Overnight Plan Artifact Placement Drift Reconciliation

Overnight plan artifact placement drift reconciliation

Use when:

• overnight Codex planning workers were launched from an external worktree
• the worker claims success and GitHub labels/comments advanced
• expected docs/plans/... or scripts/review/results/... files are missing from the original worktree
• you suspect the worker used a sandbox worktree or pushed directly to the remote branch

Symptom pattern

Typical signals:

• worker output says an issue is now status:plan-review
• GitHub issue comments contain plan/review summaries
• local external worktree does not contain the claimed plan/review artifacts
• git status in the external worktree does not reflect the worker's claimed changes
• a branch tip exists on origin that your local worktree has not incorporated

What happened

Codex may execute from an in-sandbox checkout (for example under .Codex/worktrees/...) rather than the external /mnt/local-analysis/worktrees/... path you launched from. It can still push a valid commit to the intended branch and update GitHub issue labels/comments, leaving the original external worktree stale.

This is not necessarily worker failure. It is artifact-placement drift.

Verification order

Do NOT trust only local file existence. Verify in this order:

1. GitHub live state

• gh issue view <issue> --json labels,comments,url,title
• confirm whether status:plan-review or status:plan-approved actually changed
• confirm the latest issue comment references the claimed plan path and review verdicts

2. Remote branch state

• git ls-remote --heads origin <branch>
• capture the branch SHA the worker claims to have pushed

3. Remote commit contents

• git show --stat <sha>
• confirm exact plan/review artifact paths in the pushed commit
• if needed: git show <sha>:docs/plans/<file> and git show <sha>:scripts/review/results/<file>

4. Local external worktree state

• only after steps 1-3, check whether the files exist locally
• if they do not exist locally but do exist in the remote commit, classify as placement drift

Decision rule

Classify outcomes as:

• Clean success: GitHub + remote commit + local worktree all agree
• Artifact-placement drift: GitHub + remote commit agree, local worktree missing/stale
• Worker failure: GitHub did not advance and no remote commit contains the claimed artifacts
• Governance drift: labels advanced but artifact evidence is incomplete or inconsistent

Recovery actions

If placement drift is confirmed:

1. Do not rerun the planning worker immediately.
2. Record the remote SHA and exact artifact paths.
3. Reconcile the external worktree by fetching/resetting, cherry-picking, or rebuilding the worktree from the updated branch.
4. Only after reconciliation should you launch implementation from those plans.
5. In status reporting, say: "GitHub state verified; artifact placement drift detected; local worktree reconciliation required."

Why this matters

Without this check, you can mistakenly conclude:

• the worker failed when it actually succeeded remotely
• the plan is missing when it exists on the branch
• the next implementation wave can start from a stale worktree

Minimal command bundle

gh issue view 2463 --json labels,comments,url,title
git ls-remote --heads origin nightly/2460-2465-planwave
git show --stat <sha>
git show <sha>:docs/plans/<expected-plan>.md | sed -n '1,40p'

Notes

This pattern was observed in a workspace-hub overnight 4-worker planning wave where:

• issues moved to status:plan-review
• comments were posted correctly
• some artifacts existed only in a remote branch commit from a sandbox worktree
• the original external worktree remained stale