/validation — Full Validation Phase Orchestrator
YOU MUST EXECUTE THIS WORKFLOW. Do not just describe it.
Loop position: moves 6 (slice acceptance) + bead acceptance roll-up of the operating loop. Consumes wave outputs; produces a slice-validation roll-up: every Given/When/Then from the intent issue must map to a passing test. Activity logs do not close beads.
Strict Delegation Contract (default)
Validation delegates to /vibe, /post-mortem, /retro, and /forge (plus lifecycle skills /test, /deps, /review, /perf) via Skill(skill="<name>", ...) calls — separate tool invocations. Strict delegation is the default.
Anti-pattern to reject: spawning judges via Agent() in place of /vibe, inlining post-mortem analysis, skipping /forge. See ../shared/references/strict-delegation-contract.md for the full contract and supported compression escapes (--quick, --no-retro, --no-forge, --no-lifecycle, --no-behavioral, --allow-critical-deps).
See docs/learnings/orchestrator-compression-anti-pattern.md for the live compression signature.
See references/isolation-contract.md for the four-lever model and the compression patterns scripts/check-skill-isolation.sh flags in phase-skill SKILL.md bodies. See references/best-practices.md for the lifecycle principle + anti-pattern citation table.
Validation owns the validate_acceptance port in the
Intent-to-Loop Hexagon.
The roll-up must preserve bounded context, context packet, guard adapters, done
state, and fresh proof for each accepted scenario. Apply the
Completion-Claim Kernel
before accepting DONE/closed/green claims.
Execution
Run the DAG in references/dag.md — STEP 1 (vibe) → 1.5 (four-surface closure) → 1.6 (test pyramid) → 1.6b (validation-lane budget guard) → 1.7 (lifecycle: test/deps/review/perf) → 1.8 (behavioral) → 2 (post-mortem) → 3 (retro) → 4 (forge) → 5 (phase summary), no stopping between steps. That file owns the executable workflow, gate detail, blocking conditions, phase summary format, phase budgets, and the expensive-command policy.
Flags
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--complexity=<level> | auto | Force complexity level (fast / standard / full). Matches /rpi and /discovery syntax. |
--interactive | off | Human gates in validation report review (before writing summary). Does NOT override /vibe council autonomy. |
--no-lifecycle | off | Skip ALL lifecycle checks in STEP 1.7 (test, deps, review, perf) |
--lifecycle=<tier> | matches complexity | Controls which lifecycle skills fire: minimal (test only), standard (+deps, +review), full (+perf) |
--no-retro | off | Skip retro step only |
--no-forge | off | Skip forge step only |
--no-budget | off | Disable phase time budgets |
--strict-surfaces | off | Make all 4 surface failures blocking (FAIL instead of WARN). Passed automatically by /rpi --quality. |
--allow-critical-deps | off | Allow shipping with CVSS >= 9.0 vulnerabilities (acknowledged risk acceptance) |
See references/flags.md for flag interactions, precedence, and combined-flag examples.
Expensive Command Policy
Routine validation is targeted by default. Broad proof commands such as
go test -race, go test -shuffle, go test -count=N with N > 1, eval
runners, retrieval bench, headless runtime smoke, and release gates require
explicit operator/release/acceptance-criteria context. If one is run, record the
reason and timeout in the phase summary.
When validating release-bound work, see references/release-readiness-gates.md for the additional gates that must pass before shipping.
Quick Start
/validation ag-5k2 # validate epic with full close-out
/validation # validate recent work (no epic)
/validation --complexity=full ag-5k2 # force full council ceremony
/validation --no-retro ag-5k2 # skip retro only
/validation --no-forge ag-5k2 # skip forge only
Output Specification
Format: markdown summary to stdout + on-disk artifacts. Files written: .agents/rpi/phase-3-summary-YYYY-MM-DD-validation.md (phase summary), .agents/post-mortems/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md, .agents/learnings/<slug>.md, .agents/findings/registry.jsonl (appended), .agents/ratchet/state.json. Exit signal: completion marker — see below.
Completion Markers
<promise>DONE</promise> # Validation passed, learnings captured
<promise>FAIL</promise> # Vibe failed, re-implementation needed (findings attached)
Troubleshooting
See references/troubleshooting.md.
Reference Documents
- references/validation.feature — Executable spec: criterion→test roll-up, strict delegation, verdict.json, strict-surface blocking (soc-qk4b.2)
- references/dag.md — executable workflow, gate detail, blocking conditions, phase summary format, phase budgets, expensive-command policy
- references/per-criterion-rubric.md — per-criterion verdict rubric and runner contract
- references/step-1.8-behavioral-validation.md — STEP 1.8 holdout + agent-spec evaluator council
- references/four-surface-closure.md — four-surface closure validation (code + docs + examples + proof)
- references/forge-scope.md and references/idempotency-and-resume.md — forge scoping, rerun behavior, standalone mode
- references/remote-and-multi-repo-validation.md
- references/phase-data-contracts.md — phase artifact data contracts (cited from references/isolation-contract.md)