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skills/software-development/subagent-driven-development/references/context-budget-discipline.md

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+# Context Budget Discipline
+
+Practical rules for keeping orchestrator context lean when spawning subagents or reading large artifacts. Use these whenever you're running a multi-step agent loop that will consume significant context — plan execution, subagent orchestration, review pipelines, multi-file refactors.
+
+Adapted from the GSD (Get Shit Done) project's context-budget reference — MIT © 2025 Lex Christopherson ([gsd-build/get-shit-done](https://github.com/gsd-build/get-shit-done)).
+
+## Universal rules
+
+Every workflow that spawns agents or reads significant content must follow these:
+
+1. **Never read agent definition files.** `delegate_task` auto-loads them — you reading them too just doubles the cost.
+2. **Never inline large files into subagent prompts.** Tell the agent to read the file from disk with `read_file` instead. The subagent gets full content; your context stays lean.
+3. **Read depth scales with context window.** See the table below.
+4. **Delegate heavy work to subagents.** The orchestrator routes; it doesn't execute.
+5. **Proactively warn** the user when you've consumed significant context ("Context is getting heavy — consider checkpointing progress before we continue").
+
+## Read depth by context window
+
+Check the model's actual context window (not "it's Claude so 200K"). Some Sonnet deployments are 1M, some are 200K. If you don't know, assume the smaller one — err toward leanness.
+
+| Context window | Subagent output reading | Summary files | Verification files | Plans for other phases |
+|----------------|-------------------------|---------------|--------------------|-----------------------|
+| < 500k (e.g. 200k) | Frontmatter only | Frontmatter only | Frontmatter only | Current phase only |
+| >= 500k (1M models) | Full body permitted | Full body permitted | Full body permitted | Current phase only |
+
+"Frontmatter only" means: read enough to see the final status/verdict/conclusion. If the subagent wrote a 3000-line debug log, read the summary section it produced, not the log.
+
+## Four-tier degradation model
+
+Monitor your context usage and shift behavior as you climb the tiers. The point is to notice *before* you hit the wall, not when responses start truncating.
+
+| Tier | Usage | Behavior |
+|------|-------|----------|
+| **PEAK** | 0 – 30% | Full operations. Read bodies, spawn multiple agents in parallel, inline results freely. |
+| **GOOD** | 30 – 50% | Normal operations. Prefer frontmatter reads. Delegate aggressively. |
+| **DEGRADING** | 50 – 70% | Economize. Frontmatter-only reads, minimal inlining, **warn the user** about budget. |
+| **POOR** | 70%+ | Emergency mode. **Checkpoint progress immediately.** No new reads unless critical. Finish the current task and stop cleanly. |
+
+## Early warning signs (before panic thresholds fire)
+
+Quality degrades *gradually* before hard limits hit. Watch for these:
+
+- **Silent partial completion.** Subagent claims done but implementation is incomplete. Self-checks catch file existence, not semantic completeness. Always verify subagent output against the plan's must-haves, not just "did a file appear?"
+- **Increasing vagueness.** Agent starts using phrases like "appropriate handling" or "standard patterns" instead of specific code. This is context pressure showing up before budget warnings fire.
+- **Skipped protocol steps.** Agent omits steps it would normally follow. If success criteria has 8 items and the report covers 5, suspect context pressure, not "the agent decided 5 was enough."
+
+When these signs appear, checkpoint the work and either reset context or hand off to a fresh subagent.
+
+## Fundamental limitation
+
+When you orchestrate, you cannot verify semantic correctness of subagent output — only structural completeness ("did the file appear?", "does the test pass?"). Semantic verification requires either running the code yourself or delegating a review pass to another fresh subagent.
+
+**Mitigation:** in every task you delegate, include explicit "must-have" truths the subagent must confirm in its response (e.g., "confirm your test actually tests X, not just that X was imported"). The subagent re-asserting concrete facts is evidence; vague summaries are not.

skills/software-development/subagent-driven-development/references/gates-taxonomy.md

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+# Gates Taxonomy
+
+Canonical gate types for validation checkpoints across any workflow that spawns subagents, runs review loops, or has human-approval pauses. Every validation checkpoint maps to one of these four types — naming them explicitly makes the workflow legible and prevents "what happens when this check fails?" confusion.
+
+Adapted from the GSD (Get Shit Done) project's gates reference — MIT © 2025 Lex Christopherson ([gsd-build/get-shit-done](https://github.com/gsd-build/get-shit-done)).
+
+## The four gate types
+
+### 1. Pre-flight gate
+
+**Purpose:** Validates preconditions before starting an operation.
+
+**Behavior:** Blocks entry if conditions unmet. No partial work created — bail before anything changes.
+
+**Recovery:** Fix the missing precondition, then retry.
+
+**Examples:**
+- Implementation phase checks that the plan file exists before it starts writing code.
+- Delegated subagent checks that required env vars are set before making API calls.
+- Commit checks that tests passed before pushing.
+
+### 2. Revision gate
+
+**Purpose:** Evaluates output quality and routes to revision if insufficient.
+
+**Behavior:** Loops back to the producer with specific feedback. Bounded by an iteration cap (typically 3).
+
+**Recovery:** Producer addresses feedback; checker re-evaluates. The loop escalates early if issue count does not decrease between consecutive iterations (stall detection). After max iterations, escalates to the user unconditionally — never loop forever.
+
+**Examples:**
+- Plan reviewer reads a draft plan, returns specific issues, planner revises, reviewer re-reads (max 3 cycles).
+- Code reviewer checks subagent-produced code against must-haves; dispatches fixes back to the implementer if any must-have failed.
+- Test coverage checker validates new tests exercise the new paths; if not, sends back to author.
+
+### 3. Escalation gate
+
+**Purpose:** Surfaces unresolvable issues to the human for a decision.
+
+**Behavior:** Pauses workflow, presents options, waits for human input. Never guesses, never picks a default.
+
+**Recovery:** Human chooses action; workflow resumes on the selected path.
+
+**Examples:**
+- Revision loop exhausted after 3 iterations.
+- Merge conflict during automated worktree cleanup.
+- Ambiguous requirement — two reasonable interpretations and the choice changes the approach.
+- Subagent reports "the plan says X but the codebase actually does Y" — human decides which is right.
+
+### 4. Abort gate
+
+**Purpose:** Terminates the operation to prevent damage or waste.
+
+**Behavior:** Stops immediately, preserves state (checkpoint current progress), reports the specific reason.
+
+**Recovery:** Human investigates root cause, fixes, restarts from checkpoint.
+
+**Examples:**
+- Context window critically low during execution (POOR tier, >70%) — abort cleanly rather than produce truncated output.
+- Critical dependency unavailable mid-run (network down, API key revoked).
+- Unrecoverable filesystem state (disk full, permissions lost).
+- Safety invariant violated (agent attempted an irreversible destructive action outside approved scope).
+
+## How to use this in a skill
+
+When you write an orchestration skill that has validation checkpoints, **name each checkpoint by its gate type explicitly** and answer three questions:
+
+1. **What condition triggers this gate?** (e.g., "plan file missing", "issue count didn't decrease", "context >70%")
+2. **What happens when it fails?** (block / loop back / ask human / abort)
+3. **Who resumes, and from where?** (fix precondition + retry, revise + re-check, human decision, restart from checkpoint)
+
+Answering these three up front means your skill never hits "what do we do now?" at runtime.
+
+## Example — a review loop with all four gate types
+
+```
+[Pre-flight] plan.md exists and is non-empty?   → no: bail, ask user to write a plan first
+                ↓ yes
+[Execute]  subagent implements task
+                ↓
+[Revision] reviewer checks against must-haves  → fail: loop back to subagent (max 3)
+                ↓ pass
+[Pre-flight] tests pass?                       → no: bail, report failing tests
+                ↓ yes
+[Commit]
+                ↓
+(on revision loop exhaustion)
+[Escalation] "3 review cycles failed to converge on issue X — pick: force-merge, rewrite task, abandon"
+                ↓ user picks
+(on any tier-POOR context pressure during loop)
+[Abort] "context at 73%, checkpointing and stopping"
+```
+
+The vocabulary is small on purpose. Every gate in every workflow should fit one of these four. If you find yourself inventing a fifth, it's probably a revision gate with extra branching, or an escalation gate in disguise.