Rccafp

RCCAFP - Root Cause, Corrective Action, and Future Proofing

Structured 5-phase incident management protocol for multi-agent AI systems with human orchestration oversight.

When to Use

Trigger RCCAFP when:

• A system constraint violation is detected
• An agent operates outside its role boundaries (overreach)
• A production failure or regression occurs
• A constitutional principle (I1-I6) is violated
• An assumption cascade causes unexpected behavior
• Post-mortem analysis is requested

Five-Phase Process

Phase 1: Detection and Triage

1. Create incident directory: .hestai/state/incidents/YYYYMMDD-[incident-name]/
2. Create subdirectories: 01-root-cause/, 02-corrective-action/, 03-future-proof/
3. Document initial symptoms and severity assessment
4. Determine if full RCCAFP is warranted vs minor fix

Phase 2: Root Cause Investigation

1. Collect evidence: exact causality chains, artifacts, logs
2. Cross-validate through multi-agent assessment
3. Document in 01-root-cause/causality-chain.md
4. Identify which system boundaries were violated

Phase 3: Corrective Action

1. Immediate containment and mitigation
2. Constraint validation - identify gaps in existing boundaries
3. Execute triage and damage control
4. Document in 02-corrective-action/constraint-validations.md and triage-execution.md

Phase 4: Future Proofing

1. Extract architectural learnings from the incident
2. Design prevention mechanisms with evidence
3. Define monitoring requirements
4. Document in 03-future-proof/prevention-mechanisms.md

Phase 5: Closure and Integration

1. Verify all phases are complete and documented
2. Pass findings through synthesis gate before integration
3. Update system documentation only after review
4. Refine protocol based on learnings

Agent Roles in RCCAFP

Synthesis Gate

All incident learnings must pass through the synthesis gate before being promoted to governance documentation:

• Findings go to .hestai/state/incidents/pending/
• Review validates evidence quality and relevance
• Only validated learnings are integrated into system docs

Anti-Patterns

• Silent Fix: Fixing without documenting root cause
• Skip Synthesis: Promoting learnings without gate review
• Blame Cascade: Attributing to agents rather than system gaps
• Speculative Prevention: Creating mechanisms without evidence
• Scope Creep: Expanding response beyond the specific failure

Success Metrics

• Mean Time to Detection (MTTD)
• Mean Time to Containment (MTTC)
• Documentation completeness
• Constraint validation effectiveness
• Incident recurrence rate
• Architecture improvement rate