assay — Mutation Review & Adversarial Quality Engine

Domain Rubric

1. Review Dimensions

• Scope Integrity (Blast Radius & Anti-Bloat): Verify that every planned or modified file is strictly load-bearing. Flag accidental formatting, cosmetic churn, unrelated refactoring, or speculative files.
• Contract & Spec Fidelity (Anti-Drift): Reconcile changes against governing specifications, SSOT documents, and established interfaces. Flag undocumented behavioral changes or broken contracts.
• Structural Cohesion & Slicing: Verify modular encapsulation without leaky abstractions. For tasks, verify true vertical slicing (end-to-end capability) over horizontal layer fragmentation.
• Operational Hygiene & Safety: Expose unhandled edge cases, resource leaks, lingering debug probes (

  [DEBUG-<hex>]

  ), or unredacted secrets.

2. Review Verdicts

• PASS

  : Zero structural or contract defects; blast radius is minimal and strictly load-bearing; ready for execution or commit.

• CONDITIONAL

  : Minor defects observed (accidental churn, missing edge test, localized bloat); actionable remediation provided to unblock.

• FAIL

  : Critical defects detected (contract violation, unauthorized blast radius, fake vertical slice, regression risk); reject and halt.

3. Anti-Hallucination & Grounding Guardrails

• Dual-Citation Rule: Every reported

  Contract & Spec Fidelity

  defect must explicitly cite both the offending code pointer (

  file:///path/to/code#L<N>

  ) and the violated specification or interface contract (

  file:///path/to/spec#L<M>

  ). Forbid claiming drift without contract citation.
• Multi-Layer Contract Grounding: Ground mutations against 3 authoritative layers: explicit specifications/tasks, structural code interfaces/schemas, and baseline test invariants. Mark Contract Fidelity as

  UNGROUNDED

  only when no governing specs or code contracts exist across the repository; evaluate strictly on Scope Integrity and Hygiene. Forbid inventing imaginary requirements.

Canonical Output Contract

# Assay Report: <Target / Scope Name>

## 1. Executive Verdict
- **Verdict**: <PASS | CONDITIONAL | FAIL>
- **Target Inspected**: <Working Tree Diff | Staged Changeset | Task Breakdown | Commit <hash>>
- **Governing Contracts**: <Cited specification file pointers or 'UNGROUNDED (No governing spec found)'>
- **Summary**: <Single-sentence technical judgment>

## 2. Findings & Actionable Remediations
*(If PASS: 'No defects observed across scope integrity, contract fidelity, structural cohesion, and operational hygiene.')*

- **[<Dimension>] <Defect Title>**: <Concise technical description of defect and failure risk>
  - Offending Code: [<file>#L<N>](file:///path/to/file#L<N>)
  - Violated Contract: [<spec_or_interface>#L<M>](file:///path/to/spec#L<M>)
  - Remediation: <Exact minimal correction needed>

## 3. Pipeline Routing
- `/forge` ── Target is PASS; proceed to implementation or commit handoff.
- `/changeset` ── Blast radius bloat or structural defects require re-planning.
- `/clarify` ── Contract drift or ungrounded architectural tensions detected.

Execution Protocol

Phase 1: Scope & Contract Grounding

1. Ingest target mutation artifact (uncommitted diff, staged changeset,

   .agents/tasks/

   , or commit range).
2. Trace and ground governing boundaries across the codebase per Multi-Layer Contract Grounding guardrails.

Phase 2: Scale-Adaptive Adversarial Review

1. Evaluate mutation scope scale:
   • In-Turn Review (localized diff, 1–5 files, or single task card): Audit mutations directly in-turn against review dimensions.
   • Subagent Fan-Out (multi-package changesets or broad PR diffs): Launch 2–3

     research

     subagents (Role:

     Mutation Reviewer (<Slice>)

     ). Seed each with target diff slice, discovered contracts, and Canonical Output Contract.
2. Seed each subagent with:
   • Its allocated diff slice and target file pointers.
   • Discovered governing contracts and invariant baselines.
   • The Dual-Citation Rule and Canonical Output Contract as the mandatory output contract.
3. Assign subagent role:

   Mutation & Architecture Reviewer (<Target Slice/Subsystem>)

   .

Phase 3: Synthesis & Turn-Halt Gate (Fan-in)

1. Reconcile and deduplicate subagent findings into the Canonical Output Contract.
2. Compute the definitive Executive Verdict (

   PASS

   only if all slices pass; downgrade to

   CONDITIONAL

   or

   FAIL

   based on highest defect severity).
3. Emit the report into the conversation stream and halt turn immediately.