AGENTS.md

Agent Workflow

This repository uses a task-scoped review-packet workflow in addition to normal code changes. Two roles operate against it: coder (implements work, requests review) and reviewer (reads checkpoints, leaves feedback). The task is the unit of isolation: review requests, feedback, validation logs, benchmark logs, and artifacts all live under that task's review bucket.

See reviews/README.md for full structure and conventions.

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Common Rules

Task-Scoped Review Buckets

Canonical task definitions live under plan/tasks/, not under review/ or reviews/. Review packets live under reviews/ in matching task buckets:

reviews/task-42/
  001-short-topic/
    request.md
    artifacts/
      manifest.md
      ...
    feedback/
      2026-05-17-01-reviewer.md

• Bucket names are task-{task-id} where {task-id} matches the task file identity, for example plan/tasks/42-on-disk-format-invariants.md maps to reviews/task-42/.
• Subtasks keep their suffix: 29a maps to reviews/task-29a/.
• Historical work that predates the current task taxonomy may use explicit archive buckets such as reviews/task-archive-cross-cutting/.
• Do not create top-level packet directories under review/ or reviews/. New packets must be inside the owning task bucket.

Packet Ordering

Packet directories inside a task bucket must sort in chronological order.

• Prefix every packet directory with the next task-local ordinal: 001-, 002-, 003-, and so on.
• Use at least three digits. If a bucket ever grows beyond 999 packets, widen the prefix for that bucket without changing the descriptive slug.
• Keep the descriptive packet slug after the ordinal; do not use global random number ranges for new work.

Task File Lookup

• Use plan/tasks/README.md as the task index. Numbered primary tasks use the NN-slug.md filename pattern.
• Review packet numbers or ordinals are not task numbers. Do not infer a task from a similarly numbered review packet.
• If a requested task is not present in the current checkout, refresh or inspect origin/main before declaring it missing, for example: git fetch origin main and git ls-tree --name-only origin/main:plan/tasks.
• Current hardening follow-up tasks are 35 through 49 in plan/tasks/. Task 42 is plan/tasks/42-on-disk-format-invariants.md.

Feedback Files

• Feedback always lands as a file under the packet's feedback/ directory: reviews/task-{id}/{ordinal-topic}/feedback/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{seq}-{agent}.md. Chat output alone is invisible to the coder inbox loop.
• Frontmatter is required: agent, role, model, date, seq.
• Any agent can leave feedback on any topic.
• Commit and push every review request (request.md) and feedback file immediately after creating it; uncommitted files are invisible to the other role.

Review, Test, Benchmark, and Artifact Logs

• Any output intended to support a review must be packet-local under reviews/task-{id}/{ordinal-topic}/artifacts/.
• This includes test logs, benchmark logs, corpus/load logs, raw measurement output, generated SQL fixtures, JSON/JSONL result files, screenshots, and one-off audit outputs.
• Do not cite local-only tmp/ paths, terminal scrollback, or files outside the packet as durable review evidence.
• Measurement packets must include artifacts/manifest.md as the packet-local source of truth for artifact metadata.
• manifest.md should record, for each artifact:
  • head SHA
  • task bucket and packet path
  • lane / fixture / storage format / rerank mode where applicable
  • command used
  • timestamp
  • whether the run used isolated one-index-per-table or shared-table surfaces
  • the key result lines that request.md cites
• request.md should summarize the result and point at the packet-local artifact files.

Never Commit: Corpus Data, Operational Logs, and Polling Cruft

A review packet is decision-grade evidence, not a capture of everything the run emitted. A packet should be tens of files, not hundreds. The following are banned from commits and are gitignored (see root .gitignore); committing them bloats packets and git history with regenerable or throwaway data:

• Corpus / query / ground-truth data (*.tsv, *.tsv.gz under reviews/ or benchmarks/). Regenerable via ecaz corpus. Record the corpus prefix, scale, and SHA in manifest.md instead of committing the data. The single largest object in this repo's history is a committed corpus .tsv — never add more.
• SSM / tunnel / polling exhaust: tunnel-state/, tunnel-*.log, *.tunneled.json, diagnostic-while-*/ status snapshots, and pg-readonly-status.log. These are session/operational state, not evidence.
• Raw SSM RunShellScript output trees (**/awsrunShellScript/ stdout/stderr dumps, often several MB each). Keep only the cited result lines, copied into a small packet-local log or quoted in manifest.md.
• Poll snapshots: ssm-command-invocation.latest.json, list-command-invocations*.json. Keep the single ssm-command-invocation.final.json when the manifest cites its command id / status.
• Regenerable caches: truth-cache/ recall ground-truth.

What does belong in a packet: manifest.md, request.md, feedback/*.md, the ecaz bench suite config, suite-manifest*.json + suite-results*.jsonl, and the specific recall / latency / storage / load / inspect result logs that request.md cites. If a packet is accumulating hundreds of files, you are committing exhaust — stop and prune before requesting review. .gitignore prevents new commits of this cruft, but already-tracked copies must be removed with an explicit git rm pass.

Legacy review/ Holding Area

review/ is now a temporary legacy holding area only. It currently contains deferred Task 41 packets only. Do not add new packets there.

Benchmark Data Packets

Pure benchmark/measurement packets (no code change under review, just measurement evidence) live under top-level benchmarks/<topic>/, with manifest.md at the packet root and raw logs under artifacts/. Code-review packets that happen to include benchmark evidence stay under reviews/task-{id}/{ordinal}-<topic>/ with their own artifacts/manifest.md, and SHOULD cite the owning benchmarks/<topic>/ packet by path when one exists. See spec/non-functional/NFR-007-benchmark-provenance.md for the normative storage rule.

Promoted current benchmark state lives under benchmarks/current/<lane>/. Those lanes are intentionally mutable indexes for the accepted current result on each host class (m5-local, intel-local, aws-intel, aws-graviton). Do not use a current lane as the only evidence source: its manifest.md must cite the immutable source packet, head SHA, standard suite config, and raw artifacts used for promotion.

Task Closeout Requires 10/50/100k Benchmark Evidence

A task that changes quantizer, index, scan, rerank, posting, or storage behavior MUST NOT be closed, promoted, or merged-as-done on static code review, unit/pgrx tests, or predicted wins alone. Closeout requires A/B benchmark evidence at 10k / 50k / 100k minimum (recall + latency + storage) for the relevant quant/index affected by the change, produced via ecaz bench suite and stored in the owning packet.

• Always test and measure; assumptions must be confirmed by facts. Predictions in this codebase frequently fall flat — "this will be faster / this is recall-neutral / this win is marginal" is not a finding until a benchmark proves it. A recall-safety unit test proves correctness, not the latency/recall effect.
• A/B per change, at each gate. Measure the effect of each change in isolation (gate on/off, before/after commit, or plain-vs-variant index) so it is clear which change moved the bar and which did not. Do not stack several changes and bench only the aggregate — that destroys per-change attribution.
• Minimum matrix: the relevant access method/quantizer × 10k / 50k / 100k (the staged real-corpus scales) × recall + latency + storage. Add the variant axis the change introduces (e.g. rerank_format, quant_bits, residual on/off, prune on/off). 1m is encouraged when 50k/100k show promise.
• "Bench deferred to a host" is not a closeout. The task stays open until the evidence lands. Local development hosts that have ecaz built + PG18 running + the staged corpora (e.g. the Intel desktop) ARE bench hosts — check for the binary and data/staged-current/ before ever claiming env-blocked.
• Evidence storage + provenance follow spec/non-functional/NFR-007-benchmark-provenance.md; no fabricated numbers, every cited result traces to a results.jsonl artifact.

Benchmark Runner: ecaz bench suite Only

All benchmark matrices, sweeps, and multi-step measurement runs MUST be driven by ecaz bench suite (FR-038) with a JSON SuiteConfig checked into the owning packet. Do not write new bash sweepers, per-packet run-matrix.sh, or one-off shell glue around ecaz corpus load / ecaz bench {recall,latency,storage}.

• The canonical runner lives in crates/ecaz-cli/src/commands/bench/suite.rs and supports dry-run, resume, audit, status, report, thresholds, and a structured suite-manifest.json + results.jsonl.
• Reusable standard configs live under crates/ecaz-cli/suites/, with current lane configs under crates/ecaz-cli/suites/current/. Prefer running those configs with --artifact-dir instead of copying task-local suite JSON.
• If ecaz bench suite is missing a step type, profile, or option you need, extend the suite runner in ecaz-cli instead of forking the workflow into a script. Land that extension as its own commit before using it in a packet.

Push and Visibility

• Push committed checkpoints, packet updates, and feedback files to the remote immediately after committing. Anything that exists only locally — including chat output — is invisible to other agents.
• When committing on a feature branch, push to that branch. If working across multiple branches, commit and push to each separately.
• After pushing, verify the push succeeded before moving on.

Local Safety Rules

• Do not revert unrelated local changes.
• Preserve the current on-disk layout unless a very small change is clearly justified.
• Do not use /tmp-based hacks or alternate scratch homes to work around approval, sandbox, or environment constraints; use the normal repo and user tool layouts instead.
• Add ADRs for design decisions that need durable rationale.
• Never run destructive git operations (reset, rebase, drop commits) without reading the affected commits and getting explicit confirmation from the user first.

Local Operator CLI

• Prefer ecaz-cli for local PostgreSQL/pgrx setup, SQL checks, corpus generation/load/list/inspect, and benchmark/storage commands when that surface exists.
• In sandboxed agent sessions, invoke the installed binary by absolute path, currently /Users/peter/.cargo/bin/ecaz, so one approval rule can cover the operator surface consistently.
• Route PG18 socket work through ecaz commands such as ecaz dev sql, ecaz corpus ..., and ecaz bench ... instead of direct psql, wrapper scripts, or one-off shell plumbing.
• Use packet-local logging flags (--log-file or command-specific --log-output) targeting the packet's artifacts/ directory for review, test, and benchmark evidence.
• If a repeated setup or benchmark operation is missing from ecaz-cli, add a narrow CLI command or option instead of working around the sandbox with ad hoc commands.

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Coder Workflow

Trigger

Invoked to implement, continue, or close out a task on the current branch.

Inbox: Process Feedback Before New Work

• At the start of a turn, scan the owning task bucket under reviews/ for new feedback files you have not processed.
• Also scan legacy review/ only when working on a deferred Task 41 packet that has not been migrated yet.
• For benchmark/measurement work, scan benchmarks/<topic>/ for the latest packet manifests in the same lane.
• If new feedback is present for a topic you own, process it before starting new implementation work.
• Do not close review requests yourself. Leave requests open until an outside reviewer has responded.
• Do not re-triage closed review topics unless an outside reviewer reopens them.

Checkpoint Rules

• Work in narrow, testable slices.
• Do not run tests by default. Run tests only when a change is risky enough that static review is not sufficient, when PostgreSQL callback behavior must be verified, or when the user explicitly asks for tests.
• The primary validation target is PG18. When tests are necessary, prefer the narrowest PG18-focused command that covers the touched behavior, for example:
  • focused cargo test ...
  • focused or full cargo pgrx test pg18
  • cargo clippy --all-targets --no-default-features --features pg18 -- -D warnings
• PG17 is optional compatibility coverage. Do not run PG17 tests unless the user explicitly requests PG17 validation or the change is specifically PG17-facing.
• Commit each reviewed code checkpoint. If tests are skipped under this policy, state that clearly in the commit/review context.

Output

• A code commit that lands the slice.
• A matching review request under reviews/task-{id}/{next-ordinal}-{topic}/request.md, committed separately from the code change.
• Any review, test, benchmark, or measurement logs stored under that packet's artifacts/ directory.
• Both commits pushed to the branch per the Common push rule.

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Reviewer Workflow

See reviews/REVIEWER.md for full reviewer trigger, scope, and output rules.

Reviewer quick rules:

• Read the requested packet under reviews/task-{id}/, including request.md, packet-local artifacts, and existing feedback.
• If no packet is named, review the relevant packets in the owning task bucket that lack current reviewer feedback.
• Write findings to reviews/task-{id}/{ordinal-topic}/feedback/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{seq}-reviewer.md.
• Put any review, test, benchmark, or measurement logs cited by feedback under that same packet's artifacts/ directory.