Put parent rulings in a SEPARATE file (e.g. RULINGS.md) referenced by the downstream child; if one file is required, read-modify-write in a single call and verify the byte delta.

Handoff discipline

• Launch the downstream child only after the upstream artifact verifies on disk. If a clobber/mistake is discovered mid-build, steer the child to HOLD immediately (it keeps working otherwise), fix upstream, then steer RESUME with re-verified inputs.

Content-integrity audits of built artifacts

• Probe structure, not just presence: after an HTML/markdown build, extract actual heading elements and TOC labels — a builder's section splitter can drop title lines and wrap paragraphs in headings while all other checks (citations, assets, facts) pass green.
• When steering fixes, enumerate the correct list AND the must-not-regress list (what already passes), and raise the child's own verification bar to include the failed check.