Ralph Specum Triage

Ralph Specum Triage

You are a coordinator, not a triage analyst -- delegate decomposition work to a triage-analyst sub-agent.

Contract

• Epic data lives under specs/_epics/<epic-name>/
• Track the active epic in specs/.current-epic
• Do not guess on ambiguous epic or spec names
• Triage produces a plan for multiple specs. It does not implement them

Action

1. Parse exact --quick and exact --interactive tokens before routing. Reject both together, -q, variants, and natural-language substitutes.
2. Check specs/.current-epic. If an active epic exists, load its .epic-state.json as STATE and normalize mode before any possible question. With exact --quick, resume the matching active epic without prompting; an explicit different epic must include its goal. In interactive mode, summarize status and offer resume, details, or a new epic.
3. Validate the resolved epic name against ^[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*$ before constructing any path. Reject invalid names. If specs/_epics/<epic-name>/.epic-state.json already exists, reuse and resume it without replacing state or progress. If the directory exists without a valid state, stop and require a different name or an explicit user-authorized reset. Only a missing directory may be initialized.
4. Resolve or create only the epic directory, .progress.md, and .epic-state.json. Serialize the name and goal through a JSON encoder such as jq --arg. Use .epic-state.json as STATE for every phase gate command with phase triage. Use .epic-state.json as STATE for every writer. After that, do not require .ralph-state.json. Create no research.md, epic.md, or generated plan.md before approval.
5. For a new epic, run scripts/phase_gate.py mode STATE with the exact parsed mode flag, then register specs/.current-epic before discovery. Exact quick mode asks no setup question; missing required name or goal is an input error.
6. Resolve the output destination from explicit input and configuration. In exact quick mode, use local Spec files as the deterministic default and ask nothing. Only interactive mode may ask one administrative destination question when the destination remains ambiguous; that answer never satisfies the interview gate.
7. Ensure skill discovery pass 1 exists for the epic goal. Collect plugin, project .agents/skills, project .claude/skills, and current harness catalog entries. Select explicitly named skills and record shadowed duplicates.
8. Load skills/interview-framework-codex/SKILL.md, its required algorithm and domain-modeling references, and every selected domain contract in both interactive and quick mode. In interactive mode, follow the algorithm for critical decomposition boundaries, stable cross-spec contracts, dependency choices, and sequencing risks. Ask no storage, naming, branch, or discoverable question.
9. In interactive mode, require explicit approve and delegate; in exact quick mode, record bypassed_quick. In both modes, run phase_gate.py check-delegation with phase triage and the current loaded-manifest identity before every artifact-producing child. Apply the shared hard-transition invariant before every triage artifact writer. A failed check-delegation in either mode stops this invocation before phase transition, child dispatch, or target-artifact write; after a normal-mode failure, only the next explicit invocation creates a fresh manifest/interview identity. After an exact --quick delegation failure, the next explicit invocation reruns discovery, records a fresh phaseSkillLoad and interview identity, and does not reuse a terminal bypassed_quick interview or its discovery revision. Only a matching in-progress collecting or awaiting_confirmation interview is resumable. Exact --quick retains its existing question-and-approval bypass and discovery, manifest, delegation, and writer checks.
10. Read-only exploration children may inspect seams, constraints, and existing boundaries, but they write no epic artifact.
11. Keep the existing epic-state, read-only exploration, and multiwriter flow, plus each child packet, identity tuple, and receipt behavior, unchanged. Use separate unique gated writer dispatches as needed:

• a triage research writer for research.md
• a triage plan writer for epic.md and generated spec plan.md files
• a fresh revision writer for every artifact-review revision Pass the absolute gate helper path, epic state path, identity tuple, unique teammate dispatch identity, and verbatim phaseSkillLoad manifest to each writer. Each writer records its manifest loads and passes check-agent-write with its unique identity before its first filesystem artifact write.

12. The coordinator does not assemble, format, or revise artifact content. Validate the gated writer outputs and persist .epic-state.json with each spec, its status, dependencies, and gate receipts.
13. Keep specs/.current-epic set to the active epic name.
14. Show the next unblocked spec and route back to $ralph-specum-start for per-spec execution.

Output Shape

The result should make it clear:

• what belongs in each spec
• which specs can start now
• which specs are blocked by dependencies
• what contracts must stay stable across specs