workflow-retrospective

Workflow Retrospective

Observe and improve the SDD workflow process itself, not the application code.

Invocation

Codex:

Use the workflow-retrospective skill for specs/<feature>

Claude Code:

/sdd-quality-loop:workflow-retrospective specs/<feature>

Metrics Collection (read-only)

Read the following sources; do not modify them:

• reports/implementation/ — one report per task cycle
• reports/quality-gate/ — one report per quality-gate run
• docs/review-tickets/ — all YAML tickets for the feature
• git log --oneline — commit history scoped to the feature path

For each task derive:

• QG Cycles — count of quality-gate reports for that task
• Blocked Count — count of Blocked decisions across those reports
• Tickets — count of review tickets by severity (critical, major, minor)
• Auto-fixed — count of tickets where auto_fix_allowed: true and status: resolved
• Outcome — final task status (Done or still open)

Output

Generate reports/retrospective/<timestamp>.md from templates/retrospective-report.template.md. Fill every section; do not leave template placeholders unfilled.

Improvement Loop

1. Identify friction. Flag patterns that recur across at least two tasks:

   • Same type of review ticket appears repeatedly.
   • A phase produces Blocked more than once.
   • Auto-fix rate drops below 50 % for a ticket type.

2. Draft a WFI. For each identified friction, create docs/workflow-improvements/WFI-NNN.md from templates/workflow-improvement.template.md with status: Draft. Increment NNN from the highest existing WFI number (start at 001 if none exist). If the repository also runs an automated self-improvement routine (e.g. it has .github/self-improvement-prompt.md), check open issues labeled self-improvement first; if one covers the same theme, reference its issue number in the WFI instead of duplicating the work.

3. Await human Approved. Do not apply any improvement until a human sets the WFI status to Approved. Record the pending WFI references in the retrospective report under "Proposed Improvements".

4. Apply approved improvements. Modify only project-side workflow files:

   • AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md in the project root
   • specs/ template files or task-splitting guidelines
   • Task granularity guidance documents

   Do not modify installed plugin files (skills, references, templates inside plugins/).

   Always include the WFI ID (WFI-NNN) in the commit message and any PR that applies an approved improvement. Automated maintenance routines treat WFI--referenced changes as protected and will not revert them; changes without the marker lose that protection.

5. Verify effect. After the next task cycle completes, re-run metrics collection and append a Result section to the WFI document. Compare with the previous retrospective to confirm the friction decreased.

Sudo Mode

A valid SDD_SUDO flag does not bypass WFI approval. Setting a WFI status to Approved changes the SDD workflow itself (governance), so it remains a human-only action even under sudo: continue to await human Approved before applying any improvement. The WFI records status as an inline Status: <value> field; a hook guard denies any agent edit introducing Status: Approved in a docs/workflow-improvements/WFI-*.md file, and is never bypassed by sudo. Read-only metrics collection runs as normal. See plugins/sdd-quality-loop/references/sudo-mode-policy.md.

Boundaries

• Do not modify application code.
• Do not change task status fields.
• Do not commit or push unless the human explicitly requests it.
• Do not create, resolve, or modify review tickets.
• Do not invoke quality-gate or fix-by-review-ticket.