Development record
A planning interview run in a plain terminal on the API-key runner ended at its first question on 2026-11-01. The interviewer wrote a sound question, but abcd's question check refused it at 39 rows against a 32-row limit, and the refusal was treated as the runner's invalid answer: with no host fallback in a terminal the interview stopped, printing 'runner: claude invalid for planning-interviewer ... the contract's validator refused its answer: the question breaks 1 rule(s): tab 1, whole tab (rows)'. The person was left with an internal message and no next step. The brief tells the role 'abcd refuses a receipt ... whose question breaks a rule below, and the interview stops', and only a refused done outcome is ever handed back for another turn. A host session's own question check shows an over-long question with a warning and has the agent redraft refused ones silently, so the terminal route is stricter than the host route for the one rule a model cannot count exactly. The product thinker ruled the same day (dcn-2611011402510346) that an interview must never stop on a question abcd's check refuses, and that anything which does end an interview tells the person in plain words what happened and what to do.
A planning interview run in a plain terminal on the API-key runner ended at its first question on 2026-11-01. The interviewer wrote a sound question, but abcd's question check refused it at 39 rows against a 32-row limit, and the refusal was treated as the runner's invalid answer: with no host fallback in a terminal the interview stopped, printing 'runner: claude invalid for planning-interviewer ... the contract's validator refused its answer: the question breaks 1 rule(s): tab 1, whole tab (rows)'. The person was left with an internal message and no next step. The brief tells the role 'abcd refuses a receipt ... whose question breaks a rule below, and the interview stops', and only a refused done outcome is ever handed back for another turn. A host session's own question check shows an over-long question with a warning and has the agent redraft refused ones silently, so the terminal route is stricter than the host route for the one rule a model cannot count exactly. The product thinker ruled the same day (dcn-2611011402510346) that an interview must never stop on a question abcd's check refuses, and that anything which does end an interview tells the person in plain words what happened and what to do.
2026-11-01: the product thinker ruled the bound and the end state (dcn-2611012123240576): redrafts are bounded by a per-repository setting, three by default, and at the bound abcd shows the question as it stands, repaired mechanically where it can be, instead of ending the interview.
2026-11-01, second occurrence: the product thinker retried a planning interview of itd-2610262140595217 at 21:45 on the main key from a plain terminal, and it ended before any question was shown, the check refusing the first question at 39 rows against 32 ("question text 23, options 8"), with the same internal message. The terminal route has now failed both of the product thinker's attempts on the key on this one rule.
2026-11-02: lowered from major to minor by the product thinker's ruling (dcn-2611020715491928), so the build loop may take the fix on the API-key route; the ruling, not the defect's reach, sets the rating.
Grounds
- pursued: a plain-terminal interview whose interviewer writes a question over the rows limit, or one breaking another asking rule, goes on instead of ending with the runner's invalid-answer message; the new interview tests (watched failing on the base tree with that exact message) and make preflight show it, and a redraft path that drew a refused question, recorded it as a fallback, or showed an internal finding to the person would show it wrong.
Frontmatter
| id | iss-2611011402496418 |
|---|---|
| type | issue |
| lifecycle | resolved |
| severity | minor |
.abcd/work/issues/resolved/iss-2611011402496418-a-planning-interview-run-in-a-plain.md
open on GitHub ↗ · commit history ↗
mentions6
- dcn-26110114025103462026-11-01 — The product thinker ruled on 2026-11-01 that an interview must never stop on a question abcd's check refuses: stopping breaks the flow and leaves the person, product thinker or technical facilitator, not knowing what to do next. A refused question is handed back for the interviewer to redraft, and anything that does end an interview tells the person in plain words what happened and what to do. The ruling reverses the written interview's stop-on-refusal behaviour (the brief line 'the interview stops' in internal/core/interview/written.go), and the fix is tracked by iss-2611011402496418, the terminal route's issue.
- dcn-26110121232405762026-11-01 — The product thinker ruled on 2026-11-01 how a terminal interview treats a question abcd's check refuses: it is handed back to the interviewer to redraft, up to a bound each repository may configure, three by default; once the bound is reached abcd shows the question as it stands, repairing what it can mechanically, rather than ending the interview. The rows limit becomes a warning on the terminal route too, drawing the question as the host's question check already does; today the terminal route refuses on it. This settles the question path of iss-2611011402496418's remedy; a done outcome still refused at the bound ends under dcn-2611011402510346's rule that any end tells the person what happened and what to do.
- dcn-26110207154919282026-11-02 — The product thinker ruled on the morning of 2026-11-02, in an interview another session relayed and one question put here: the test stages run from one fixed check directory per repository, ~/.abcd.noindex/tests/<root-sha>/, used by one check at a time, so results carry over between worktrees and criterion 1 of itd-2611011325421304 holds for tests that read the tree; a key's budget caps count the whole key, every session on that key pauses together at a cap, and spend never passes it, which replaces the 2026-11-01 reading in dcn-2611012123470476 that a limit stops only the session that hit it; what happens at a cap is a per-repository setting, pausing by default, with moving to a second key the person named for that purpose as the alternative and the subscription never; the terminal interview fix iss-2611011402496418 is lowered to minor so the build loop takes it on the API key, a ruling the product thinker gave directly to the session that records it, in answer to a question it put, which that session's transcript in the person's transcript store carries; and a command agents cannot run that admits one named issue above minor to the build loop is to be built next (iss-2611020305525945). The same morning they confirmed the edited wording of itd-2611011325421304's press release, that a test declared as reading what abcd cannot see always runs, in place of the wording confirmed at its interview.
- iss-2609301519558538Deferred, owed to a person: the live proof of the command-line runner (itd-2609201916056194). Phase 1 and 2 prove every criterion on fake harness binaries only; no ruling admits a live check of the runner (ruling L names the site setup, the API adapter and the decision adapter; H8 lists the three paid-service checks and itd-6's RepoPrompt run), so the intent cannot close. What a person must run: (1) the intent's first proof, criterion 7 live: a ruthless review of a real lane routed roles.ruthless-reviewer.runner=opencode, from a lane the host drives, its return recorded beside a host-run review's and differing only in the route; (2) the claude runner under --bare with --permission-mode dontAsk and --allowedTools, confirming a nested claude does not refuse under an inherited CLAUDECODE, and noting that the headless page (read 2026-09-30) says bare mode never reads OAuth or the keychain, so the claude runner needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, a paid API key rather than the person's subscription; (3) opencode run --format json --pure: the event shape (the CLI page does not document it; the adapter assumes step_start/text/step_finish with a sessionID and a part) and whether run mode prompts for a permission, which the timeout bounds and records as a fallback.
- iss-2611020305525945abcd build refused the terminal interview fix (iss-2611011402496418) at 03:05 on 2026-11-02: 'is handback under adr-2609291342092738 (severity): severity major is above the drain's (nitpick, minor); remedy: the issue is a person's'. The product thinker had directed that fix the evening before and ruled that agent work runs on the API key, but the only route for a major issue is a host session, which bills the subscription the person asked to spare. Nothing lets a person admit one issue they have decided on to the loop, so a directed major fix waits for the person or runs on the route they ruled out.
- itd-2610262140595217abcd records how each preflight on a machine behaved