Close Out Story

Tandem: close-out-story (QA → PM hat)

Operate as QA hat transitioning to PM hat for the MONITOR update. The testplan is done (all TCs PASS) and the story needs to gate through DoD.

Inputs needed

• Story file path — try canonical (_00-Project-Management/32-Stories/EPIC-NN/FEAT-NN.M/STORY-NN.M.PP-*.md) then flattened (_00-Project-Management/03-Stories/EPIC-NN/FEAT-NN.M/STORY-NN.M.PP-*.md).
• The paired testplan should already be done. If not, redirect to /tandem:run-testplan first.

Load into context

The canonical layout is the scaffold under _00-Project-Management/ (12-Active, 32-Stories, 40-Decisions, 42-Monitor, 90-Standards). Older / flattened repos may use alternate names — accept any of the below as a match. If NONE of the candidates exist for a given role, note it in the DoD output (don't fabricate scaffolding) and degrade gracefully (e.g. skip the WIP-removal step if no ACTIVE.md exists; the status: done flip is the source-of-truth anyway).

• Story file — at the resolved path from "Inputs needed" above.
• Paired testplan — under _00-Project-Management/33-Testplans/... (canonical) OR _00-Project-Management/05-Test/... (flattened).
• SOP / DoD reference — _00-Project-Management/90-Standards/SOP.md if present. If absent, fall back to project-root CLAUDE.md for DoD-equivalent rules.
• Project-wide quality gate definitions — _00-Project-Management/90-Standards/PROJECT-CONTEXT.md if present. If absent, infer from package.json scripts (see "Lint quality gate" in the DoD section).
• Monitor — try in order:
  • _00-Project-Management/42-Monitor/MONITOR.md (canonical)
  • _00-Project-Management/00-Monitor/MONITOR.md
  • _00-Project-Management/00-Monitor/STORY-MONITOR.md (older flattened-variant naming)
• Active WIP index — _00-Project-Management/12-Active/ACTIVE.md (canonical) OR _00-Project-Management/00-Active/ACTIVE.md. If neither exists, skip the WIP-removal step.
• ADR folder — _00-Project-Management/40-Decisions/ (canonical) OR _00-Project-Management/06-ADR/ (flattened). Required for DoD item 7's "ADRs present + linked" check.
• Project root CLAUDE.md — always loaded for project-specific overrides.
• Prior HTML context (html_context:) — if the story frontmatter carries a non-empty html_context: array, Read every repo-relative path it lists (explorations, annotated diffs, options-comparisons) into context before running the DoD AI-code review (item 6). These are the prior HTML artefacts the human reviewer read; the review agent reviews against the same architectural reasoning. Skip entries that don't resolve (validator R16 already flags missing/traversal paths at pm:lint — don't double-report, just note the skip). Treat the SOP §11 50 KB guideline as advisory: if a listed file is very large, summarise rather than reading it whole.

Use Read / Glob to detect existence rather than assuming; treat missing files as "not present" rather than throwing.

Task — run the DoD checklist verbatim

For each item, mark PASS / FAIL with evidence.

DoD checklist

1. All AC checkboxes in the story file are ticked.

2. All TCs in the testplan have Result: PASS — YYYY-MM-DD (or FAIL linked to a wontfix/accepted BUG with explicit user approval).

3. Project quality commands pass (from PROJECT-CONTEXT.md if present, else inferred from package.json scripts) — scoped to the changed area, not the full repo:

   • Lint (scoped). Resolution order: (a) npm run lint if defined in package.json; (b) npx eslint <changed files> IF a standalone ESLint config (.eslintrc*, eslint.config.*, or eslintConfig in package.json) exists at repo root; (c) if neither — most CRA/Vite/Next projects bundle ESLint into the build pipeline and have no standalone config — use npm run build as the lint substitute and note it explicitly in the DoD result row. NEVER report "lint skipped" silently; either it ran or it was substituted by build.
   • Type check (scoped if possible).
   • Unit tests (scoped to the modified module). For CRA projects, note that npm test only scans src/; tests outside src/ (e.g. firebase-functions/, scripts/) need npx jest <path> --testEnvironment=node.
   • Build.

4. No new errors in the error tracker after smoke run (if applicable).

5. If UI: visual contract tests green (per PROJECT-CONTEXT.md).

6. AI-code review pass. First, if the story's html_context: array is non-empty, Read each listed prior HTML artefact into context (see "Load into context" above) so the review runs against the same architectural reasoning the human reviewer had. Then delegate the code review to /tandem:peer-review — the canonical, reusable six-dimension, severity-ranked (blocker / major / minor) review contract (FEAT-05.2). Run it against the story's diff plus the prior HTML context; peer-review reviews for correctness, security, performance, maintainability, test coverage, and error paths, and emits the AI-CODE-REVIEW HTML artefact (see "AI-code-review artefact" below) — one canonical review path whether the review is invoked ad-hoc or here at the DoD gate, so the standalone skill and this gate never drift. Close-out then records the outcome in frontmatter and enforces the blocker gate below; the findings live in the artefact, not just the story body.

   When to run (closed list — both rules in force):

   • Always if the story ships test code (any new *.test.* / *.spec.* / tests/rules/* file, OR new describe(...) / test.describe(...) block in an existing test file), regardless of net-line count. Reason: test code that ships without an independent review tends to contain mock-vs-real coverage gaps, duplicate structural blocks (precedent: STORY-00.4.01 close-out 2026-05-23 H1), and assertion-shape brittleness that the dev pass misses. Three close-outs over 2025-05-22..2026-05-23 each surfaced 1+ HIGH finding under this rule.
   • Always if the diff exceeds 50 net lines across >2 files (the original general-purpose threshold).
   • Skip only for typo fixes, copy edits, one-line config tweaks, or pure frontmatter / status edits where no executable code or schema changed.

   AI-code-review artefact (when the review runs — SOP §7.1):

   1. Copy _00-Project-Management/91-Templates/AI-CODE-REVIEW.template.html to _00-Project-Management/41-Reports/reviews/AI-CODE-REVIEW-<story-id>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.html (today's date).
   2. Interpolate the real unified diff into the diff slot (data-slot="diff") and one <article class="anno-card severity-<level>"> per finding into the annotation slot (data-slot="annotations"). Each annotation carries data-severity (blocker / critical / warning / nit), data-file, data-line, data-category (security / correctness / perf / style / dead-code), plus reasoning and a suggested fix. Render reasoning/fix as text only — never innerHTML (XSS-safe).
   3. Write the artefact's repo-relative path into the story's ai_review_artefact: frontmatter, and set ai_review: completed-YYYY-MM-DD (today's date). Set this token MECHANICALLY — never copy the review's verdict word. The ai_review: field is a lifecycle marker, not a verdict: it is ALWAYS one of completed-<today> / skipped-trivial / n-a, regardless of whether the review's outcome was "APPROVE", "LGTM", "REJECT", or anything else. Copying a verdict word (e.g. ai_review: approve) is the exact defect BUG-20260608-01 recorded; validator R14 now rejects any non-terminal ai_review on a done story, so a verdict word there will fail pm:lint.
   4. Blocker gate (hard rule, SOP §7.1): count the data-severity="blocker" annotations. If blocker count > 0, this DoD item FAILs — do NOT flip status: done. Report the blockers, fix them, re-review, and regenerate the artefact until the blocker count is zero. critical / warning / nit findings do not block the flip but must be triaged.
   5. For a skipped review (skipped-trivial / n-a), do NOT produce an artefact and leave ai_review_artefact: empty — validator R15b exempts those. Don't emit an empty placeholder artefact.

7. All ADRs created during execution are present in 40-Decisions/ and linked from the story's decisions: array.

8. Any tech debt observed during this work has a corresponding BACKLOG-NNNN file.

If ANY item FAILs

• STOP. Do not flip status to done.
• Show the DoD result table.
• List the gap clearly. For each gap, propose the smallest fix.
• Ask the user before continuing.

If ALL items PASS

1. Flip story status: in-review → done. Set completed_at to now (ISO 8601 + offset). Atomic edit — status + timestamp in the same write.

2. Remove the story from the resolved ACTIVE.md (canonical 12-Active/ACTIVE.md OR flattened variant). Skip this step entirely if no ACTIVE.md exists — the status: done flip on the story file is the canonical source of WIP truth; the ACTIVE.md is just a cache.

3. Update the resolved MONITOR file in the same response:

   • Increment the shipped count (and per-epic / per-feature counts) IF the monitor maintains numeric totals.
   • Tick the bar character (░ → █) if MONITOR uses progress bars.
   • Prepend a one-line entry to the revision history with today's ISO date and the story ID + short outcome.

4. Dashboard regeneration is project-specific. Probe package.json for a pm:dash script (or equivalent — dash, dashboard, monitor). If it exists AND no Stop hook is configured for the project, run it. If neither the script nor a Stop hook exists, skip silently — not every project has a generated dashboard. Don't fabricate the command name.

5. Append the retro ledger line — in the SAME response as the flip and the MONITOR update, per SOP §14.1. This is a side-effect, not a gate. It never prompts, never blocks, and a failure here must never hold the close-out: the writer always exits 0 and warns on stderr (ADR-0110). Skip the whole step silently if _00-Project-Management/93-Scripts/retro-capture.js is absent — older installs won't have it.

   node _00-Project-Management/93-Scripts/retro-capture.js --level story --id <STORY-ID> --phase <EPIC-NN> [--chat <CHAT-NN>] [--tier <low|high>] [--estimate-vs-actual <under|on|over>] [--bugs <n>] [--adrs <n>] [--wall-clock-s <n>] [--rework|--no-rework] [--friction "…"] [--artefact-gap <ID>] [--kit-signal "…"]
   

   This is the only story-level capture site in the kit — defined here once, and referenced (never restated) by anything that needs it, including execute-batch-parallel's reconciliation stage 3. That is why this command and not execute-story owns the level: a second copy could only double-write and drift.

   Everything after --id is optional, and omitting beats guessing. An absent field is recorded as an explicit null meaning "not recorded"; a wrong value is indistinguishable from a measurement and quietly corrupts the calibration data. Worse, a value the schema rejects (unknown, n/a, ~120, 2m) refuses the entire record, not just that field — and because this step never blocks, the warning goes unread and the story's whole retro is lost. When in doubt, leave the flag off.

   Field rules — count them the same way every time (PRD §A.2):

   • --chat — omit entirely when execute-story drove the work; it is not part of a batch.
   • --tier — omit when unknown or human-driven. Never guess it.
   • --estimate-vs-actual — omit when the story carries no estimate. An absent estimate is recorded as absent, never inferred.
   • --rework when the work needed a second implementation pass after a failed TC or a blocker-severity review finding; --no-rework for a first-pass close. Omit both only if you genuinely cannot tell — absent means "not recorded", and is not the same as --no-rework.
   • --bugs — BUG files raised during this execution, from its 34-Bugs/ writes. Not bugs merely referenced.
   • --adrs — ADRs created during the work, i.e. the length of the decisions: array here.
   • --wall-clock-s — execution-window seconds, and only from a real elapsed measurement you actually have. It is not a lead-time or cycle-time figure and must never be derived from frontmatter timestamps (ADR-0107, which retired exactly that derivation). No measurement means omit the flag — see ADR-0109 for why the field exists at story level at all.
   • The three judgement flags are for when something genuine happened. Omit them otherwise; they are written as explicit null and the rollups skip nulls.

Output rules

• Show the DoD result table before flipping status — gives the user a chance to override.
• DoD is non-negotiable. "Tests are flaky so I'll skip" is not allowed — file a BUG or BACKLOG entry instead, and don't close the story until that's addressed.
• If a TC failed earlier but the bug was accepted as wontfix or pushed to BACKLOG, link the decision explicitly in the close-out note on MONITOR.

Non-negotiable rules from CLAUDE.md

• Frontmatter timestamps (completed_at set in the SAME edit as status: done).
• Status enum.
• DoD gate is mandatory.
• MONITOR update is in the same response as the status flip.
• Dashboard regen is handled by the Stop hook IF one is configured for the project; only run manually if no hook is active AND a dashboard script exists.

End-of-close-out summary (always emit)

Only report a status you can point to a gate or tool result from this session for; anything unverified is stated as unverified.

• DoD result: PASS / FAIL with gaps
• Story status now: done | still in-review
• MONITOR updated: yes / no
• Decisions captured:
• Tech debt captured:
• Uncommitted work: report the git status --porcelain line count; if > 0, note plainly that done means finished-and-verified-on-disk, NOT committed, and ask "commit now?". Do NOT auto-commit — commit only on explicit user request. (Stops done stories silently piling up uncommitted across back-to-back sessions.)
• Next Ready story to pull:

Reset conversation Mode if this was the last story in the phase

After the story is done and MONITOR is updated, check whether any other story in the SAME phase/feature set is still in-progress, in-review, or ready:

• If none remain (this was the last open story in the phase) → reset the mode: node _00-Project-Management/93-Scripts/mode.js set neutral --by auto-neutral --session <session_id> Announce it: "Last story in the phase closed — Tandem mode reset to Neutral."
• If others remain → leave the mode unchanged. Do NOT reset on every story close.

Use the same status scan you already perform for the phase; reuse npm run pm:monitor output or the live frontmatter you just read. Never reset silently. Use the session ID from the session context as <session_id>.

Next command

Next: /tandem:close-phase

When every story in the phase is done, close the whole phase (retrospective + gated merge).