Run retrospective

Assess the completed workstream through delivery-speed, process, and codebase-health lenses and agree evidence-backed improvements with the user. The actual grilling skill owns the decision loop. Present the retrospective in the conversation.

Authorization

The request to run a retrospective authorizes analysis only. File edits and other mutations require the user's final selection through grilling, and that selection authorizes only the selected documentation edits, the selected ticket actions through create-issue, and invocation of any explicitly selected immediate implementation through its normal /deliver workflow, never direct implementation by this skill. It does not authorize unrelated commits, pushes, PRs, issues, or file edits. The original request to run a retrospective is not this final selection.

Gates

• Define the workstream boundary from the current conversation, handoff, diffs, commits, issues, PRs, reviews, checks, outcomes, and rework. Record unavailable evidence and lower confidence; do not invent a narrative or broaden into a repository audit.
• Before proposing a process or design correction, trace its originating decision, the current implementation or executable configuration, and the current documentation. Distinguish missing design from implementation drift and documentation drift. Preserve a settled choice unless contradictory current evidence requires a new decision; do not re-grill it merely because the implementation or prose drifted.
• Inspect the complete available coordinator and subagent record, including process events and handoffs. Identify repeated reasoning, rebuilt or dropped evidence, loaded-but-unused or bypassed skills, manual resumes, capability-routing mistakes, and other context consumption that added no value. Report this no-value context separately from other findings and name any unavailable conversation or process evidence.
• Read references/timing-analysis.md before building the timing ledger. For a completed Milestone Rush, also read its ignored .agent/milestone-rush-events.jsonl under that reference. Reconcile telemetry with current repository, issue, pull-request, and CI evidence; partial or missing telemetry is a confidence limitation, not permission to infer values.
• Invoke grilling with the evidence and candidates. Do not imitate it with ad-hoc questions; stop if it is unavailable. Let it ask one decision at a time with a recommendation. Act only after it reaches shared understanding and confirms the exact action set.
• Assess all three lenses, even when one produces no durable finding:
  • Delivery speed: less waiting, rework, handoff friction, unnecessary scope, or cognitive load without weakening quality.
  • Process: planning, decisions, handoffs, gates, tools, and collaboration.
  • Codebase: architecture, maintainability, tests, developer experience, reliability, and accumulated friction.
• Promote only generalized, project-level lessons supported by evidence. Exclude chronology, one-off mistakes, personal preferences, duplicates, existing rules, and speculation.
• Apply de-duplication to the workstream: reuse prior investigations and decisions, coalesce the same event from multiple evidence systems, and combine candidate lessons with the same cause and action while retaining provenance. Report repeated implementation or discoverability evidence when it caused workstream friction, but do not turn the retro into a repository-wide duplication or discoverability audit; that belongs to codebase-audit.

Route each lesson

• Documentation edit: durable guidance in existing contracts, READMEs, docs/, ADRs, AGENTS, skills, templates, policies, or contributor guidance. Prefer tightening or coupling with existing text. Direct edits are limited to documentation.
• Follow-up ticket: source, executable configuration, or other implementation is needed. Offer more detail, further grilling, create-issue (with a draft first if the user wants one), or skip; the delegated workflow retains its own gates.
• Implement before next cycle: recommend this route when a selected improvement should be delivered before another cycle begins. Recommendation alone authorizes nothing. After explicit user selection, reuse or create its visibility issue through create-issue, enter the normal /deliver workflow, and keep this retrospective active until the action is delivered or genuinely blocked. The delegated workflows retain all of their gates.
• Report only: useful evidence warrants neither an edit nor a ticket.

Use both edit and ticket only when the guidance and its implementation are separately necessary. A missing document may be created only when the user selects its exact proposed contents.

Workflow

1. Resolve the workstream boundary and read relevant project documentation.
2. Trace origins and the coordinator/subagent record under the gates above. Then build an evidence ledger of outcomes, friction, rework, surprises, effective or missed gates, successful practices, and separately classified no-value context under all three lenses. Select one or more timing profiles from the timing reference and map both high-level lifecycle phases and available ground-level operations.
3. Reconstruct exclusive critical-path contribution, overlapping or masked work, and aggregate resource consumption without double-counting. Rank bottlenecks by exclusive wall-clock impact; report confidence and missing attribution.
4. Remove unsupported, session-specific, duplicate, and already-covered candidates; classify the rest using the routes above.
5. Summarize key delivered changes and material outcomes in conversation with evidence-backed Before and After states, uncertainty, and source links. Use a diagram or comparison table when it clarifies a mechanism or decision.
6. Run grilling one decision at a time with the boundary, evidence, current docs, absences, and candidates. Offer to deep-dive into any finding before selecting actions; incorporate new evidence into the comparison.
7. Present the detailed summary:
   • findings under every lens, including no-finding results;
   • lifecycle and selected surface profiles, exclusive critical-path ranking, masked or overlapping work, ground-level build/test/tool timings, aggregate resource totals, evidence provenance, and confidence gaps;
   • key outcomes, Before/After states, and available deep dives;
   • exact proposed documentation additions, replacements, or removals by file;
   • concise ticket summaries with all available action paths;
   • report-only observations, supporting evidence, confidence, and gaps.
8. Obtain exact user selections through grilling. More detail or further grilling returns to that loop and regenerates the summary.
9. Apply only the selected actions under the authorization above, preserving documentation structure and avoiding duplication. For each selected implement-before-next-cycle action, reuse or create the visibility issue, invoke normal /deliver, and remain in the retrospective until it is delivered or genuinely blocked.
10. Compare the result with the confirmed action set and run declared documentation checks.
11. Report changed docs, created issue links, immediate-action delivery or blocker evidence, report-only findings, confidence limits, and observed validation. Keep workstream history in chat and remind the user they can request a deep dive into any finding.