# Retrospection

> The learning-extraction procedure behind /retro and /meta-retro. Use when a significant task completes, when the Stop gate or 3-corrections nudge fires, when the user expresses frustration or strong approval, or when you finish anything you'd handle differently next time. Converts session experience into reviewed harness diffs — this is the ONLY mechanism by which the system improves, so under-triggering it means not learning.

- Skill: `ghostlygawd/retrospection` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ghostlygawd/retrospection`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ghostlygawd/retrospection/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Productivity
- Author: GhostlyGawd (https://skillmd.com/u/ghostlygawd)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ghostlygawd/retrospection

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# Retrospection

A retro that produces prose produced nothing. The output unit is a DIFF.

## Procedure (also encoded in commands/retro.md)

1. **Gather signal**, cheapest first:
   - `harness corrections list` for this session (gold)
   - prediction misses (`harness stats`, this session's ids)
   - strike-2/3 events from stuck-detection
   - anything the user re-explained twice (you made them pay twice)
   Then backfill skill VALUE tags for skills that visibly fired this session:
   `harness skill-fired <name> --outcome helped|neutral|hurt` — evidence-based
   only (the skill changed/failed to change the outcome; unsure ⇒ don't tag).
   Fire counts alone can't catch a high-fire/low-value skill; /meta-retro
   prunes on hurt>helped, so untagged noise directly corrupts pruning.
   (provenance: roadmap item 9, session 975732da, 2026-07-05)

2. **Select <= 3.** The highest-signal events only. A retro that proposes ten
   changes is noise wearing a process costume; three reviewed diffs beat ten
   unreviewed ones every time.

3. **Spawn the retro-miner agent** with the transcript path + correction log.
   Fresh context matters: it reads what happened, not what you remember
   happening. Take its top events as candidates; you may veto with a reason.

4. **Route each** via skill routing-learnings → write the artifact on a branch
   `retro/YYYY-MM-DD-slug` in the HARNESS repo (never the project repo, unless
   the routing verdict was "project fact").

5. **Self-lint**: `python3 lint/lint_harness.py`. Fix violations now.

6. **Audit**: spawn harness-auditor on the diff. It checks for the four sins:
   weakening enforcement, duplicating an existing artifact, missing
   provenance, unfalsifiable claims. Address verdicts before proposing.

7. **Propose**: `git push` the branch and `gh pr create` with the provenance
   template (commands/harness-pr.md). Auto-merge only if autonomy.json says
   this category has graduated — check, don't assume.

8. Mark done — TWO records (resolve `$HARNESS` per /retro step 1):
   - ephemeral Stop-gate flag (silences this session's nudge; deleted at session end):
     `touch "$HARNESS/state/retro_gate_<session_id>"` — use the ABSOLUTE trunk path; a
     relative `state/...` lands in the active worktree's CWD, not the trunk, so the
     flag (and any backlog tracking) silently misses (forensic finding, session 9856a41f).
   - durable completion ledger (persists; /retro-backlog reads it to skip done sessions):
     `"$HARNESS/bin/harness" retro-done add <session_id> --slug <slug>`.

## What good output looks like

"User corrected import-sorting twice (sessions a1b2, c3d4) → PR adds
PostToolUse format hook proposal + user-model entry (evidence: 2)."
One sentence of why, one diff, one provenance line. That's a learning.