Postmortem

Postmortem

postmortem owns reusable failure memory. It does not own workflow state, review findings, remote delivery, or ordinary failure logs.

Use exactly one mode:

• recall: a recurrence, failed verification, or review escape may match a prior lesson;
• interrogate: evidence is too thin to classify the lesson;
• record: a confirmed reusable lesson, review escape, or explicit user request needs durable memory.

Use scripts/postmortem-contract.js#decidePostmortem before any filesystem write. Ordinary failures and unconfirmed lessons do not record. Recall does not make historical evidence current; revalidate it against the present repro and code.

When recall is needed, search docs/postmortems/ only if it exists. Search by module, exact error, violated contract, failure class, and stable recurrence signature. A recurring pattern applies broadly; a special case applies only when its narrow recall condition matches.

Before recording, require the symptom, evidence, root-cause status, lesson type, recall condition, and stable recurrence key. A suspected or unknown cause must never be written as confirmed. Update an existing matching recurrence rather than create a competing lesson.

Durable records live under:

docs/postmortems/<lowercase-kebab-slug>.md

Call scripts/postmortem-contract.js#recordPostmortem only after the decision says record: true. The function creates the directory at that moment; the directory is never eagerly created.