Overnight Pre Plan Review Wave Artifact Drift

Overnight pre-plan-review wave artifact drift

Use when:

• the goal is to move open issues from pre-status:plan-review into status:plan-review
• you want 4 parallel Codex planning workers overnight
• the main checkout is dirty or already carrying unrelated state
• you need planning only, not implementation

Core workflow

1. Create a fresh planning worktree from origin/main.
2. Select up to 4 open issues that lack both status:plan-review and status:plan-approved.
3. Write one prompt per worker plus a master summary.
4. Restrict worker writes to planning artifacts only:
   • docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-issue-NNN-*.md
   • scripts/review/results/*plan-NNN-*
   • optional .planning/quick/*NNN*
5. Explicitly forbid docs/plans/README.md, source files, and tests in the worker prompt.
6. Launch Codex with: PROMPT=$(< worker.md) Codex -p --permission-mode acceptEdits --no-session-persistence --output-format text --max-budget-usd 20 "$PROMPT" </dev/null | tee logs/<worker>.log
7. Each worker should:
   • inspect GH + local evidence
   • draft the canonical plan
   • run adversarial review
   • revise once if MAJOR
   • add status:plan-review only if approval-ready
   • otherwise post blocker comment and leave unlabeled

Verification rule: check 3 surfaces

A worker can advance GitHub state even when artifacts do not appear in the orchestrator's active local worktree.

Always verify across these three surfaces:

1. Live GitHub state
   • issue labels
   • latest planning comments
2. Local active worktree state
   • canonical plan path under docs/plans/
   • expected review artifacts under scripts/review/results/
3. Remote branch / alternate-worktree provenance
   • git ls-remote --heads origin <branch>
   • git show --stat <sha>
   • git show <sha>:path/to/file

How to classify outcomes

Clean success

• GitHub label/comment correct
• local plan/review artifacts present where expected

Artifact-placement drift

• GitHub status:plan-review is correct
• worker comments are present
• local active worktree is missing claimed artifacts
• remote branch commit or sandbox/alternate worktree contains the artifacts

Treat this as governance/artifact drift, not as worker failure. Record it explicitly and reconcile before any downstream execution wave.

Blocked plan

• no status:plan-review
• blocker comment posted
• MAJOR findings remain

Operational lessons

• Fresh planning worktrees reduce collisions with a dirty primary checkout.
• For planning-only waves, not editing docs/plans/README.md is a good collision-avoidance rule.
• Worker success messages can overstate local artifact placement; trust live evidence plus git provenance, not the terminal summary alone.
• If a worker used a sandbox/in-repo alternate worktree, GitHub may already be correct while the orchestrator's external worktree stays unchanged.

Morning handoff format

Report per issue:

• issue number
• GitHub status label verified or not
• local artifact presence verified or not
• remote-branch artifact presence verified or not
• disposition:
  • cleanly ready for approval
  • ready on GitHub but artifact reconciliation needed
  • blocked / needs rewrite