# Failure Archaeology > Load when about to wait on CI in a hand-rolled loop, ship a doctrine line that states runtime behavior, adopt or delete a leftover local branch, add a contributor clause without a probe marker, or re-open something this session settled (version bumps, mid-campaign PRs, the sol r11 residue, the untracked transcripts). - Skill: `f-e-u-e-r/failure-archaeology` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add f-e-u-e-r/failure-archaeology` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/f-e-u-e-r/failure-archaeology/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Marketing & Growth - Author: F-e-u-e-r (https://skillmd.com/u/f-e-u-e-r) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/f-e-u-e-r/failure-archaeology --- # Failure Archaeology — 2026-07-29/30 session Dead ends, traps, and residue from the contributor-PR campaign session, so no future agent re-walks them. Entry fields per the project-skill template: disposition / what happened / mechanism / standing rule / residue location. ## 1. dead — hand-rolled CI wait loop - What: an until-loop ("wait until no check is pending") was launched to wait for PR #90's CI, then stopped; the session's own live note hedged that an inverted loop condition would return early. A transient API error landed in the same window. (Transcript-recorded only — the stopped loop left no repo artifact.) - Mechanism: a hand-written wait predicate is unverifiable from the outside — when it exits you cannot distinguish "done" from "predicate wrong", and a mid-wait interruption leaves no state. - Standing rule: read CI state directly and re-derive on every resume — `gh pr checks ` — instead of encoding the wait condition in a loop you cannot test. The session's later CI waits (#93, #97) completed as plain background status checks. - Residue: none (the loop was stopped; nothing landed). ## 2. dead — untested runtime-semantics text in #96 (fixed in gate) - What: contributor text asserted `os.environ["KEY"]` "silently reads empty" in non-interactive shells, and its ❌ example used `'\\n'` inside single quotes. - Mechanism: prose about runtime behavior that nobody had executed. Both lenses converged on the KeyError correction (r1); sol+luna refined `.get()` → `None` (r2); a lens executed the printf example and showed `'\\n'` emits a literal backslash-n, so the example could never produce the incident it described. - Standing rule: runtime claims in doctrine get executed verification before shipping (`gate-adjudication-and-folds`). - Record: `6fa6154`, `5fa241b`, PR #97 body, #96's evaluation comment. ## 3. recurring-trap — covenant markers missing on contributor clauses - What: #95's clause carried only the Provenance-level label (`f529014`); the #85–#89 batch needed six in-body markers added (`814d116`); a sweep found five Provenance entries missing the contributor-reported label (#90 body). - Mechanism: contributors satisfy the covenant at the Provenance level and miss the in-body standing form; every batch re-imports the same gap. - Standing rule: sweep new clauses for marker + label pairing as an integration fix BEFORE gate round 1 (`doctrine-change-conventions`). - Tripwire: a new clause whose opening sentence lacks the marker while its Provenance entry says unprobed. ## 4. recurring-trap — your own folds introduce defects - What: #90's gate caught the staged-diff gate's circular trigger (the catch is named in #90's body; that an earlier fold introduced it is session-recorded). - Standing rule: folds are attack surface for the next round; no terminal close on unreviewed folds outside the disclosed bounded-loop residual (`gate-adjudication-and-folds`). ## 5. residue, not in-progress work — local branch graveyard - What (observed 2026-07-30): local branches with deleted upstreams (`[origin/…: gone]`: integrate-pr62-65, integrate-pr68-69, phase-a…d, hook-*, delegation-*) plus never-pushed mine-* and pr3x-review branches from earlier mining campaigns. - Standing rule: residue — do not adopt-and-finish, do not delete without the owner's ask (cleanup mutates the owner's workspace; operational-rigor §2). Observed mechanics: this repo merges with TRUE merge commits, so `git branch --merged main` DOES list all of these branches as merged (verified 2026-07-30: 37 of 37) — reachability is the authoritative signal here. The canonical squash-merge caveat ("squash defeats `--merged`") applies to squash-based repos, not to this one's observed history. The never-pushed mine-*/pr3x-review branches are also listed as merged — their content landed via other branches; still residue, not live work. - Residue location: `git branch -vv` on the owner's machine. ## Deliberately-not-done (do not "helpfully" complete) - No version bump for #84–#97 — doctrine-only merges do not bump (`doctrine-change-conventions`). Do not "fix" the badge forward. - #91 was NOT merged into #90 although it was open before #90 merged — mid-campaign arrivals stay out of the pinned set (`contribution-gate-playbook` step 0). It got its own campaign (#93) instead. - No r12 for #90 — sol's r11 residue closed under the bounded-loop precedent and ships labeled `sol-unverified` in the PR body. Do not re-open the campaign to "finish" sol's convergence; a future finding against those two folds is a NEW finding, handled fresh. - `security-enhancement.md` and `chat-history.md` stay untouched at the repo root — owner disposition pending (issue #100; `UNCERTAINTY.md` item 1). Do not move, stage, or edit them. ## Re-verify `git branch -vv | grep -c ': gone'` (nonzero = residue still present) and `gh pr view 90 --json body --jq .body | grep -n 'sol-unverified\|bounded'` (the disclosed residual is still the record). Entry 5's branch list is machine-local — re-observe it rather than trusting this file's snapshot. ## Provenance Distilled 2026-07-30 from the session transcript; commits, PR bodies, and comments cited inline were re-read in-repo the same day; the branch list was observed directly (`git branch -vv`, 2026-07-30).