Workflow Bugfix

Quick Summary

Goal: [Workflow] Trigger Bug Fix workflow — systematic debugging with root cause investigation, fix, and verification.

Workflow:

1. Detect — classify request scope and target artifacts.
2. Execute — apply required steps with evidence-backed actions.
3. Verify — confirm constraints, output quality, and completion evidence.

Key Rules:

• MUST ATTENTION keep claims evidence-based (file:line) with confidence >80% to act.
• MUST ATTENTION keep task tracking updated as each step starts/completes.
• MUST ATTENTION when creating/reviewing specs or tests, name Business Intent / Invariant Guarded or the protected business intent/invariant and ensure the test would fail if that intent breaks.
• MUST ATTENTION define success criteria before execution and loop until observable verification passes.
• MUST ATTENTION require regression tests to name Business Intent / Invariant Guarded and fail if that intent breaks.
• MUST ATTENTION apply the shared SDD Artifact Contract from shared/sdd-artifact-contract.md in the active skills root; use docs/project-config.json and docs/project-reference/docs-index-reference.md for project-specific conventions.
• MUST ATTENTION record current behavior, expected behavior, and unchanged behavior that must be preserved before fixing.
• MUST ATTENTION treat code-extracted specs and TCs as reference-only until canonical review accepts them.
• MUST ATTENTION allow any supported AI tool to implement or review when the shared contract, synced context, and local docs are available.
• NEVER skip mandatory workflow or skill gates.

Repeated Steps Disambiguation (CRITICAL for task creation)

[TASK-PLANNING] Before acting, analyze task scope and systematically break it into small todo tasks and sub-tasks using TaskCreate.

[IMPORTANT] Analyze how big the task is and break it into many small todo tasks systematically before starting — this is very important.

IMPORTANT MANDATORY Steps: /scout -> /investigate -> /debug-investigate -> /spec [mode=amend] -> /plan -> /plan-review -> /plan-validate -> /why-review -> /spec [mode=tests] -> /why-review -> /artifact-review --type=spec-tests -> /integration-test -> /fix -> /prove-fix -> /integration-test -> /integration-test-review -> /integration-test-verify -> /spec [mode=sync] -> /workflow-review-changes -> /changelog -> /test -> /scan --target=domain-entities -> /docs-update -> /demo-guide -> /workflow-end -> /watzup

IMPORTANT MANDATORY Steps: /scout -> /investigate -> /debug-investigate -> /spec [mode=amend] -> /plan -> /plan-review -> /plan-validate -> /why-review -> /spec [mode=tests] -> /why-review -> /artifact-review --type=spec-tests -> /integration-test -> /fix -> /prove-fix -> /integration-test -> /integration-test-review -> /integration-test-verify -> /spec [mode=sync] -> /workflow-review-changes -> /changelog -> /test -> /scan --target=domain-entities -> /docs-update -> /demo-guide -> /workflow-end -> /watzup

Single-pass steps are self-loop-backed (convergence lives in the skill, not the sequence): the /artifact-review --type=spec-tests step appears once in the flat sequence with no repeat wired — intentionally. It carries the full SYNC:double-round-trip-review self-loop (review → validate findings → fix validated findings → full re-review until a clean pass), so a single occurrence still converges to zero findings on its own; the workflow relies on that per-skill loop rather than re-listing the step. Code-change convergence is delegated to /workflow-review-changes (whose specialist scoped-re-run note lives in that skill).

[BLOCKING] Each non-skipped step MUST ATTENTION invoke its Skill tool — marking a task completed without skill invocation is a workflow violation, except a cited conditional skip explicitly authorized by canonical preActions.injectContext. NEVER batch-complete validation gates.

[CRITICAL] Plan Before Fix Gate: The /plan → /plan-review → /plan-validate steps are MANDATORY before /fix. You MUST ATTENTION create todo tasks for these plan steps AND complete them before proceeding to fix. Never skip planning — fixes without validated plans lead to incomplete root cause analysis and regressions.

Activate the workflow-bugfix workflow. Run /start-workflow workflow-bugfix with the user's prompt as context.

Spec check (before investigation): If docs/specs/ has a spec for the affected service/module, read the relevant ERD + business-rules + API-contracts files FIRST. Engineering specs provide domain context that reduces investigation time significantly. Command: ls docs/specs/ to discover available app buckets or flat system folders; then probe ls docs/specs/{app-bucket}/ or ls docs/specs/{system-name}/ to find the specific service spec.

[BLOCKING] Code Bug vs Spec Bug Gate (the bugfix-specialized instance of SYNC:spec-drift-adjudication / shared/sdd-artifact-contract.md → Drift Gates — same model, bugfix vocabulary): Before writing regression TCs, classify the issue:

• Code Bug (= CODE-WRONG) — the canonical spec describes intended behavior, but code diverged. Write regression TCs for the intended behavior before fixing code.
• Spec Bug (= SPEC-STALE) — the spec documents wrong behavior and code faithfully implements it. Update canonical spec/docs first via /spec [mode=amend], then write TCs for the corrected behavior.
• Ambiguous — ask the user or product owner which behavior is intended before writing TCs.

Include a behavior preservation note: current behavior -> expected behavior -> unchanged behavior to preserve -> regression TC/test evidence. Never normalize the divergence to whichever side currently passes — reconcile to canonical intent.

[BLOCKING] End-to-start trace before fix plan: Before /plan, /spec [mode=tests], or /fix, the investigation must include observed final state, final reader/query/renderer/assertion, backward hops through storage/projection/writer/consumer/producer, all feeder paths, hypothesis matrix, owning fix layer, and forward convergence proof. Missing trace evidence blocks the fix path.

Goal Contract propagation (workflow-owned): At workflow start, resolve the active Goal Contract per SYNC:goal-contract-satisfaction-loop (active plan goal.md → plans/goals/{YYMMDD-HHmm}-{slug}/goal.md → create from the bug report). Map root cause, regression-test evidence (RED fail + GREEN pass), and /prove-fix proof to the saved success criteria — each criterion gets file:line/command/report evidence in the Iteration Log. Pass the same goal file reference to every child step. Before /workflow-end, emit the final Goal Satisfaction matrix (PASS/FAIL/BLOCKED); workflow completion requires every required criterion PASS or BLOCKED with a user-facing escalation.

Steps: /scout → /investigate → /debug-investigate → /spec [mode=amend] → /plan → /plan-review → /plan-validate → /why-review → /spec [mode=tests] → /why-review → /artifact-review --type=spec-tests → /integration-test → /fix → /prove-fix → /integration-test → /integration-test-review → /integration-test-verify → /spec [mode=sync] → /workflow-review-changes → /changelog → /test → /scan --target=domain-entities → /docs-update → /demo-guide → /workflow-end → /watzup

[CONDITIONAL TERMINAL DOMAIN-ENTITY REFERENCE REFRESH] After /test and before /docs-update, run /scan --target=domain-entities to refresh the project-reference entity catalog only when the final diff changes an entity/model, DTO/data contract, persistence schema/migration, or entity-sync evidence represented in docs/project-reference/domain-entities-reference.md. Otherwise mark the scan step completed with a cited skip reason naming the changed files and why they are outside this scope; this is the explicitly authorized exception to the per-step skill-invocation rule.

[PERFORMANCE-SDD ROUTE] If this bug fix is performance-related (latency, throughput, memory, query speed, load behavior), run /performance-review and require SLA/benchmark evidence: target metric, baseline, measurement command, and acceptable regression budget. Do not use performance scope to bypass functional no-regression checks: run /test and any relevant functional checks when behavior can change. Update docs/specs for changed SLA, performance constraints, or behavior boundaries.

[TDD-FIRST BUG FIX] The two /integration-test occurrences are intentional and serve distinct purposes:

First /integration-test (RED phase): Write a regression test that REPRODUCES the bug. Run it — it MUST FAIL. If it passes, the test does not catch the bug. Proceed to fix only after the test fails — never start the fix while the test still passes. Second /integration-test (GREEN phase): Re-run integration tests after the fix — expect all to PASS. Confirms the fix works AND the regression guard is in place. /integration-test-review: Verify tests have real assertion value (not smoke/existence-only checks).

UI-intent maintenance (conditional) — runs alongside the /spec [mode=sync] step, only when the change carries user-facing behavior (else state the skip reason — backend-only change, no §6 change). When the fix changes user-facing behavior, run /spec (ui-intent intent) to refresh the affected Feature Spec §6 interaction surface — View Inventory, Key UI States, and the per-story (US-/OP-/BR-) click-path the bug touched — and link the governing /design-spec/mockup in the spec frontmatter so §6 and the design artifact stay coupled to what was actually fixed. The rules live in the shared block below (SYNC:ui-intent-layer) — follow it; do not restate it here.

End-to-Start Debugger Trace — For non-trivial bugs, failed verification, regression fixes, behavior-changing code, or unclear code flow, start from the observed final state and walk backward before proposing a fix.

1. Frame 0: observed end state — Name the exact user-visible output, failing assertion, log line, persisted value, API response, rendered UI, or aggregate bucket. Record the reader/query/renderer that produced it with file:line evidence.
2. Walk backward one hop at a time — Trace final reader -> projection/cache/storage -> writer -> consumer/handler/job -> producer/caller -> original trigger. At every hop record: input, transformation, output, owner, and evidence.
3. Enumerate all feeder paths — Find every upstream producer/caller/event/job that can write into the final path, including retry, async, cache, background, and alternate UI/API paths. Mark each path verified, ruled out, or still unknown.
4. Build the hypothesis matrix — For each plausible cause, list evidence for, evidence against, how to reproduce/verify, blast radius, and status (primary, contributing, ruled out, latent). Do not fix until competing causes are explicitly resolved or bounded.
5. Choose the owning fix layer — Identify the invariant owner and the lowest shared point that protects all downstream consumers. A fix at the symptom site is rejected unless the symptom site owns the invariant.
6. Prove convergence forward — After choosing the fix, walk start -> end again and show how the corrected state reaches the observed final output. Map each root cause to a fix part and each fix part to a test/proof.

BLOCKED until: final state named · backward trace written · all feeder paths enumerated · hypothesis matrix completed · owning fix layer justified · forward convergence proof mapped to tests.

NEVER: Start at the first suspicious code path. Collapse multiple producers into one "flow". Treat duplicate symptoms as duplicate records without proving the read model. Skip ruled-out hypotheses.

Nested Task Expansion Contract — For workflow-step invocation, the [Workflow] ... row is only a parent container; the child skill still creates visible phase tasks.

1. Call TaskList first. If a matching active parent workflow row exists, set nested=true and record parentTaskId; otherwise run standalone.
2. Create one task per declared phase before phase work. When nested, prefix subjects [N.M] $skill-name — phase.
3. When nested, link the parent with TaskUpdate(parentTaskId, addBlockedBy: [childIds]).
4. Orchestrators must pre-expand a child skill's phase list and link the workflow row before invoking that child skill or sub-agent.
5. Mark exactly one child in_progress before work and completed immediately after evidence is written.
6. Complete the parent only after all child tasks are completed or explicitly cancelled with reason.

Blocked until: TaskList done, child phases created, parent linked when nested, first child marked in_progress.

Critical Thinking Mindset — Apply critical thinking, sequential thinking. Every claim needs traced proof, confidence >80% to act. Anti-hallucination: Never present guess as fact — cite sources for every claim, admit uncertainty freely, self-check output for errors, cross-reference independently, stay skeptical of own confidence — certainty without evidence root of all hallucination.

Test-Failure Fault Adjudication — When a test fails (or you are debugging or fixing a failure), the job is to determine who is at fault — the source code or the test code. Getting that verdict right matters more than turning the suite green. Binds every debug / fix / test skill identically.

1. Provisional verdict before touching either side. Classify the observed evidence as SOURCE-WRONG, TEST-WRONG, TEST-NOT-OPTIMAL, ENVIRONMENT-BLOCKED, or AMBIGUOUS; then /debug-investigate and trace end-to-start before editing. A green-again suite is NOT the goal.
2. Triangulate against the spec AND the source. If a governing Feature Spec covers the behavior (e.g. docs/specs/** — §3 ACs / §4 BRs / §5 invariants / §8 TCs), it is the tiebreaker for intended behavior — compare BOTH the production source and the failing test against it. With no spec, the documented intent / acceptance criteria / caller contract is the reference. Decide from this evidence whether the SOURCE is wrong or the TEST is wrong.
3. Classify who is at fault, then fix the wrong side at its root:
   • SOURCE-WRONG — production code violates the spec's intended behavior or a clear invariant → fix the source at the owning layer; keep or strengthen the test that caught it.
   • TEST-WRONG — the test encodes a stale or incorrect assertion, setup, or expectation that contradicts intended behavior → fix the test at its root. NEVER weaken an assertion, add a skip, or relax a timeout to force green.
   • TEST-NOT-OPTIMAL — intended behavior is valid but the test seam, timing, or assertion signal is fragile → improve the test without weakening the invariant.
   • ENVIRONMENT-BLOCKED — infrastructure or external state prevents a source/test verdict → preserve diagnostics and stop mutation until the environment is healthy.
   • AMBIGUOUS — evidence or intended behavior does not safely select an owner → ask the user or canonical owner before editing.
   • NEVER change a test to match broken source, and NEVER change source to satisfy a broken test. (Migration code excluded — schema/data migrations are one-time execution paths, not core application logic.)
4. Ask the user when intended behavior is unclear. If no spec covers the behavior, the spec is silent, or the spec is ambiguous about which side is correct, STOP and AskUserQuestion (or consult the canonical spec owner) before editing either side — never silently pick source or test just to make the suite pass.

Reconcile to intended behavior, never to whichever side currently passes — green can encode the very bug.

AI Mistake Prevention — Failure modes to avoid on every task:

Re-read files after context changes. Context compaction, resume, or long-running work can make memory stale; verify current files before acting. Verify generated content against source evidence. AI hallucinates APIs, names, claims, and document facts. Check the relevant source before documenting or referencing. Check downstream references before deleting or renaming. Removing an artifact can stale docs, generated mirrors, configs, and callers; map references first. Trace the full impact chain after edits. Changing a definition can miss derived outputs and consumers. Follow the affected chain before declaring done. Verify ALL affected outputs, not just the first. One green check is not all green checks; validate every output surface the change can affect. Assume existing values are intentional — ask WHY before changing OR flagging one as a defect. Before changing or reporting a constant, limit, flag, cutoff, wording, or pattern, read nearby context and history, the CALLER's ordering, and 2+ sibling call sites of the same convention. A doc stating WHAT without WHY is missing rationale, not proof of a missing guard. Surface ambiguity before acting — don't pick silently. Multiple valid interpretations require an explicit question or stated assumption with risk. Assert the outcome your system owns, not the intermediate state your infrastructure owns. When verifying async work, assert the final business state — never the delivery/retry bookkeeping held in shared infrastructure that any co-running process can write. Such a check passes when run alone and flakes the moment anything else shares that infrastructure. Keep shared guidance role-relevant. Universal guidance must help every receiving skill or agent; code-specific obligations belong only in code-specific protocols.

Incremental Result Persistence — MANDATORY for all sub-agents or heavy inline steps processing >3 files.

1. Before starting: Create report file plans/reports/{skill}-{date}-{slug}.md
2. After each file/section reviewed: Append findings to report immediately — never hold in memory
3. Return to main agent: Summary only (per SYNC:subagent-return-contract) with Full report: path
4. Main agent: Reads report file only when resolving specific blockers

Why: Context cutoff mid-execution loses ALL in-memory findings. Each disk write survives compaction. Partial results are better than no results.

Report naming: plans/reports/{skill-name}-{YYMMDD}-{HHmm}-{slug}.md

Sub-Agent Return Contract — When this skill spawns a sub-agent, the sub-agent MUST return ONLY this structure. Main agent reads only this summary — NEVER requests full sub-agent output inline.

## Sub-Agent Result: [skill-name]

Status: ✅ PASS | ⚠️ PARTIAL | ❌ FAIL
Confidence: [0-100]%

### Findings (Critical/High only — max 10 bullets)

- [severity] [file:line] [finding]

### Actions Taken

- [file changed] [what changed]

### Blockers (if any)

- [blocker description]

Full report: plans/reports/[skill-name]-[date]-[slug].md

Main agent reads Full report file ONLY when: (a) resolving a specific blocker, or (b) building a fix plan. Sub-agent writes full report incrementally (per SYNC:incremental-persistence) — not held in memory.

Context budget — the return payload is a SUMMARY, not a transcript: ≤10 finding bullets, no raw file contents / full diffs / verbatim logs inline, no re-pasted source. Everything beyond the summary lives in the Full report on disk. A sub-agent that would exceed the summary shape MUST write the detail to its report and return only the pointer — the orchestrator's context is the scarce resource the whole map-reduce protects.

[BLOCKING] Capture a tech-agnostic UI/UX intent layer in every UI-bearing spec — a reader must be able to visualize how the feature works without naming any technology. When the feature has a user interface, the spec MUST ATTENTION carry an interaction-surface section so the application — not just its API — can be rebuilt on any stack:

1. View Inventory — list each view/screen by its UX ROLE and purpose (e.g. "list of items", "item editor", "confirmation step") and what information it presents. Describe by role, never by an implementation name.
2. Navigation Map — how a user moves between views: entry points, transitions, and exits. Trace how this surface connects to neighboring features already in the system.
3. Key observable UI States — the distinct states a user can observe per view (empty, loading, populated, error, success, permission-denied, etc.) — described as what the user perceives, not how it is rendered.
4. Per-story interaction flow — for each user story, the step-by-step click/action path from intent to outcome, cross-referenced to the logical IDs the spec already owns (US-/OP-/BR-).
5. Couple to the companion design artifact — keep deep visual fidelity (layout, tokens, pixel detail) OUT of the spec; it lives in the linked design-spec/mockup. Record that companion's path in the spec frontmatter so the spec stays the navigable hub.

M1-clean (NON-NEGOTIABLE): the prose names ZERO frameworks, routes/URLs, CSS, or component-class names — only roles, information, states, and flows. Technology detail belongs in the companion design artifact, never here.

Skip ONLY when the feature is backend-only (no UI) — state that reason explicitly in the section.

IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION debugger trace gate: for non-trivial bug/fix/investigation/review work, start at the observed final output and trace backward through reader -> storage/projection -> writer -> consumer/job -> producer/trigger. Enumerate all feeder paths and hypotheses before fixing. BLOCKED until trace, hypothesis matrix, owning fix layer, and forward convergence proof exist.

• MANDATORY Parent workflow rows do not replace child phase tracking; expand phases and link the parent when nested.
• MANDATORY Orchestrators pre-expand child skill phases before invocation; use [N.M] $skill-name — phase prefixes and one-in_progress discipline.

• MANDATORY Resolve the active Goal Contract BEFORE work (active plan goal.md → plans/goals/{YYMMDD-HHmm}-{slug}/goal.md → create from current request) and read saved success criteria before editing.
• MANDATORY Append iteration evidence after execution; emit a Goal Satisfaction matrix (PASS/FAIL/BLOCKED) before reporting PASS; loop on validated FAIL; escalate repeated no-progress or blockers. NEVER store secrets in goal files.

• MANDATORY For UI-bearing specs, author/maintain the tech-agnostic interaction-surface layer (View Inventory + Navigation Map + observable UI States + per-story US-/OP-/BR--traced flow); keep deep visual fidelity in the linked design-spec/mockup recorded in frontmatter; name ZERO frameworks/routes/CSS/component classes; skip ONLY for backend-only features with a stated reason.

Project Protocol Overlay — Before executing this skill, resolve any PROJECT overlay rules layered onto it: match this skill's name against the Target column of the project's skill-protocol index (docs/project-reference/skill-protocols-reference.md by default; a referenceDocs entry in docs/project-config.json overrides the path), taking the most specific matching tier ONLY — exact name > glob > *. That precedence orders overlays against EACH OTHER, never against this skill. Read ONLY the matched bodies, resolved as <protocols-dir>/<Name>.md; a row's Body link is display text, never a read path. A matched body that is missing or malformed is REPORTED and skipped — never reconstructed from the index Description. No index, or no match -> proceed with no overlay, silently. Full contract: .claude/skills/project-skill-protocol/references/registry.md.

Overlays are ADDITIVE ONLY: they ADD rules on top of this skill's own protocol and NEVER replace, override, disable, or reinterpret a rule it already states — removing every overlay must return this skill to exactly its documented behavior. An overlay is a BRIEF, not an authority escalation: it can NEVER waive a workflow gate, git discipline, a review gate, or a user-confirmation gate. A genuine overlay-vs-skill conflict, or two equally-specific overlays that directly contradict -> surface both to the user; NEVER resolve silently.

MUST ATTENTION resolve project protocol overlays for this skill BEFORE executing — most specific matching tier only (exact > glob > *, which ranks overlays against each other, NEVER against this skill), read only matched bodies at <protocols-dir>/<Name>.md; a missing or malformed body is reported, never reconstructed. Overlays are ADDITIVE ONLY (they never replace this skill's own rules) and are a brief, NEVER an authority escalation; an equal-specificity contradiction goes to the user.

Closing Reminders

IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION Protocols in force (concise digest of the SYNC/shared blocks this skill carries) — NEVER skip a listed protocol; ALWAYS honor each canonical body:

• End-To-Start Debugger Trace: Trace observed end state backward; matrix + fix layer before fixing.
• Nested Task Creation: Expand child phases; link parent; one task in_progress.
• Critical Thinking: Traced proof per claim; confidence >80% to act.
• AI Mistake Prevention: verify generated content against evidence, trace downstream references, verify all affected outputs, re-read after context loss, surface ambiguity.
• Incremental Persistence: Append findings to report file; never hold in memory.
• Subagent Return Contract: Return summary only; full detail to disk report.

IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION apply Phase 1 compression before structural enhancement; preserve semantic meaning. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION NEVER alter YAML frontmatter, code blocks, tables, or SYNC-tag bodies during optimization. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION keep evidence gates and mandatory workflow/skill steps explicit and enforceable. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION add a final review task to verify output quality and unresolved risks.