Mace-Enterprise Condition-based waiting
Arbitrary delays guess at timing → races that pass locally and fail in CI. Wait for the condition you actually care about, not a duration. (Assimilated from obra/superpowers-skills; security-audited 2026-06-18 = clean; our wording.)
Status: probation — promote to active after a verified win where this skill was used and helped (see the skill-and-agent-probation-lifecycle methodology).
Pattern
# ❌ guess
sleep(50); assert getResult() != None
# ✅ condition
waitFor(lambda: getResult() is not None, timeout=5s); assert getResult() != None
A generic poller: loop calling the predicate (fresh each iteration), return on truthy, throw on timeout with a clear message, poll ~10ms (not 1ms — that burns CPU). Wait for: an event present, a state value, a count reached, a file existing, a compound condition.
Common mistakes
- No timeout → infinite hang. Always bound it with a descriptive error.
- Polling too fast → wasted CPU. ~10ms is plenty.
- Caching state before the loop → stale. Call the getter inside the loop.
When a fixed delay IS correct
Only for genuinely timed behavior (debounce/throttle): first waitFor the triggering
condition, then wait a known interval, with a comment explaining why. Never a bare
guess.