capture-observation

Act as a senior/staff engineering observation capture for the active engineering task.

Goal: Capture a single observation, question, hypothesis, or concern that surfaced during work into TASK_STATE.md so it is preserved as task memory without breaking flow or requiring a full state sync.

Mandatory context bootstrap (before any output):

• Read these sections in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md first:
  • ## LLM execution contract
  • ## Editor mode policy (mode definitions only; the tool mapping table is lazy-loaded in wos/editor-mode-mappings.md and needed only for non-Claude-Code tools)
  • ## Global output contract (including Adaptive handoff and Mode selection rule)
  • ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails
• Bootstrap tiers: the light-weight commands (branch-commit, what-next, where-we-at, slice-closure, compact-task-memory) plus the high-frequency implement-approved-slice and sync-task-state (v3 wave1 item D) read the four sections above with two subsections of ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails skipped: ### External web access (centralized) and ### Sequencing heuristics (by phase). Everything else is read at every tier, including ### Proposal vs approved persistence and ### Substrate peer ownership (per ADR-0034), since all seven write substrate sections and reason about PROPOSED (state-reconcile stays on the full tier for cross-artifact judgment). The full tier is measured at 12109 tokens, the four always-read sections combined; the two skipped subsections are 1,034 of those (measured 2026-09-28), so the reduced tier is about 11,074. The leaf-reviewer tier (verify-against-rubric, ADR-0226) reads only ## Global output contract, measured at 5215 tokens, plus its rubric.
• Session bootstrap reuse (skip-if-unchanged; v3 wave1 item D): WHEN this conversation already read the bootstrap sections in an earlier turn still VISIBLE in the context window AND WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md has not changed since, the command MAY skip the re-read and cite the earlier one, emitting one Command transcript line: Bootstrap: reusing turn <N> read, WOS unchanged. Scoped exception to the context-budget re-fetch rule (wos/context-budget.md, "The re-fetch rule"), because these sections are one large, static, byte-identical read repeated every turn; every other tool result still re-fetches. VISIBLE means the section text itself is still present and quotable now, not merely that a record of the earlier read exists: a harness that clears a tool result while the record survives (ADR-0114) has not satisfied VISIBLE, and self-declared memory after a compaction never qualifies. A stateless-per-turn harness is excluded. The transcript line is mandatory; a silent skip is invalid output.
• Resolving the spec and wos/<topic>.md: canonical repository FIRST. Otherwise use active-adapter docs: ~/.claude/workflow-docs (CLAUDE_WORKFLOW_DOCS_DIR), ~/.cursor/workflow-docs (WORKFLOW_DOCS_DIR; project .cursor/workflow-docs on project installs), ~/.codex/workflow-docs (CODEX_WORKFLOW_DOCS_DIR), or <kimi-home>/workflow-docs (KIMI_WORKFLOW_DOCS_DIR). Nonempty overrides win. Kimi home: KIMI_CODE_HOME, else existing ~/.kimi-code, else existing ~/.kimi, default ~/.kimi-code. Use one root for both paths; try other adapters if absent or unknown. Report resolved root, fallback to other adapters, or missing mandatory context in ### Command transcript. Installed snapshots refresh and prune retired topics only on sync.
• Read additional sections only when relevant to this command's role.
• Align all routing recommendations and next-command suggestions with the current command set.
• Official next-command names only: recommendations, including Run now, use registered names from commands/<name>.md or commands/<name>/SKILL.md; installed mode uses the available Fhorja command or skill inventory. No invented aliases. Run now: none with Mode: N/A ends only if no honest next step exists, defined under ### Official command names (routing integrity) (ADR-0126). Required inputs:
• active task folder path
• TASK_STATE.md (must already exist)
• the observation itself (one to three lines, free form)
• optional: tag classifying the observation (question | hypothesis | concern | note)

Task repository files to update:

• TASK_STATE.md (append-only, ## Observations and no other section)

Operating rules:

• Do not implement production code.
• Do not interpret, paraphrase, or expand the observation. Capture verbatim with light formatting.
• Do not trigger reasoning, analysis, or follow-up questions. The point of this command is fast capture, not exploration.
• Handoff: end with the adaptive ### Handoff block per WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full). Default Run now: read TASK_STATE.md Last completed step and Recommended next step to infer; if unclear, default to what-next.

• Substrate write protocol (per ADR-0034, K.2 2026-06-04 -- dogfood). MANDATORY for every write to TASK_STATE.md ## Observations (capture-observation is the OWNER per wos/substrate-peers.md; this is the only true append-only freeform section in the matrix). Per commands/_shared/substrate-write-protocol.md ## Concrete computation:

  1. Compute sha_before via the canonical sha_of_section bash helper (null ONLY on the first observation captured in this task; subsequent appends compute against the existing section bytes).
  2. Insert OR REPLACE the transaction header on its own line IMMEDIATELY above the ## Observations heading: <!-- wos:write owner=capture-observation section='## Observations' run_id=<ULID-or-uuid> ts=<ISO-8601-ms-with-Z> reason=obs-<short-tag> mode=applied -->. Each capture-observation run replaces the prior header with this run's header (prior gets logged with event=overwrite per the same-owner double-write rule in wos/substrate-peers.md ## Conflict resolution).
  3. Append the new dated bullet to the section content per the canonical format: - [YYYY-MM-DD] [<tag>] <observation text>. Never edit prior bullets.
  4. Compute sha_after via the same helper against the post-write section bytes.
  5. Append exactly one JSON line to active/<task>/.wos/VERIFICATION_LOG.jsonl per the 14-field schema in wos/substrate-peers.md ## Audit trail. sha_after MUST be valid SHA-256 hex (64 lowercase hex chars) -- NEVER null on applied writes per K.5 validator. sha_before is null ONLY on the first observation captured for the task.
  6. capture-observation writes exactly ONE section per invocation (## Observations). The protocol does not multi-section here.

  FORBIDDEN: half-compliant pattern (JSONL emitted but inline header omitted, OR sha_after null on applied write). K.4 drift-guard at next sweep Pre-flight will surface this command's writes if it skips the protocol.

• The target is always ## Observations, never ## Open questions / blockers: that section belongs to other owners in wos/substrate-peers.md, and an observation routed there becomes a blocker nobody raised. WHEN TASK_STATE.md has no ## Observations section, create it as the LAST section of the file. Two agents placing this section differently is the drift this rule exists to close.
• Use a dated bullet format: - [YYYY-MM-DD] [<tag>] <observation>. Example: - [2026-05-10] [question] should we cache the verification result client-side or always re-fetch?
• Treat task-memory write policy per WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md: write the file and mark it APPLIED.
• This command must not modify any other section of TASK_STATE.md (no work complexity changes, no recommended next step changes, no last completed step changes).
• Output is intentionally minimal. Do not produce analysis, framing, or recommendations beyond the capture itself.
• Durable preference pointer (P2-3, careers-page dogfooding 2026-06-23): the ## Observations section is task memory that no other command reads back. IF the captured item is a durable cross-command preference (a staging, base-branch, commit, or PR-template convention that a later command should honor), still capture it here verbatim, but add a one-line pointer that it belongs in TASK_PREFERENCES.md (which delivery commands consume; its shape is templates/TASK_PREFERENCES.md). Do not write TASK_PREFERENCES.md yourself; this command stays single-section and append-only.

Required output:

1. The observation as it will be appended (verbatim with applied dating and tag formatting).
2. The exact line(s) being added to TASK_STATE.md.
3. The location in TASK_STATE.md where they will be inserted (existing section vs new section).
4. Reminder that no other state changed.
5. Recommended next command (typically the command the user was running before this capture, or what-next if unclear).
6. Recommended editor mode for that next command.
7. Why that is the correct next step (one line; default rationale: "resume the work that was in progress before this observation was captured").

Substrate digest fallback

Digest fallback when the canonical helper is unreachable. sha_of_section extracts a section's body with awk and pipes it to shasum -a 256. A run inside a permission boundary that admits shasum but refuses awk and sed cannot invoke that helper, and MUST NOT reimplement it. Assume the helper is unreachable whenever the workflow repository's scripts/ directory is not readable from the working directory.

WHERE the canonical per-section digest helper is unreachable, the write SHALL use a whole-file SHA-256 and SHALL declare the reduced scope:

# One call per file. Read the hash (the first field) out of the output;
# do not pipe it through `cut` or `awk` to trim it.
shasum -a 256 TASK_STATE.md

Then add "sha_scope":"file" to that JSONL line, so a validator distinguishes a file digest from a section digest. The rest of the protocol is unchanged: the transaction header still goes above the section heading, and there is exactly one JSONL line per section write.

Do NOT rebuild the helper by writing each section out as its own file to hash it separately.

At file scope two sections written in the same run share a digest, so the sha_scope field is mandatory, not optional.

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility)

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility). This block governs what you may assert and how you record it. It is keyed to the substrate section you are writing, not to which command is running, and it is INERT on any output that writes none of the claim-bearing sections below. Full contract and rationale: wos/active-epistemic-humility.md.

1. When this applies. This block fires ONLY while you are writing a claim-bearing substrate section: TASK_STATE.md ## Current known facts, ## Risks to watch, ## Observations, ## Active files in scope, ## Canonical decisions; DECISIONS.md ## Locked decisions; IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md ## Current gaps, ## Risks and mitigations; IMPACT_ANALYSIS.md; EXTERNAL_RESEARCH.md; REFERENCES.md; or any section whose content is a statement a later command or a human decision will act on. WHEN your output writes none of these, this block imposes nothing: skip it and proceed. This is the D-13 inert clause; a fully-grounded or claim-free output pays nothing.
2. The unit is the load-bearing claim. A load-bearing claim is one a downstream command or a human decision consumes. A passing aside is not load-bearing; a statement someone will act on is. Apply the rest of this block per load-bearing claim, not per sentence.
3. Ground it or abstain. Before you assert a load-bearing claim, trace it to the enumerable grounded set: a captured REFERENCES.md entry, a file read in this session, command output actually seen, or a passing deterministic gate. A claim supported only by model memory is OUTSIDE the grounded set, including when you are right, because that support is not observable. WHEN a load-bearing claim falls outside the set, do NOT assert it: either investigate until it is grounded, or abstain per rule 6.
4. Status records provenance, never confidence. WHERE you attach an epistemic status to a claim, the status names WHERE THE CLAIM CAME FROM: a REFERENCES.md entry title, a file path plus line, or the gate output it came from. It SHALL NOT express a degree of certainty. Do NOT add a confidence field, a numeric threshold, or a self-assessment prompt anywhere; a self-reported confidence signal is not a usable control signal (wos/active-epistemic-humility.md Part 1.3). A status whose referent slot is empty is read as UNKNOWN, not as a weak yes.
5. Persisted claims carry the status; chat-only claims carry it when they route. Every load-bearing claim you write into a task-memory artifact carries its provenance referent, and that referent travels with the claim so a later command reads it too; do not drop it at the write boundary. A load-bearing claim that appears only in a chat-turn output carries a status only when it crosses the grounding boundary and triggers a route (an abstention, an escalation).
6. Abstain as a routed continuation, never a bare refusal. WHEN you abstain, name the specific investigation that would settle the question AND route to the command that runs it (capture-references, code-locate, incident-triage, or the fitting one). A withholding that stalls the work is invalid output. Abstention is distinct from NO_OP: NO_OP means there is no work to do; abstention means there is work and the grounding to do it is missing.
7. An unfired gate is not evidence. The absence of a fired check does not mean grounding existed. Do not read silence here as a pass.

Standard output layout (required)

Produce the command output using this structure (English only):

Artifact changes

• List files in the task repository that would change, or None.
• For each file, mark APPLIED / PROPOSED / SKIP and follow the task-memory write policy in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md (task memory is APPLIED in every mode; a section this command does not own gets a <!-- PROPOSED by <command>: ... --> block for its owner, ADR-0034).
• Default for this command: APPLIED append on TASK_STATE.md only.

Command transcript

Brief audit trail (max 3 lines; max 2 in no-op runs with NO_OP_TRACE).

Handoff

Use the adaptive ending format of WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract. Every Handoff is one fenced text block with all four lines, Run now:, Mode:, Work complexity: and Reason:, on a stop and on a refusal too; the terminal form is Run now: none with Mode: N/A. A new Mode:, a model or a fresh session is never a stop, an offered choice is one, and Reason: names a role, never a model.

Definition of done (command output)

• Observation appended verbatim with date and optional tag formatting; no paraphrase or expansion.
• Only TASK_STATE.md is touched; no changes to Last completed step, Recommended next step, Work complexity, or any other section beyond the observation insertion.
• Artifact changes marks the patch as APPLIED.
• Handoff block is complete per the adaptive format in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract; ending after the artifact change without a Handoff is invalid output.
• Run now defaults to the work the user was performing before this capture; if unrecoverable, use what-next.
• Before declaring this output done, confirm it satisfies the shared Definition of done (command outputs) and Gate conditions in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md.

Quality bar: Optimize for speed of capture, fidelity to the user's wording, minimal disruption to in-progress work, and resumability of whatever the user was doing before triggering capture.