One seam for every stage edge
No skill assembles journal events or invents an idempotency key. Every boundary goes through
stage-boundary.mjs, which validates the transition, digests the artifact, links the
previous event, takes an append lock and returns a receipt.
Four verbs
Each stage runs the same edge commands, so the journal reads the same way whichever stage wrote it.
enter
accept
exit
return
How an attempt ends
An attempt opens at stage.entered and closes exactly once. Overlapping open attempts are illegal.
advanced
superseded
abandoned
workstream-closed
Hiccups have context
Sometimes something unexpected surfaces in a later stage and the work has to return to an earlier
one to adjust. This is expected, and it often points to an opportunity for improvement. So the
owner, the stages involved, the fix and the evidence are captured for learning.
History is immutable
Accepted artifacts and completed attempts stay as they were, even when later evidence forces a
return. A retry that would change history fails; an idempotent retry returns the original receipt.
Feedback is private
Each boundary asks one optional question about how the stage went. The answer lands in the
workstream's feedback/ folder. Only its coverage status ever reaches the journal, and a
declined answer never blocks the work.
Host-neutral by construction
Lifecycle writes depend on no host and no external service. Where a skill would rather ask a
structured question, it uses the host's facility if there is one and plain text if there is not —
the wording and the choices never change with the host.