Glossary

Architect · Role that resolves spec ambiguity when orchestrator emits NEXT_ARCHITECT. Read-only on source files; writes only validation-contract.md.

Boil the lake · Principle (gstack-inspired) requiring roles to do fewer things perfectly rather than many things mediocrely.

Branch isolation · Per-feature harness/<fid> git branches off baseBranch. With useWorktrees: true, each branch lives in its own filesystem dir.

Checkpoint · Hermes-inspired named human-gated pause. Distinct from escalation: checkpoint = “hit a milestone, please approve”; escalation = “stuck.”

Competition mode · Conductor-inspired same-feature race. N workers attack the same feature in sibling worktrees; validator picks a winner.

Crosscheck · Optional second-validator pass with a different model (e.g. validator runs Opus, crosscheck runs Sonnet). Catches confidently-wrong validator decisions.

Curator · Role that compacts memory. Promotes raw.md entries to summary.md / MEMORY.md / identity/<role>.md. Only role allowed to delete memory.

Debugger · Fires when attempts >= threshold for a failing feature. Investigates root cause; writes debug/<fid>.md.

Decision verb · Single-line output from the orchestrator each iteration. One of: DONE, NEXT_WORKER, NEXT_VALIDATOR, NEXT_ARCHITECT, CONVERTED, ESCALATE <reason>, CHECKPOINT <name>.

Documenter · Role that produces user-facing Starlight docs after a feature passes. Runs in the main apps/docs/, not the papercup-docs you’re reading now.

Escalation · Mission halt with escalation.md describing the blocker. Run.sh exits 3.

Evidence rule · claudecode-orchestrator-inspired rule that every PASS claim must be accompanied by quoted source output.

Feature · One row in .harness/features.json with id, title, claims[], status, attempts. Features may be original (planner-created) or F-FIX-NNN (curator+orchestrator-promoted from validator issues).

Ghost · An orchestrator output that doesn’t parse as a known decision verb. Tracked as ghostRate in /decisions. Ghost rate ≥ 10% triggers a low_ghost_rate health check failure.

Health check · One of 9 signals at /api/harness/:slug/health. Composite OK = all 9 pass.

Identity file · ~/autonomous-harness/identity/<role>.md. Cross-mission append-only memory per role.

Issue · Validator-flagged problem outside the current feature’s claim scope. Lives in .harness/issues.json. Curator dedupes; orchestrator may promote to F-FIX-NNN features via CONVERTED.

Lane · One parallel worker slot. With parallelWorkers.max: 3, three lanes run concurrently. With mode: competition, all lanes attack the same feature.

Mission · One run of run.sh for a project. Multiple iterations until DONE / ESCALATE / CHECKPOINT / cost-cap / max-iter.

Orchestrator · Role invoked every iteration. Reads state, emits one decision verb. Designed to be the only role that picks “what next.”

Plan-reviewer · Gate role that fires after planner. VERDICT line determines accept / accept-with-notes / reject.

Planner · Role that creates features.json + validation-contract.md from SPEC.md. Fires once per mission.

Prompt cache · Anthropic’s cache of stable prompt prefixes. We design for ~99.94% cache hit rate.

Product role · Autonomous scope-expansion role. Diffs GOAL.md against SPEC.md; writes proposals.

Raw memory · .harness/memory/raw.md. Append-only one-liner observations from any role.

Smoke test · Service-level URL check via bin/service-smoke-test.sh. Optional gate on DONE or each feature pass.

Snapshot · State capture at iteration boundary. Lives in .harness/snapshots/<ts>-iter-NNN/. Restorable via UI.

Summary memory · .harness/memory/summary.md. Curator-maintained, capped at 40 lines / 800 tokens. Auto-injected into every role’s prompt.

Supervisor · External-cron role that wakes periodically and writes intervention notes. Not part of the inner loop.

TRICK: · Worker prompt convention for flagging generalisable observations in raw.md. Curator promotes confirmed tricks to identity/worker.md.

UI-QA · Real-browser verification role. Fires for features with VAL-UI-* claims. Uses verdict CLI.

Validator · Role that adversarially verifies feature claims. TDD iron law + evidence rule. Default disposition: reject.

VAL-XXX-NNN · Claim id in validation-contract.md. Format encodes domain (e.g. VAL-AUTH-001) and number.

Worker · Role that implements features. Reads contract, writes code, runs its own tests, sets status to validating.

Worktree · git worktree at .harness/worktrees/<fid>/. One per feature when useWorktrees: true.