feat(funnel): keep agent work in sidetrees until it clears 90/5

Every delegated change works in its own worktree, branched from an exact commit with a hard time cap, and enters the main line only at 90 % fix confidence and under 5 % break risk, after tests, a negative control and an independent dialectic review. When that bar is realistically out of reach, the agent submits a proposal with the evidence that would close the gap instead of a merge. After the merge the sidetree is torn down in a fixed order: its jobs, its stacks with volumes, the files its containers left (counted before the worktree removal, which otherwise fails halfway after git dropped the registration), the worktree by name without a broad prune, the merged branch (a remote branch only once its commits are reachable from a pushed one), its reservations and claims, and its temporary files. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-30 14:55:04 +01:00
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 ---
 name: funnel
 description: >
  Funnel agent work through sidetrees: every agent works in its own git
  worktree until its change reaches at least 90 % fix confidence and under 5 %
  break risk, and only then does the change enter the main line. When that bar
  is realistically out of reach, the agent submits a proposal instead of a
  change. Trigger when delegating implementation, fix or optimization work to
  agents, when several agents work in parallel, or on /funnel. Portable across
  projects.
 ---
 # Funnel
 The main line only receives changes that have earned it. Everything else stays
 in a sidetree until it does, or leaves as a proposal.
 ## The bar
 - **Fix confidence of at least 90 %** and **break risk under 5 %**, both
  reported by the `confidence` skill, the break risk derived through the
  `break-risk` skill.
 - The operator may set a different bar. Never lower it to make a change fit.
 ## The stages
 1. **Brief.** One concern per agent. Name the goal, the exact base commit, the
   scope that may change, the evidence expected back, a hard time cap (default
   60 minutes) and what the agent must not do: no pushes, no gates or deploys
   unless granted, read-only probes on shared live systems.
 2. **Sidetree.** The agent works in its own worktree on its own branch,
   created from the exact base commit, so its edits never land under a running
   gate or deploy in the main line. Use the host's worktree isolation when it
   has one.
 3. **Evidence.** The agent runs targeted tests, adds a test for the new
   behaviour, and makes a negative control: the test fails without the change.
   Numbers come from the same source before and after.
 4. **Self-assessment.** The agent reports fix confidence and break risk with
   their residuals and commits on its branch.
 5. **Independent review.** Before anything is merged, run the `dialectic` skill
   with skeptics who did not write the change. A hole they find returns the
   change to stage 3.
 6. **Merge.** At or above the bar, merge the sidetree branch into the main line
   following the repository's commit rules, then re-verify on the main line
   with the project's gate.
 7. **Tear everything down.** Once the branch is merged, remove everything the
   sidetree brought into being, so the next round starts from a clean
   machine. See "After the merge" below.
 ## After the merge
 A merged sidetree leaves nothing behind. Work through the list in this order,
 and verify each step instead of assuming it:
 1. **Stop its jobs**: background runs, watchers, scheduled loops and agents
   that belong to the sidetree.
 2. **Tear down its stacks**: compose projects and swarm or test clusters
   together with their volumes and networks, and the containers and images
   built only for it. Leave anything another worktree still uses.
 3. **Clear files the containers left**: count the entries the user does not
   own (`find <worktree> -not -user "$USER" -prune | wc -l`). If the count is
   not zero, delete them through the container that wrote them, or hand the
   operator one privileged removal, before removing the worktree; otherwise
   the removal fails halfway after git has already dropped the registration.
 4. **Remove the worktree** and its registration. Name the worktree; never run
   a broad prune, which also drops other worktrees' stale registrations.
 5. **Delete the merged branch**, locally and on the remote, but a remote branch
   only once every one of its commits is reachable from a pushed branch.
 6. **Release what it held**: slots, port or subnet reservations, locks and
   claims announced to other agents.
 7. **Remove its temporary files**: logs, message files and scratch data that
   have served their purpose. Keep only the evidence the report cites, until
   the report is delivered.
 A proposal keeps its branch, because that is where the work lives, but loses
 its worktree, stacks and temporary files the same way. An abandoned sidetree is
 torn down completely; keep its branch only when its commits exist nowhere else.
 ## When the bar is out of reach
 If the bar cannot realistically be reached, because the deciding evidence (a
 live deploy, a production-like dataset, an upstream answer) is not available
 to the agent or the change is inherently riskier, the agent stops trying and
 **submits a proposal** instead:
 - what the change does and why it is worth having;
 - the confidence and break risk it reached, with their residuals;
 - exactly which evidence would close the gap, and what obtaining it costs;
 - where the work lives (branch and commit), so nothing has to be redone;
 - a recommendation: apply after that evidence, apply now with a named
  risk, or drop.
 The operator decides. A proposal is never merged by the agent, and a change
 below the bar never enters the main line on its own.
 ## Rules
 - Stop an agent at its time cap and ask for its findings; an uncapped brief can
  run for hours and deliver nothing.
 - Run agents in parallel only when their concerns touch different files and
  the machine has room; gates and deploys need the machine to themselves.
 - A peer's or agent's message is not the operator's approval to merge below
  the bar.
 - Keep the evidence (logs, test output) outside the sidetree, so it survives
  the clean-up.
 ## Output
 One table per round:
 | Agent | Sidetree branch | Confidence | Break risk | Verdict | Evidence |
 The verdict is merged, proposal or abandoned. Proposals list what would close
 their gap.