gannonh Reflect
Harness adaptation
Read the harness adaptation contract before delegating work, asking structured questions, selecting models, or locating harness state.
Mine the current conversation for durable learnings, then route them into skill edits.
When to invoke
- The user said "reflect" or "ps-reflect".
- A complex task (5+ tool calls) just landed cleanly and the recipe is worth keeping.
- The agent hit dead ends, found the working path, and the path generalizes.
- The user corrected the agent's approach mid-task.
- A non-trivial workflow emerged that isn't captured anywhere.
Skip when the conversation is trivial, off-topic, or already covered by an existing skill the parent followed correctly. One-offs are not learnings.
Process
1. Locate the active transcript
The parent finds its own transcript file before fanning out. The system prompt names the active workspace's agent-transcripts/ directory; use that path. Do not glob across unrelated global transcript directories/. That crosses workspace boundaries and reads private chats from unrelated projects.
ls -t <agent-transcripts>/*.jsonl <agent-transcripts>/*/*.jsonl <agent-transcripts>/*/subagents/*.jsonl 2>/dev/null | head -10
Three transcript layouts: legacy flat (<id>.jsonl), current nested (<id>/<id>.jsonl), and subagent (<parent>/subagents/<child>.jsonl).
For each candidate, read the first JSONL line and check that message.content[0].text contains the conversation's opening user prompt. Take the matching path. If no path resolves, write a tight digest of the session and pass that instead.
2. Spawn three reviewers in parallel
Spawn three general-purpose reviewer subagents concurrently. Resolve each model from the configured tiers and give each reviewer access to connected evidence tools. The prompts forbid file writes; the parent applies edits.
| Lens | model |
Prompt template |
|---|---|---|
| Judgment | reflect judgment from role_tiers (default large) |
references/judgment-reviewer.md |
| Tooling | reflect tooling from role_tiers (default medium) |
references/tooling-reviewer.md |
| Divergent | reflect divergent from role_tiers (default large) |
references/divergent-reviewer.md |
Pass each template verbatim, substituting the transcript path or digest where marked. Reviewers return findings in the subagent result.
3. Synthesize
Spawn one general-purpose synthesizer subagent with reflect synthesizer from role_tiers. Give it access to connected evidence tools because it spot-checks citations. Use references/synthesizer.md verbatim, with each reviewer's full output inlined where marked. The synthesizer returns a structured Accepted / Rejected / Backlog list.
4. Structural enforcement check
Sanity-check the synthesizer's Accepted list. For any item that would be enforced more reliably by a lint rule, script, metadata flag, or runtime check, move it from Accepted to Backlog. The synthesizer already applies this criterion; this is a final pass before edits land. See the encode-lessons-in-structure principle skill.
5. Apply
Before applying any Accepted edit, present the synthesizer's full Accepted/Rejected/Backlog output to the user and wait for explicit approval. The user picks which subset to apply and may redirect routings. Skill changes affect every future agent in the org; do not auto-apply.
Backlog items file to whatever devex / backlog tracker your team uses automatically. Those are tracker submissions, not skill edits. Only the Accepted list waits for approval.
For each approved Accepted item, follow the Routing field exactly:
- Trivial existing-skill edit (a one-line bullet, a tightened sentence, a stale fact corrected): parent does directly.
- Substantive existing-skill edit (a new section, a new pattern table, more than ~10 lines): hand to the harness's built-in
create-skillskill and run its draft / test / iterate loop. tune description: <skill path>(the skill exists but didn't trigger when it should have): hand tocreate-skilland run its description-optimization loop.new skill via create-skill: <kebab-name>: hand creation tocreate-skill. Do not invent the shape ad hoc.
If your environment ships a SKILL.md validator, run it on every touched skill before declaring done. Skip this step if it doesn't.
6. Summarize for the user
Short list, no preamble:
- Edits applied:
<skill path>. What changed, one line each. - New skills created:
<skill path>. One line each (rare). - Backlog filed to the devex tracker:
<issue title>(<tags>). One line each. - Dropped: one line per rejected finding + reason from the synthesizer.