Fprime Iterative Development

Skill: F Prime iterative development loop

Develop a feature or component through the standard phase-gated process, then converge it in a local test-and-review loop: run unit tests, integration tests, and manual GDS tests, run the full multi-agent review locally only, fix what they surface, and repeat until tests pass and findings trend to zero.

0. Approval gate — required before use

This skill runs a long, resource-intensive loop and a full multi-agent review. Never begin it on your own initiative. Before executing:

1. Present the user a short plan: the development scope, the test commands to be run, the manual-test approach, the review setup, and the iteration exit criteria (§3).
2. Obtain the user's explicit approval to run this skill. A general request to "develop X" is not approval to iterate; ask.
3. Do not start Phase 1 (§1) until that approval is given.

1. Phase 1 — development (ask-heavy)

Follow .github/agents/fprime-development.agent.md, which classifies the task and sequences the development skills with their phase gates (requirements and FPP-design approval before implementation). This is the phase to ask questions — front-load every question you can anticipate so the iteration loop does not need to block on the user.

Implement the feature, its unit tests (test/ut/), and its integration tests (test/int/) per those skills. Before entering the loop, send the user a brief recap of the loop plan and any final questions; proceed unless a gating question is unanswered.

2. Phase 2 — iteration loop (autonomous)

Prefer autonomy, but ask the user whenever forward progress cannot be made without input (ambiguous or contradictory requirements surfaced by a finding, a fix that would change the approved design or interface, a test failure whose expected behavior is unclear, missing environment/hardware access). Do not spin in place or guess.

1. Run unit tests:

   fprime-util generate --ut && fprime-util build --ut -j"$(nproc)"
   (cd build-fprime-automatic-native-ut && ctest -j"$(nproc)")
   

2. Run integration tests: build the relevant deployment, launch it with the GDS (fprime-gds), and run the test/int/ pytest suite against it.
3. Manually test the feature: exercise it end to end via the GDS (send commands, verify events / telemetry / data products) as an operator would. Record observations.
4. Run the multi-agent review LOCALLY ONLY — the same pipeline as .github/agents/review-orchestrator.agent.md, with one critical change: no reviewer, aggregator, or subagent may post anything to GitHub — no PR reviews, inline comments, issue comments, statuses, or labels. All findings go to local files only (e.g. review-iter-N/<agent>.md):
   • Read the orchestrator, _shared/agent-registry.yml, _shared/review-contract.md, and each reviewer agent file fresh from nasa/fprime devel.
   • Run every role: reviewer agent from the registry against the local diff (git diff <base>...HEAD). Every reviewer kickoff prompt MUST state in capital letters: LOCAL REVIEW ONLY — DO NOT POST TO GITHUB; write findings to the local output file.
   • Aggregate the findings locally per review-summary.agent.md into review-iter-N/summary.md.
5. Triage and fix: classify each finding (fix / false positive / acknowledged nit), fix test failures and valid findings, and record the finding count for the iteration.
6. Loop: return to step 1.

3. Exit criteria

Stop iterating when:

• all tests pass AND findings trend to zero (no new high/medium findings; remaining findings are acknowledged nits or false positives) — success; or
• finding counts plateau across two consecutive iterations — summarize the residual findings for the user; or
• 5 iterations complete — report status and ask how to proceed.

Deliverables: the implementation and tests (delivered per the user's PR workflow; the PR description may summarize the final local review outcome, but never post the raw review as PR comments/reviews), plus the final iteration's review-iter-N/ artifacts (per-agent findings and summary) shared with the user.

Forbidden actions

• Never run this skill without the explicit approval required by §0.
• Never post review results to GitHub — no PR reviews, inline comments, issue comments, commit statuses, or labels from the local review pipeline. Validation: zero comments/reviews/statuses created by this run on any PR or commit.
• Never skip the requirements/design approval gates of fprime-development.agent.md.
• Never modify or weaken tests to make them pass.
• Do not give reviewer subagents a token with write scope; grant read access only when needed for context.