Sandcastle re-invokes agents up to maxIterations even when the work is
already done — the decomposer was looping 4x re-writing the same epic
on every dispatch. Two halves to the fix:
- Pass completionSignal: "<promise>COMPLETE</promise>" explicitly on
all three run() calls (decompose, implementer, reviewer). Makes the
contract visible alongside maxIterations instead of relying on
sandcastle's default.
- Append a "Signal completion (required)" section to each prompt
telling the agent to emit the literal marker as its final line when
the work is genuinely done, plus a "do NOT emit if..." list to
discourage premature signaling.
The user surfaced that the binder-wrap-helper epic's stories
decomposed into horizontal sub-steps (read 3 files → write helper
→ write test → export → typecheck → coverage), not vertical
slices. Per the glossary's slice = task = PR = commit rule, every
checkbox should land as one green commit.
.sandcastle/decomposer.prompt.md:
- New "The slice rule (non-negotiable)" section near the top
defining the three constraints every task must satisfy: one
green commit; exercises a layer; independently meaningful.
- New "Tasks that are FORBIDDEN" list naming the anti-patterns
the previous output exhibited (read a file as a task; write
test without impl; standalone gate runs; standalone export;
sub-step decomposition of a single slice).
- New "Tasks that are CORRECT" list with examples drawn from
this codebase (gen invocation, full use-case slice, per-feature
binder migration, audit emission, bindAll wiring).
- New paragraph on "Manifest-first ordering INSIDE a task" —
the 4-step ordering (manifest → contracts → red test → green
impl) is what the implementer does within one task, not a
multi-checkbox decomposition.
- Constraints section gains two new bullets:
* Prefer FEWER but FATTER tasks (one per vertical slice)
over MANY thinner sub-steps
* Self-check: imagine the commit each checkbox produces;
do all gates pass on that commit alone?
.sandcastle/reviewer.prompt.md:
- New check #8 "Slice discipline" rejecting:
* Multi-commit diffs where any intermediate commit has red
gates
* Sub-step shape that should have been separate tasks
* Incomplete slices (use case w/o DI binding, manifest
publish w/o publish site, controller w/o router wiring)
.gitignore: adds `.pnpm-store/` so a misconfigured pnpm install
that places the store inside the project doesn't stage thousands
of cache files.
The existing binder-wrap-helper stories were decomposed under the
old (unconstrained) prompt and need re-decomposing under the new
rule. That's a separate action — this commit fixes the prompts;
the existing epic stays as-is until you re-decompose.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
