oocx Retrospective Evidence
A retrospective is only as good as what it can point at. This is where the objective record lives.
The highest-signal source is state.json
jq '{attempts, open_questions, gates}' docs/<type>/NNN-<slug>/state.json
attempts— a stage that ran three times is a workflow defect, not bad luck. Look at why it repeated: an unclear specification usually shows up as repeated Developer rework, not as a Requirements Engineer problem.open_questions— a question nobody answered means a role proceeded on an assumption. If the assumption turned out wrong, that is a finding about the gate design, not about the role.gates— a gate that was never contested when it should have been, or one that fired on something trivial, is a rule worth adjusting.
The work protocol
work-protocol.md carries each role's own account, including the
Problems Encountered field. Read those first: they are the closest thing to a
first-hand incident report, and a problem that was logged and then ignored is a worse
finding than the problem itself.
Git history
git log --oneline origin/main..HEAD # how often work was redone
git log --format='%s' origin/main..HEAD | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c
Repeated commits touching the same file, or a string of fix: commits after a
feat:, tell you where the work actually went.
CI
scripts/check-workflow-status.sh list
What failed, and how late it failed. A failure caught in PR Validation that a role could have caught locally is an argument for moving the check earlier.
What this skill replaced
Retrospectives used to be driven by VS Code chat exports, parsed by
scripts/analyze-chat.py. Those exports do not exist outside VS Code, and the metrics
they produced (model usage, tool invocation counts, approval friction) measured the
harness rather than the workflow. The sources above measure the work.
Writing the finding
Every improvement opportunity needs three things or it is a wish:
- The evidence — which of the above, quoted.
- The change location — the file that would change.
- The verification — how you would know it worked.