Summary
A recent RLCR session exited via circuit-breaker stagnation at round 4 of 42 after 3 consecutive rounds of the reviewer re-raising the same structural finding against a byte-locked plan artifact that the harness physically forbids editing in-loop. The code-level loop worked well (rounds 0-3 closed real bugs). The structural-dispute loop did not: a contract mismatch between the reviewer's "deferred = incomplete" prompt and the harness's plan byte-lock rule produced 3 rounds of unactionable re-raise before the circuit breaker fired.
Fully sanitized analysis — no project-specific identifiers, paths, code, or domain terms.
7 suggestions
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Reviewer-prompt awareness of harness contracts: extend review-prompt schema with a "harness-locked artifacts" section and a "terminal-action verdict" the reviewer must use when the only close path is harness-external.
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Explicit exit-route signals: add a "terminal-dispute" verdict to both the implementer's update-request channel and the reviewer's verdict enum, so the loop can exit at round N+1 when both parties classify the dispute as structural.
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Pre-flight plan-prose audit: scan the tracked plan document at session start for placeholders that presuppose in-loop plan edits; fail-fast or stage a one-shot pre-loop amendment.
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Distinguish stagnation-as-failure from stagnation-as-playbook: when the implementer cites a canonical lesson in two consecutive rounds naming the expected exit-route, surface "playbook-execution" as a signal separate from "regression".
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Empirical-blocker artifact as first-class deliverable: add a dedicated attempt-and-revert round-contract template; require the rejection transcript verbatim; recognize it as a closing artifact for structural-dispute findings.
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Cap reviewer's authority to re-raise identical findings: after N consecutive rounds with the same evidence locator, force the reviewer to choose escalate / revise / accept rather than restate.
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Reviewer-side memory of prior implementer rebuttals: require the reviewer to explicitly mark each prior structured update-request as accepted / refuted (with new reasoning) / escalated, before raising the same finding again.
Context for prioritization
The core failure mode is two coexisting hard contracts that cannot both hold in the same in-loop step: the reviewer's prompt classifies "deferred = incomplete", while the harness classifies "the artifact under review is byte-locked at session-start". Any finding whose only close path edits the locked artifact is structurally unclosable in-loop. Suggestions 1, 2, 6, 7 directly add the missing vocabulary; 3 pre-empts the pattern at session start; 4 stops conflating playbook execution with regression; 5 turns the empirical-blocker side-product into a standardized deliverable.
Generated from a sanitized methodology-analysis report. Happy to share the full report (still sanitized) if useful for prioritization.
Summary
A recent RLCR session exited via circuit-breaker stagnation at round 4 of 42 after 3 consecutive rounds of the reviewer re-raising the same structural finding against a byte-locked plan artifact that the harness physically forbids editing in-loop. The code-level loop worked well (rounds 0-3 closed real bugs). The structural-dispute loop did not: a contract mismatch between the reviewer's "deferred = incomplete" prompt and the harness's plan byte-lock rule produced 3 rounds of unactionable re-raise before the circuit breaker fired.
Fully sanitized analysis — no project-specific identifiers, paths, code, or domain terms.
7 suggestions
Reviewer-prompt awareness of harness contracts: extend review-prompt schema with a "harness-locked artifacts" section and a "terminal-action verdict" the reviewer must use when the only close path is harness-external.
Explicit exit-route signals: add a "terminal-dispute" verdict to both the implementer's update-request channel and the reviewer's verdict enum, so the loop can exit at round N+1 when both parties classify the dispute as structural.
Pre-flight plan-prose audit: scan the tracked plan document at session start for placeholders that presuppose in-loop plan edits; fail-fast or stage a one-shot pre-loop amendment.
Distinguish stagnation-as-failure from stagnation-as-playbook: when the implementer cites a canonical lesson in two consecutive rounds naming the expected exit-route, surface "playbook-execution" as a signal separate from "regression".
Empirical-blocker artifact as first-class deliverable: add a dedicated attempt-and-revert round-contract template; require the rejection transcript verbatim; recognize it as a closing artifact for structural-dispute findings.
Cap reviewer's authority to re-raise identical findings: after N consecutive rounds with the same evidence locator, force the reviewer to choose escalate / revise / accept rather than restate.
Reviewer-side memory of prior implementer rebuttals: require the reviewer to explicitly mark each prior structured update-request as accepted / refuted (with new reasoning) / escalated, before raising the same finding again.
Context for prioritization
The core failure mode is two coexisting hard contracts that cannot both hold in the same in-loop step: the reviewer's prompt classifies "deferred = incomplete", while the harness classifies "the artifact under review is byte-locked at session-start". Any finding whose only close path edits the locked artifact is structurally unclosable in-loop. Suggestions 1, 2, 6, 7 directly add the missing vocabulary; 3 pre-empts the pattern at session start; 4 stops conflating playbook execution with regression; 5 turns the empirical-blocker side-product into a standardized deliverable.
Generated from a sanitized methodology-analysis report. Happy to share the full report (still sanitized) if useful for prioritization.