Rite Temper

$rite-temper: review scope and risk before planning

Review a readied spec for outcome ambition, scope, pre-mortem risks, and unnecessary solution surface. Fold accepted decisions into the canonical contract before $rite-define. This step is optional for small work and skips low-stakes specs, but $rite-autocomplete always invokes it. Read the active workspace first; if there is no readied spec.md, tell the user to run $rite-spec. Review depth follows devrites-lib/reference/orchestration-profiles.md; the required exact strategy reviewer never changes with profile.

Rules consulted (read on demand from .agents/skills/devrites-lib/reference/standards/)

Pull on demand: patterns.md + coding-style.md (the over-engineering / YAGNI rubric (reuse the pack's standard, don't invent one), documentation.md (ADR-style decisions.md entries), afk-hitl.md (irreversible-risk list + gate ceiling), elicitation.md (the move-set to deepen a section that needs more than the default pre-mortem) selected by the section's risk). Load repository-topology.md, data-integrity.md, or integration-reliability.md only when the spec applicability map triggers that risk family.

Operating rules

• Raise outcome ambition without expanding the solution unnecessarily. Solve the underlying problem without adding speculative capability or abstraction.
• Route every scope change through the Spec Drift Guard. A scope change takes effect only when spec.md records the confirmed decision. Expansion is opt-in (HITL confirm; AFK pauses: see autocomplete policy). Nothing auto-grows into the build.
• Apply maximum caution to hard-to-reverse changes. Auth, migration, public API, and data-model changes always pause under the irreversible-risk list.
• Honest verdict. Never round "needs work" up to "ready"; record every scope call's why.
• Search before asking. Apply afk-hitl.md decision ownership; only human-owned calls enter the interactive walk.
• You write; the reviewer judges. You are the single canonical writer (strategy.md + the spec edits); the reviewer agent is read-only.
• Require spec-quality checklists for significant features. Before hardening, confirm checklists/<domain>.md exist and pass (rite-spec/reference/spec-checklists.md); a scope expansion you fold in adds its own rows (new Success/Acceptance criteria get checklist rows too). A folded expansion with an unquantified criterion is a CRITICAL failure that reopens the readiness gate.

Workflow

0. Read .agents/skills/devrites-lib/reference/standards/core.md, then resolve the active slug, require its state.md, and read the cursor directly. Then read the workspace: spec.md, decision-coverage.md (+ decisions.md, assumptions.md, design-brief.md if UI), state.md. Require Spec gate: passed: else STOP → $rite-spec. Require Decision coverage: CLEAR: else STOP → $rite-clarify. If a plan already exists, scope changes route through $rite-plan repair (record in drift.md), not a blind spec edit.
1. Significance test: reference/significance.md. Low-stakes / shape-not-meaning work → write the exact one-line skipped — low stakes (<trigger>) verdict to strategy.md, set state.md Phase: temper + Next step: $rite-define, and recommend it. Otherwise fire the full pass below.
2. FORWARD pass + mode selection: reference/scope-modes.md. First, the one-sentence-intent test: state the whole change's intent in a single sentence. If you can't without an "and" that joins two unrelated outcomes, it is two features: the scope-creep signal; recommend splitting or narrowing the spec before continuing. Then consider the 10-star outcome for the underlying problem and choose exactly one scope mode (expand opt-in · selective · hold-rigor · reduce-to-MVP) with its rationale and the condition that would change the choice. $ARGUMENTS --mode is a hint, not a command.
3. INVERSION pass: pre-mortem in past tense ("it shipped and failed: what went wrong"), each top risk carrying likelihood + mitigation + the slice it will bind to; then the YAGNI ledger (each candidate scope item gets the "imagine the later refactor" test; defer unless now-cost is trivial AND deferred-cost is large). Interruption pre-mortem: audit the spec forecast and assumptions for unresolved behavior, proof prerequisites, approvals, access, and irreversible gates. Resolve facts and reversible details now; retain only unavailable-pre-code or mandatory action-time checkpoints. Challenge each not applicable decision against live evidence and each applicable topology/data/integration row against its worst credible partial-state/recovery case.
   • Deepen on demand. When a scope decision, requirement, or risk needs more analysis than the default pre-mortem provides, choose 3-5 techniques from elicitation.md whose when-to-reach-for-it matches that section's risk (irreversible decision → Red-Team/Blue-Team + Assumption Audit; sizing → Delphi; vague requirement → Steelman-then-Attack), offer them, and run the chosen one on that section. Record what changed, not the technique name. The default passes remain sufficient when no deeper analysis is needed.
4. Score the 9 dimensions: reference/review-dimensions.md. Cite evidence before the band; gate on the floor (the weakest dimension, not an average). Completion: all nine dimensions have cited evidence, a band, and one explicit floor verdict.
5. Review human-owned findings with the human; do not batch them. strategy.md records the interactive review but does not replace it. Present each material scope decision through AskUserQuestion, one at a time, best-guess + why. Each material scope call ends as a recorded decision: a resolved questions.md qid (HITL) or a decisions.md ADR (AFK): so the review leaves an auditable record outside chat. (AFK gate policy — reference/significance.md — hold-rigor + reduce-to-MVP auto-apply, any expand is a blocking pause, irreversible-risk always pauses.) Apply objective clarity, mitigation, and assumption fixes directly.
6. Write strategy.md + fold back: reference/strategy-template.md. Choose the drift path based on whether a plan exists: no plan.md yet (the normal pre-define case) → update spec.md through the Spec Drift Guard. Success metrics (outcome-level, no AC id) and Acceptance criteria for each opt-in expansion / cut, Non-goals for every deferred item, Constraints and invariants, with top failure modes + mitigations folded into Failure and recovery behavior rows, and the Open questions table; plan.md already exists → do not edit spec.md here: write the deltas to drift.md and hand off to $rite-plan repair. Either way, append decisions.md (one ADR per scope call: context · decision · why-not · what-would-change-it) and assumptions.md (every "we'll probably need X" → assumption-to-verify). (every delta carries the step-5 recorded decision; an untraceable fold is invalid). Re-check the spec Readiness gate (it fails if any folded scope delta lacks its decision or leaves a foreseeable human build choice). After any edit to brief.md, spec.md, decisions.md, assumptions.md, or questions.md, re-scan the affected coverage rows, assumption audit, residual uncertainty, and closed gates. Partial/Missing, an unowned material assumption, or an open blocking/escalating question routes $rite-clarify/HITL. Only after the matrix is re-closed may the phase advance. Update state.md: Phase: temper, Next step: $rite-define; on a blocking pause (expand / irreversible / a dimension still below bar) write the Awaiting human block + Status: awaiting_human before stopping.
7. Adversarial verification loop: ask the exact devrites-strategy-reviewer through the native fresh-context contract in agents.md, with only the hardened spec + rubric: no authoring reasoning. Resolve actionable findings by editing spec.md/strategy.md, re-dispatch; cap ≤3 iterations. A dimension still below bar after 3 is classified by decision ownership: a product/scope/risk choice becomes a blocking question; an objective spec defect stays blocked with the exact required edit and routes to $rite-spec, not $rite-resolve. Irreversible-risk findings always pause. If the named agent is unavailable, stop for HITL. After an accepted edit to a coverage-bound input, repeat step 6's native coverage revalidation before handoff.
8. STOP. Report the mode, the scope deltas, and the floor verdict; recommend $rite-define.

Mid-flight discipline. Do not replace the interactive review with strategy.md, expand implementation surface without need, grow scope outside the Drift Guard, or score before citing evidence. See reference/anti-patterns.md.