session-flow/workflow: aihero course lane 2: phase-boundaries tree re-audit and context-driven continuation router

[kyle-sexton]

Context

Second of six vetting lanes for the AI Hero course lessons; contract in docs/topics/pocock-course-lanes/PLAN.md (branch claude/plan-mode-discussion-55kszx). The SSOT audited his repo-side PHASE-BOUNDARIES.md, not the course lesson version of the decision tree (continue, clear, handoff, subagent, compact-as-default). This lane also carries the effort's main build deliverable: the user does not want to hand-make boundary decisions; the router should read context and suggest or act.

Proposed work

• Element-by-element re-audit of session-flow:workflow context/continuation.md against the course lesson's tree, including subagent-not-a-router-terminal and his AFK criterion
• Design the context-driven decision layer: the router consumes session history, the overarching plan, work-item state, and the context-guard zone word, then recommends a continuation mechanism
• Posture per the locked contract: suggest-by-default, autonomous only as an explicit opt-in, designed around instruction-audit check I23 (no exit menus injected into model context; context-guard splits its report by audience for this reason)
• Evolve the existing router in place; do not author a new skill

Acceptance criteria

• Adopt / reject-with-reason / track-on-event rows recorded in docs/upstream/aihero-course.md for every phase-boundaries-lesson claim
• Work items filed for the router evolution (design settled in-lane; implementation executes outside)
• Lane summary written to the lane's topic slice
• The autonomy posture decision is recorded with its I23 reconciliation

References

• docs/topics/pocock-course-lanes/PLAN.md (contract + lane definition + recheck record)
• plugins/session-flow/skills/workflow/context/continuation.md (the current router)
• plugins/context-guard/README.md (zone words, audience-split hooks, evidence-degraded marker)
• docs/upstream/mattpocock-skills.md row 35 (prior PHASE-BOUNDARIES audit: parity-or-stronger, one criterion adopted, two rejections)

Metadata

Field	Value
Category	unspecified
Area	session-flow, context-guard
Ecosystem	unspecified

[kyle-sexton]

Lane 2 closed (decision session 2026-08-17, commit 64fe359 on claude/plan-mode-discussion-55kszx).

Tree re-audit: ten rows in docs/upstream/aihero-course.md. Headlines: his "compact seeds a new session" wording REJECTED as a harness claim (verdict C4, two-pool refuted; same session continues over a structured summary); the 30k/80k/150k figures recorded as folklore anchors, never adopted as numbers; the handoff-narrowing rejected again, confirming the lane-1 UNION; boundary-only discipline, ordered first-yes-wins, clear-when-disposable, compact-last-with-steering, and the reasoning-verbatim continue criterion all COVERED at parity or stronger.

Subagent / AFK (Q20, user-delegated): ADOPT modified. The AFK question becomes a router edge pointing to session-flow:orchestrate for the spawn-brief decision; delegation stays non-terminal, so orchestrate keeps spawn ownership and continue-in-background's explicit-intent launch gate is untouched (the router suggests, never launches).

Router design (Q21/Q22), with I23 reconciliation: inputs arrive via presence-gated pointers to the existing informants (orient's read patterns, reconcile's liveness answer, the workflow checklist, the work-item seam), like the zone seam; no duplicated reads. Autonomy is two-tier: a per-invocation explicit auto opt-in at top level (continue-in-background precedent, never a standing config), plus the orchestrator relay codified as the autonomous tier for delegated work. I23-clean because the mechanism menu lives only in the user-invoked skill body, nothing model-injected carries a menu, and autonomy initiative comes from the user's opt-in or the orchestrator, never injected context or a self-estimated budget.

Work items: #2971 (router evolution), #2972 (router evals, zero coverage today), #2973 (context-guard reader-contract pre-0.5.0 drift, verifier finding).

Lane summary: docs/topics/pocock-lane-2/SUMMARY.md. Next lane: #2901 (compaction doctrine).

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