harness-accept

A skill for non-engineer clients and producers that presents the acceptance decision (ship / wait / reject) for a completed implementation task as a single HTML page. Used at cognitive load peak (3): the acceptance decision stage.

Operates as the counterpart structure to Phase 65.1.x (harness-plan-brief), reading back the acceptance_criteria approved in the Plan Brief for evaluation.

Quick Reference

• "Create an Acceptance Demo" → this skill
• "I want to make an acceptance decision" → this skill
• "ship/wait/reject decision" → this skill

Responsibility Boundaries

Input

Pass the user's request as the [task-description] argument (use the same text as during Plan Brief). If no argument is provided, accept interactively.

Output

Schema: acceptance-context.v1

{
  "schema": "acceptance-context.v1",
  "user_request": "string",
  "user_request_hash": "sha256 hex (join key with personal-preference.v1 on the Plan Brief side)",
  "demo_artifacts": [
    { "kind": "video|screenshot|text", "path": "string" }
  ],
  "verified_criteria": [
    { "name": "string", "passed": true, "evidence": "string" }
  ],
  "tdd_verified": "yes|no|not-required|skip:<reason>",
  "unverified_caveats": ["string"],
  "past_issue_patterns": [
    { "pattern_id": "P5", "title": "string", "verified_in_current_task": true }
  ],
  "recommendation": "ship|wait|reject",
  "recommendation_evidence": ["string"],
  "project": "string",
  "generated_at": "ISO8601"
}

Full schema: see schemas/acceptance-context.v1.schema.json.

Recommendation Calculation Logic

verified_count    = count of verified_criteria where passed=true
total_criteria    = count of verified_criteria
ratio             = verified_count / total_criteria  (0 when total=0)

  ratio >= 0.8 → "ship"
  ratio >= 0.5 → "wait"
  ratio <  0.5 → "reject"
  total = 0    → "reject" (0 criteria means unable to judge; default to safe side reject)

Record the evaluation basis with literal numbers in recommendation_evidence. Example: "verified 4 / total 5 (80%) → above ship threshold"

Execution Flow

When the skill is invoked, Claude operates in the following steps.

Step 1: Resolve project name and user_request_hash

PROJECT_NAME="$(basename "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)")"
USER_REQUEST_HASH="$(printf '%s' "$USER_REQUEST" | sha256sum | awk '{print $1}')"

Use current as the default if PROJECT_NAME is empty (outside git).

Step 2: Search harness-mem project-only and retrieve Plan Brief record (default)

When the --cross-project-group <name> flag is absent (default behavior):

Call mcp__harness__harness_mem_search with the following parameters:

project: <PROJECT_NAME>
strict_project: true
tags: ["personal-preference", "plan-brief-approval"]
limit: 10

Important: The project parameter is required. Specify strict_project: true and never perform cross-project searches.

Filter the retrieved records by data.user_request_hash == <USER_REQUEST_HASH> and select the most recent one. This record holds the approval content from Plan Brief time (chosen_option / acceptance_criteria, etc.).

Step 2 (alt): cross-project search (Phase 65.3.5 opt-in)

Only when the --cross-project-group <name> flag is present, retrieve similar plan-brief-approval / acceptance-decision history from other projects within the cross-project group (D43 Option α):

MEMBERS_JSON="$(bash scripts/load-cross-project-groups.sh --group "<name>" 2>/dev/null)" || {
  echo "ERROR: cross-project group not found: <name>" >&2
  exit 1
}

If MEMBERS_JSON is [], fall back to default single project search.

If MEMBERS_JSON is non-empty, issue one MCP search per member project:

for each project in MEMBERS_JSON:
  mcp__harness__harness_mem_search(
    project: <member>,
    strict_project: true,
    tags: ["personal-preference", "plan-brief-approval"],
    limit: 10
  )

Merge results on the client side, filter by data.user_request_hash == <USER_REQUEST_HASH>. Hash matches are generally from the same user request so duplicates across projects are rare, but dedupe by id to be safe.

When adopting a cross-project record, chosen_option / acceptance_criteria from other past projects may be mixed in, so always use the --with-redaction flag when generating HTML output:

bash scripts/render-html.sh --template accept ... --with-redaction

For details, see "Phase 65.3 Implementation Decisions (D43)" in .claude/rules/cross-repo-handoff.md.

Step 3: Retrieve past issue patterns (delegated to Phase 65.2.2)

bash scripts/accept-past-issues.sh --project "$PROJECT_NAME" --task "$USER_REQUEST" > "$PAST_ISSUES_JSON"

This script semantically searches patterns.md (P1-P33) and past acceptance-context.v1 records, returning up to 3 past-issue.v1 entries, each with verified_in_current_task: bool.

Step 4: Build verified_criteria

For each item in the acceptance_criteria from Plan Brief time, evaluate the current task's state. The user (or Claude) presents "verified evidence" and fills in the evidence string.

If evidence is an empty string, a warning is shown in the HTML (DoD c).

For tasks where TDD is required, the Acceptance Demo must include a TDD verified: yes|no line. For cases where TDD is not required or is skipped, display TDD verified: not-required or TDD verified: skip:<reason>. yes can only be set when Red evidence in .claude/state/tdd-red-log/<task-id>.jsonl or literal failing test output can be confirmed.

Step 5: Calculate recommendation

Determine ship / wait / reject according to the "Recommendation Calculation Logic" above.

Step 6: Generate HTML

Call scripts/render-html.sh (Phase 65.1.1) with templates/html/accept.html.template:

bash scripts/render-html.sh \
  --template accept \
  --data "$CONTEXT_JSON" \
  --out "$HTML_OUT"

Step 7: Auto-open in browser

Reuse scripts/plan-brief-open.sh (the general-purpose OS dispatcher introduced in Phase 65.1.2):

bash scripts/plan-brief-open.sh "$HTML_OUT"

Note: The script name contains "plan-brief", but it is actually a kind-neutral OS browser open dispatcher. It was named this because it was introduced first in Phase 65.1.2. It is also reused for other purposes such as Layer 3 (final HTML pre-scan). When the BROWSER=true env is set (CI environment), opening is skipped and only the path is output via printf.

Step 8: Wait for user decision

Confirm whether to accept the ship / wait / reject recommendation or override it. Memory write after the decision is the responsibility of a separate skill (accept-record-decision.sh, Phase 65.2.3).

Failure Behavior

Related

• harness-plan-brief (Phase 65.1.2) — Counterpart skill for the planning stage. This skill reads back personal-preference.v1 from Plan Brief time, joining via user_request_hash
• scripts/accept-past-issues.sh (Phase 65.2.2) — Past issue pattern retrieval (read side)
• scripts/accept-record-decision.sh (Phase 65.2.3) — Approval memory write (acceptance-decision.v1)
• scripts/render-html.sh (Phase 65.1.1) — HTML template engine
• scripts/plan-brief-open.sh (Phase 65.1.2) — General-purpose OS browser dispatcher
• harness-progress skill (Phase 65.4.1) — Progress management skill (middle of the 3 surfaces)