Action Drafting

action-drafting

Purpose

Turns a drift signal plus research context into a specific, fully -specified ProposedAction. This skill's authority ends at status: "drafted" — it never executes, and per ADR-0005 (resolved), it never will, regardless of how other skills in this project are implemented.

When this skill runs

• Portfolio Analysis reports rebalance_recommended: true and the root planner decides to act on it
• User directly requests a specific trade be evaluated

Action Drafting doesn't invoke itself — the root planner decides to call it, same as every other skill, per ADR-0004.

Inputs

Drafting logic (deterministic, testable)

Given an over-allocated asset class from the Drift Report:

trim_amount_usd = current_asset_class_value_usd
                   - (target_percent / 100 * total_value_usd)

Trims back to the IPS's target_percent, not merely back inside the band — bringing a position to just inside max_percent would put it at immediate risk of drifting out again on the next small market move.

Ticker selection when an asset class has multiple positions: selects the single position with the largest market value in that asset class. Tax-lot optimization, partial-position splitting across multiple tickers, and gain/loss-aware selection are explicitly out of scope for this version — a simple, explainable rule beats a sophisticated one that can't be justified in the rationale field a human has to review.

Pre-check, before drafting (defense in depth)

The Reviewer/Critic is the enforcement backstop, but this skill doesn't knowingly draft a trade it already knows would fail review:

• Never proposes a ticker in excluded_tickers or a sector in excluded_sectors
• Never proposes a trade that would push the resulting position above concentration_limit_percent

If the only mathematically-indicated trade would violate either, this skill declines to draft rather than proposing something it expects the Reviewer to reject — surfaces the conflict to the user instead (e.g. "rebalancing would require trimming an excluded ticker — resolve the exclusion or accept the drift").

Output

Return only the two judgment fields:

• rationale — a single paragraph, 2–4 sentences. Cite the drift figures from the input's drift_report and, if any, the input's research_briefs by research_run_id. If confidence in the research is low, say so plainly.
• supporting_research_refs — a list of research_run_id strings you actually cited. Empty list if none apply.

Do NOT restate ticker, side, quantity, estimated_price_usd, ips_version_referenced, or any other numeric/identifier field. Those come from input.precomputed_trade and are authoritative. The orchestrator merges your two fields onto the precomputed trade and persists the result.

Failure mode: no research available

If Research was invoked but returned confidence: low, this skill still drafts — the human approval gate exists precisely for judgment calls under uncertainty — but the low confidence is stated plainly in rationale, not smoothed over. If Research wasn't invoked at all (e.g. a small, band-boundary rebalance where research adds little), that's a noted omission in rationale, not a silent gap.

Failure mode: no rebalance warranted

If no asset class is out of band and the user didn't request a specific trade, this skill drafts nothing. An empty result is a valid, correct output — never invent a trade to have something to show.

Tools / permissions required

• Managed Agent sandbox: reasons over the orchestrator's pre-computed trade candidate + IPS + holdings + research briefs. Produces a ProposedAction typed output with rationale.
• Orchestrator (outside sandbox):
  • pre-fetches IPS + holdings from Firestore
  • pre-computes the trade math and constraint checks via primitives/action_drafting.py::calculate_draft_action (excluded ticker/sector, concentration limit, IPS-target-band trim math)
  • persists the returned ProposedAction to Firestore and emits the ACTION_PROPOSED audit entry
• Alpaca: not called at drafting time. Quote lookups are mocked in primitives/action_drafting.py::get_mock_alpaca_quote. Only the orchestrator's own code calls the real Alpaca endpoint, and only after Reviewer pass + human approval (see ADR-0005).
• No Alpaca order-placement credential, ever. The Managed Agent sandbox holds no broker credentials, per ADR-0005.

Registry metadata

• Registered as: projects/{project}/locations/{location}/skills/private-action-drafting
• Skill revision: 0.1.0 (draft — not yet registered)
• Approval scope: read:holdings,read:ips,read:market_data_quote

Acceptance criteria

1. Trim quantity brings the over-allocated asset class to exactly target_percent, not merely back inside the band — verified against hand-calculated values
2. Never drafts a trade in excluded_tickers/excluded_sectors — tested directly, not only relied on via the Reviewer
3. Never drafts a trade pushing a resulting position over concentration_limit_percent
4. ips_version_referenced always matches the IPS version active at drafting time
5. No asset class out of band, no direct user request → zero ProposedActions drafted
6. This skill's credential set never includes Alpaca order-placement access — enforced at the tool-provisioning level, not just documented
7. Emits an action_proposed AuditLogEntry on every successful draft