Overnight Plan Wave Artifact Drift Reconciliation

Overnight plan-wave artifact drift reconciliation

Use when:

• running parallel overnight planning-only Codex workers
• workers are supposed to produce docs/plans/... files and scripts/review/results/... artifacts
• a worker claims success and/or advances the GitHub issue to status:plan-review
• but the orchestrator cannot find the claimed files in the active worktree

Problem pattern

In overnight planning waves, a worker can successfully:

• post GitHub comments
• add status:plan-review
• claim plan/review artifacts exist

while the orchestrator's active worktree still does not contain those artifacts.

Observed causes:

1. the worker ran in a different in-sandbox worktree than the external worktree path named in the prompt
2. the worker pushed artifacts directly to a remote branch without updating the orchestrator-visible checkout
3. shared-index / multi-worker serialization races bundled multiple workers' files into one commit with mixed attribution
4. GitHub state advanced even though local artifact normalization never happened in the expected checkout

Required verification order

For each completed worker, verify these three surfaces separately:

1. GitHub live state

• gh issue view <n> --json number,title,labels,url
• gh issue view <n> --comments
• confirm whether status:plan-review was actually applied
• capture the worker's own provenance notes from comments

2. Local active-worktree artifact state

• search docs/plans/*<issue>*
• search scripts/review/results/*<issue>*
• do not assume success just because the worker log says files were written

3. Remote-branch / commit state

• git ls-remote --heads origin <branch>
• git log --oneline --decorate -n <k>
• git show --stat <sha>
• if needed, git show <sha>:path/to/file
• use this to prove whether the artifacts exist only in the remote branch or in a different commit than expected

Classification rule

After verification, classify each issue as one of:

• fully verified

  • GitHub label/comment correct
  • local plan + review artifacts present in the active worktree

• GitHub-advanced, local-artifact drift

  • GitHub label/comment correct
  • local artifacts missing from active worktree
  • no remote proof yet

• remote-branch-only artifact provenance

  • GitHub label/comment correct
  • local artifacts missing from active worktree
  • remote branch / commit proves the artifacts exist there

• blocked / not promoted

  • worker finished but issue correctly stayed out of status:plan-review
  • usually due to MAJOR review findings

Do not describe status:plan-review items as cleanly verified unless local or remote artifact provenance has been checked.

Reporting rule

When summarizing progress for the user, explicitly separate:

• GitHub state verified
• local artifact state verified
• remote-branch artifact state verified

Good summary style:

• fully verified: #2459, #2460, #2461
• GitHub label verified, artifact reconciliation still needed: #2458, #2462, #2465
• remote-branch-only artifact provenance confirmed: #2463, #2464

Worktree / sandbox lesson

If a worker mentions:

• in-sandbox worktree relocation
• direct remote push
• shared-index race
• cleanup of a different worktree than the one named in the prompt

trust that as a provenance warning and perform branch-level verification immediately.

Operational response

If drift is found:

1. do not relaunch the same issue immediately
2. capture the current GitHub state first
3. prove whether artifacts exist in remote history
4. only then decide whether the issue needs:
   • governance cleanup only
   • local checkout reconciliation
   • re-planning
   • re-review

Reusable takeaway

For overnight planning waves, GitHub status transitions are not enough. Always audit GitHub, local worktree, and remote branch separately before calling a worker result clean.