/foundry:mode-interactive

The default posture. The lean direct loop: ONE accountable context implements inline, runs the live-seam walk, and the operator reviews the merge diff (Regular mode) — the un-forgeable segregation on single-host. No worker dispatch, no queue; the retro shows this beats the dispatch ceremony for most work.

When to trigger

• Default for a single atom / small change. "implement <atom> interactively", "/foundry:mode-interactive".
• Use mode-autonomous instead only for scale fan-out over an authorized release.

Procedure

1. Confirm the atom is AUTHORIZED (/foundry:authorize first if not).
2. Implement inline against the frozen acceptance-contract.yaml (do not weaken checkpoints).
3. Run the live-seam walk (real boot + Chrome MCP / real seam) against each frozen checkpoint locator.
   • Fast lane for breadth (page-context fetch + SSE tail). For many cases against the same seam, a faster faithful method than one-UI-path-at-a-time: drive the app's API from the browser page context (real cookies/session → the real model + DB seam, not a mocked client) and parse the streamed (SSE) response. Use it to exercise breadth quickly.
   • Caveat — conversation independence. Independent single-shot page-context calls behave differently from multi-turn/stateful flows; conversation-state independence must be verified, not assumed.
   • The UI walk stays authoritative. The fast lane is for breadth only; the UI walk remains authoritative, especially for stateful/multi-turn flows. Do not substitute the fast lane for the authoritative UI walk on those paths.
4. Cut the PR (gh pr create); the worker cuts its PR, the merge floor decides.
5. Operator reviews the diff + the floor's check results at the merge — the Regular-mode authority. Merge on PASS.

The load-bearing insight

mode-interactive and mode-autonomous differ ONLY at the two ends — who paces the loop (operator vs /loop) and who reviews before the merge (operator diff-review vs a fresh-context pr-reviewer pass — advisory, never the merge approval; the floor's green checks admit either way). The middle (authorized-spec → implement → certification → the merge floor) is identical and invariant in both.

Anti-patterns

• Skipping the live-seam walk because "it compiled / unit-tests pass" — status ≠ functional.
• Self-merging in Regular mode — the operator diff-review IS the segregation; do not bypass it even under noninteractive.