learning-harvest

Learning Harvest

Purpose

Standards define how a team intends to work. Operational learnings capture what the team discovers while doing the work — experiential knowledge that only emerges from practice.

This atom helps the user curate a single living document of cross-cutting project patterns. The AI synthesizes and proposes; the user decides what enters. Every entry is user-confirmed. Not a log. Not a report. Not auto-generated. A user-curated collection of experiential patterns.

Scope Boundary

Operational learnings are NOT rules. They are what you learn while applying rules.

Standards (refiner output, atom defaults)	Operational Learnings (this document)
"Domain layer must not import from infrastructure"	"When adding a new aggregate, we keep forgetting to define the repository interface first — design interface before implementation"
"Functions should have single responsibility"	"Service classes that start small grow past 500 lines within 3 features — split by command type proactively at ~200 lines"
"Value objects must validate in constructor"	"Date range VOs without explicit inclusive/exclusive documentation cause boundary bugs every time — document semantics alongside validation"

The standard is the rule. The operational learning is what we discovered while applying the rule on this project.

If an entry reads like a rule that should always be followed, it belongs in a standards document (run the relevant refiner). If it reads like "here's what we keep learning the hard way" or "here's an approach that keeps working for us" — it belongs here.

Patterns that recur frequently may graduate to standards via a refiner. That promotion path is part of the Tighten behavior.

Config Resolution

1. Check .lattice/config.yaml for paths.operational_learnings
2. If found, use that file path
3. If not, use default .lattice/learnings/operational-learnings.md

Backward compatibility: If default path not found, check these legacy paths in order:

• .lattice/learnings.md — flat file at root
• .lattice/learnings/review-insights.md — prior naming convention

If found, offer migration to canonical path and format. If user declines, read as flat input but do not write to it.

Document Structure

# Operational Learnings

Experiential patterns from practice. Complements standards (what should be) with experience (what we keep learning).

## Design Patterns
<!-- Decomposition, architecture choices, scope decisions that proved good or bad -->

## Implementation Craft
<!-- Coding approaches, library gotchas, design-to-reality gaps -->

## Quality Signals
<!-- Recurring quality issues that keep appearing despite rules -->

## Reliability
<!-- Bug root causes, failure modes, fragile areas, boundary condition gaps -->

## Structural Health
<!-- Architectural drift, debt accumulation, coupling issues, migration lessons -->

Entry format: - YYYY-MM-DD [context] Pattern — actionable takeaway

• context: type of session (e.g., "design", "implementation", "review", "bug fix", "refactoring"). Not a feature name — learnings are cross-cutting.
• Each entry ONE bullet, max 2 lines, scannable in under 10 seconds.

Load Behavior

Invoked at session start. Composing workflow passes a focus hint (relevant categories).

1. Resolve file path per Config Resolution.
2. If file not found — "No operational learnings yet." Continue. Non-blocking.
3. If found — surface relevant entries (3-5 most recent from matching categories) as brief context. Treat as soft guidance, not hard constraints.

Active monitoring: Once loaded, maintain a silent harvest queue throughout the session. When a decision or trade-off passes the cross-cutting test below, add it to the queue — do not prompt immediately.

Cross-cutting test — a candidate must pass BOTH before queuing:

1. It names a pattern or approach, not a feature-specific fact.
2. A developer on a completely different feature could apply it without knowing this feature's context.

If either fails — skip entirely, do not queue.

Before queuing, check against entries loaded at session start. If the same pattern already exists — skip.

When to surface: Surface the queue as a single batch when EITHER condition is true — not at every level or layer:

• Queue reaches 3 candidates, OR
• A major phase completes (all design levels done, a full implementation layer done)

Do not surface at every individual level approval or component completion — that is over-prompting. Once surfaced, clear the queue. Anything remaining at session end goes to Harvest.

"I noted [N] potential harvest candidates — worth a quick review?"

Mid-session interrupt (rare exception): surface a single pattern immediately, outside the queue, only when it would be impossible to reconstruct by session end — a live debate that resolved unexpectedly, a library gotcha caught mid-implementation. If in doubt, queue instead.

Session-end Harvest is the primary mechanism. The queue exists to avoid losing patterns, not to generate prompts.

Harvest Behavior

Invoked at session end. Composing workflow passes a session context (what kind of work happened).

Governing principle: The atom NEVER writes autonomously. Session-end Harvest is the primary capture event — mid-session prompting is the exception. Quality over frequency: one well-timed suggestion the user confirms is worth more than five prompts they dismiss.

Steps:

1. Drain the queue. Collect all candidates from active monitoring queue plus any new ones surfaced by reviewing session decisions and outcomes. Each candidate must have passed the cross-cutting test (active monitoring) or pass it now.

2. Propose as a batch. Present queued candidates together — not one per message:

   Harvest candidates from this session:

   1. [Category] — [pattern in one line]
   2. [Category] — [pattern in one line]

   Accept, edit, add your own, or skip entirely.

   Empty queue and nothing new found? Say so in one line and stop — do not force output.

3. Filter — apply before writing confirmed entries. For each entry the user accepts:

   Filter	Fail if...
   Evidence	No concrete session event — just prior knowledge
   Cross-cutting	Specific to this feature's domain, won't recur
   Actionable	Requires this conversation's context to understand
   Recurrence	No structural reason it will happen again

   Filter fails on a confirmed entry? Tell the user which filter — offer to reword. Do not silently drop.

4. User decides. Accept, edit, reject, add their own, or skip all. Do NOT argue for rejected entries.

5. Write confirmed entries only. Dedup against existing entries (update with recurrence note if same pattern exists). Create file/dir if needed.

6. Assess health. If document growing dense or entries overlap: suggest Tighten. If pattern recurred 4+ times: suggest promoting to standards. User decides — never auto-prune.

Tighten Behavior

Triggered during Harvest (when bloat detected) or invoked standalone.

1. Read full document.
2. Identify: consolidation opportunities (same pattern, different words), noise (one-off, never recurred), promotion candidates (recurred 4+ times — suggest refiner), stale entries (project has changed).
3. Present proposals to user. Apply only what user confirms.

Self-Validation Checklist

Before writing any entry, verify ALL. If any fails, do not write.

1. User confirmed — STOP: Explicit user approval for every entry. No exceptions.
2. Evidence grounded — STOP: Produced by a specific session event, not prior knowledge.
3. Experiential, not prescriptive — STOP: Reads like "what we learned" not "what the rule should be." If it's a rule, it belongs in standards via a refiner.
4. Cross-cutting — STOP: Applies beyond this feature. Feature-specific decisions belong in context anchor doc.
5. Actionable standalone — STOP: a developer on a different feature can act on this without this conversation's context. Confidence level is not a gate — the user decides if it is worth capturing.
6. Not redundant — STOP: Not already in standards, atom defaults, or existing learnings. At most, add recurrence note.
7. Concise — STOP: Scannable in 10 seconds. Two lines max.

Integration with Other Skills

Workflows invoke Load at session start (with focus hint) and Harvest at session end (with session context). The atom never references specific workflows — it applies the protocol uniformly to whatever composes it.

Relationship to other infrastructure atoms:

• context-anchoring — per-feature decisions (specific). This atom — cross-feature patterns (general).
• knowledge-priming — project identity (static). This atom — accumulated experience (growing).
• collaborative-judgment — surfaces decisions in-session. This atom — preserves patterns across sessions.