feat(playbooks,claude-config): align Fable 5 doctrine and the instruction audit with the live prompting guide

plugins/claude-config/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "$schema": "https://json.schemastore.org/claude-code-plugin-manifest.json",
   "name": "claude-config",
-  "version": "0.21.0",
+  "version": "0.21.1",
   "description": "Five audit skills for a repo's Claude Code configuration: audit (settings.json / .mcp.json / hooks / plugins / permissions drift), audit-automation-gaps (evidence-gated verdicts on automation gaps), audit-permission-grants (allow-rule / allowed-tools grants for auto-mode durability and portability), audit-instructions (locally-owned instruction surfaces vs current model capability — proposes removals/rewrites of instructions the model no longer needs, and detects cross-surface instruction conflicts), and audit-pass (one coordinated, ordered, resumable pass over a named target — three-scope inventory, run-time-derived exclusion set, stable finding identity, suppression memory, resume, one human gate — delegating every check to the plugin that owns it).",
   "author": {
     "name": "Melodic Software",

plugins/claude-config/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -3,6 +3,55 @@
 All notable changes to the `claude-config` plugin are documented here. Format follows
 [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0/); this plugin uses semantic versioning.
 
+## [0.21.1]
+
+### Added
+
+- **`audit-instructions`: row I8-d, short-turn assumptions** (criteria 1.8.0 → 1.9.0). Tier
+  `behavioral`, `Model scope: fable-5` — the promotion gate is unmet and stays unmet: the claim
+  appears in one model guide and on no model-agnostic page, so the row is inert on other targets
+  and reports `skipped-for-target`.
+
+  **Detect** is instruction text resting on the premise that a turn is short — a forced
+  interim-status cadence ("summarize every N tool calls"), a directive to answer quickly, any
+  progress rhythm pinned to a turn rather than to the work. Individual requests now run for
+  minutes at higher effort and autonomous runs for hours, so such a rhythm fires on work that has
+  not reached a reportable boundary and interrupts exactly the long runs the model is used for.
+  Four fences keep it off legitimate text: an output-length instruction is I8 base's subject, not
+  this one's (the axis here is the turn's duration, never the reply's size); a latency or duration
+  requirement the surface genuinely owns — an SLA, a downstream timeout, a human review rhythm — is
+  a constraint it is entitled to state; a document *about* the pattern is exempt on the same
+  audience test I8-b, I17, I18 and I20 already use; and a cadence carrying its own explicit
+  observability or interruptibility rationale is a design the surface is entitled to make — that is
+  the very guarantee the row's Remediate line protects — exempt unless evidence shows it was
+  calibrated to an obsolete turn length rather than to the work.
+
+  The row is **lane-only, not seeded** by `instruction-scan.sh`, and `SKILL.md` now says so
+  alongside the existing I8-c disclosure. A pattern family was considered and declined: the
+  phrasings are too varied for a rule that would earn its false-positive rate, and the one
+  candidate string in this repository resolves to the exempt meta case, so the family would have
+  shipped with a known false positive and no true one.
+
+  The guide pairs this behavior with advice to adjust **client timeouts, streaming, and progress
+  indicators**. That half is harness client configuration rather than instruction content, so the
+  row states plainly that it is out of scope and that no row claims it — the shape that *would*
+  reach this catalog is instruction text prescribing a short client timeout, and none is attested.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **`audit-instructions`: I8's base row gains one named worked instance — the delegation
+  throttle.** A cap on concurrent workers, a one-at-a-time rule, or an instruction to block until
+  each subagent returns, *where the surface's own ground is that subagent handling is unreliable*.
+  Current guidance runs the other way (readier dispatch, asynchronous orchestrator-to-worker
+  communication), so such a throttle is the base row's generic case with a name on it — which is
+  why it lands as recognition material inside I8 rather than as a fourth rule competing with it.
+  The qualifier is the whole fence: **a cap carrying its own non-model rationale is not this
+  instance.** Reviewability of returns, rate limits, cost, and shared mutable state each justify a
+  bound on their own terms, and that justification belongs to the surface making it. The base row's
+  Source gains the guide's "Parallel subagents" sentence as the instance's basis; the row restates
+  no volatile literal and so owes no per-row verification stamp under the catalog's own
+  binds-on-touch rule.
+
 ## [0.21.0]
 
 ### Added

plugins/claude-config/skills/audit-instructions/SKILL.md

@@ -256,7 +256,9 @@ bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/audit-instructions/scripts/instruction-scan.s
 It emits `file:line:check-id` candidate rows for I6 (bare prohibitions lacking a rationale
 marker), I10 (reasoning-echo directives), and the I8 families under per-family ids — `I8-a`
 instructed self-check, `I8-b` conservative-reporting, `I8-c` don't-think / don't-reason (I8-c's
-tag-naming sub-detect is lane-only, not seeded); `--count` prints the row count. Advisory — a
+tag-naming sub-detect is lane-only, not seeded, as are I8's base row and `I8-d` short-turn
+assumptions, whose phrasings are too varied for a pattern that would earn its false-positive rate);
+`--count` prints the row count. Advisory — a
 grep cannot judge whether a rationale is genuinely present, whether a restraint clause is a
 reporting gate, or which model a row targets, so the lane refines every candidate against the
 catalog's fences and the run's resolved target model.

plugins/claude-config/skills/audit-instructions/reference/criteria.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-version: 1.8.0
+version: 1.9.0
 last-updated: 2026-08-03
 ---
 
@@ -240,18 +240,30 @@ so this fires for every target model.
 
 Tier `behavioral` · Authority `ANTHROPIC-DOCS` · Severity `warning` · Surfaces: all.
 
-The base row and rows I8-a and I8-c carry their own `Model scope` (single-model guide sources;
+The base row and rows I8-a, I8-c and I8-d carry their own `Model scope` (single-model guide sources;
 promotion gate unmet). Row I8-b is unscoped — two model guides converge on it (see the row).
 
 **Base row** · Model scope: `fable-5`.
 
 - **Detect:** prior-model workarounds and over-prescriptive step lists — instructions enumerating
   behaviors a current model handles from a brief instruction, or scaffolding that pins an approach.
+  **One named worked instance, offered for recognition rather than as a separate rule: a delegation
+  throttle** — a cap on concurrent workers, a one-at-a-time rule, or an instruction to block until
+  each subagent returns before dispatching the next — where the surface's own ground for it is that
+  subagent handling is unreliable. Current guidance runs the other way, asking for readier
+  dispatch and asynchronous orchestrator-to-worker communication, so a throttle resting on that
+  premise is the generic case with a name on it. **A cap carrying its own non-model rationale is
+  not this instance** — reviewability of returns, rate limits, cost, or shared mutable state each
+  justify a bound on their own terms, and that justification is the surface's to make, not this
+  row's to override.
 - **Remediate:** propose removal or a briefer instruction; verify via the delete-and-watch loop
   that default performance holds or improves.
 - **Bounded by:** the **Stopping condition** below, which is enabled by default.
 - **Source:** Fable 5 guide — "Skills developed for prior models are often too prescriptive for
-  Claude Fable 5 and can degrade output quality."
+  Claude Fable 5 and can degrade output quality." The worked instance's basis is the same guide,
+  "Parallel subagents" — "Claude Fable 5 dispatches parallel subagents more readily than prior
+  models. Use subagents frequently … and prefer asynchronous communication between orchestrator and
+  subagents over blocking until each subagent returns."
 
 **Row I8-a: instructed self-check removal** · Tier `behavioral` · Model scope: `opus-5`.
 
@@ -319,6 +331,41 @@ three trigger phrases (see Source), so this fires for every target model.
   rule instructing the model not to think or not to reason, remove it; that kind of instruction
   increases tag leakage"; naming thinking tags is "less effective than the general form."
 
+**Row I8-d: short-turn assumptions** · Tier `behavioral` · Model scope: `fable-5`.
+
+- **Detect:** instruction text resting on the premise that a turn is short — a forced interim-status
+  cadence ("summarize every N tool calls", "check in after each file"), a directive to answer
+  quickly or keep turns brief, or any required progress rhythm pinned to a turn rather than to the
+  work. Individual requests now run for many minutes at higher effort and autonomous runs for hours,
+  so a rhythm calibrated to the old turn length fires as noise on work that has not reached a
+  reportable boundary, and it interrupts precisely the long uninterrupted runs the model is being
+  used for.
+- **Remediate:** name the guarantee the cadence was protecting — that the user can see progress,
+  that a long run stays interruptible — and either state that outcome and let the model meet it, or
+  move it to a mechanism rather than an instructed rhythm. Verify via the delete-and-watch loop.
+- **Bounded by:** the **Stopping condition** below, which is enabled by default.
+- **Must NOT flag: an output-length instruction.** Brevity of the *reply* is a different subject and
+  belongs to I8 base; this row's subject is the cadence and duration of the *turn*.
+- **Must NOT flag: a latency or duration requirement the surface genuinely owns** — a product SLA, a
+  timeout a downstream contract imposes, a rhythm a human review process depends on. Those are
+  constraints the surface is entitled to state, not assumptions about how long a model takes.
+- **Must NOT flag: a document *about* the pattern** — this row, a model-adaptation delta chapter
+  counter-steering it for a different model, a verification record quoting it — on the same audience
+  test I8-b applies.
+- **Must NOT flag: a cadence carrying its own explicit observability or interruptibility
+  rationale** — a rhythm the surface states exists so a long autonomous run stays visible or
+  interruptible names the very guarantee the Remediate line protects, and that design is the
+  surface's to make — unless evidence shows the cadence was calibrated to an obsolete turn length
+  rather than to the work.
+- **Scope, and what is deliberately outside it:** the guide pairs this behavior with advice to adjust
+  **client timeouts, streaming, and progress indicators** before migrating. That half is harness
+  client configuration rather than instruction content, so it is not audited here and no row claims
+  it; a surface whose *instruction text* prescribes a short client timeout is the shape that would
+  reach this catalog, and none is attested.
+- **Source:** Fable 5 guide, "Longer turns by default" — "Individual requests on hard tasks can run
+  for many minutes at higher effort settings … and autonomous runs can extend for hours. This is one
+  of the largest shifts teams encounter when adjusting to Claude Fable 5."
+
 ### I9: Example hygiene
 
 Tier `behavioral` · Authority `ANTHROPIC-DOCS` · Severity `info` · Surfaces: all.

plugins/playbooks/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "$schema": "https://json.schemastore.org/claude-code-plugin-manifest.json",
   "name": "playbooks",
-  "version": "0.6.8",
+  "version": "0.6.9",
   "description": "Doctrine and knowledge playbooks as on-demand skills, plus a maintainer-facing update skill. boris — Boris Cherny's Claude Code workflow tips (howborisusesclaudecode.com); skill-authoring — Anthropic's internal skill-authoring playbook; fable-5 — Claude Fable 5's operating doctrine (self-authored, no upstream). The boris and skill-authoring packs vendor a verbatim upstream baseline; /playbooks:update drift-checks and syncs those baselines centrally (maintainers).",
   "author": {
     "name": "Melodic Software",

plugins/playbooks/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -4,6 +4,84 @@ All notable changes to the `playbooks` plugin are recorded here. The `version` i
 `.claude-plugin/plugin.json` is the delivery vehicle — a consumer receives a change
 only after that version increases.
 
+## [0.6.9]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **`fable-5`'s late-session decay response could be triggered by a number, which is the
+  behavior the guide it is built from tells you to suppress.**
+  `skills/fable-5/context/context-economy.md` §"Detecting late-session quality decay" lists three
+  behavioral tripwires and then escalates to "hand off — write the resume note and tell the user a
+  fresh session will outperform continuing". Nothing said a remaining-context count is not one of
+  those tripwires, so the cheapest signal to notice — a countdown, a percentage — could enter the
+  ladder in place of the three that actually measure decay. The section now carries a fourth
+  bullet naming the number as a **non**-signal and bounding what it governs: only the ladder that
+  follows it, never the success-path reset earlier in the chapter, a stop the user asked for, or
+  an operator mechanism that gates on the window — each of those keeps its own trigger untouched.
+
+  Sourced from the guide's "Rare cases of context-budget concern", re-fetched and byte-identical
+  on 2026-08-03: the failure it describes is a session wound down early because a count looked
+  low, and the remedy it offers is a reassurance, not a new stopping rule. The chapter's
+  thinking-cost material is deliberately untouched — it concerns what a long session *costs*, not
+  when to end one, and the two were never in tension.
+
+  **The bullet governs your own initiative and nothing else**, and that scope is load-bearing rather
+  than decorative. Sibling plugins in this marketplace deliberately gate on the window — a
+  context-zone hook, a retro that shortens past a threshold, a workflow step that hands off when
+  context grows heavy — and an absolute rule here would contradict every one of them for any
+  consumer who installs both, which is exactly the cross-surface conflict `audit-instructions` I15
+  reports. So the bullet defers to an instructed stop under meta-rule 1: the user, operator
+  configuration, and the project's own conventions already outrank this playbook, and a mechanism
+  built to gate on the window is doing what it was built to do. What remains is the failure the
+  guide actually describes — winding down unprompted because a number looked low.
+
+### Added
+
+- **`fable-5`: the assessment-versus-change gate the model-adaptation chapter already pointed at
+  but no chapter held.** `reference/model-adaptation/opus-4-8.md` names "Assessment vs change" as
+  a Fable behavior to emulate and routes the reader to "(Communication chapter.)" — which had no
+  such section. `skills/fable-5/context/communication.md` now opens with
+  §"Assessment is a deliverable; a fix is a different one", stating what the pointer promised: when
+  the user describes a problem, asks a question, or thinks out loud, the deliverable is the
+  assessment; offer the fix rather than apply it. It covers the artifacts left behind unasked
+  (branches, backups, drafts) and the evidence bar before a state-changing command, and states its
+  own precedence — it runs *before* §"Decide, or ask", which allocates a choice once a change is
+  already in scope rather than deciding whether one was requested.
+
+- **`fable-5`: non-blocking orchestration.** `skills/fable-5/context/orchestration.md` gains
+  §"Keep working while workers run". The chapter specced workers well and adjudicated their
+  returns, but every path through it read dispatch-then-wait: the closest existing line
+  ("a wave of four costs roughly one worker's wall-clock") is about workers running concurrently
+  with *each other*, never about the orchestrator continuing. The new section takes the guide's
+  "Parallel subagents" posture directly — dispatch is not a blocking call, check a running wave
+  against the drift signals rather than waiting it out, and continue an already-oriented worker on
+  a shared subject instead of respawning one to re-read the same material, with the fresh-context
+  verifier carved out because holding no context is its entire value.
+
+- **`fable-5`: a bound on defensive over-building.**
+  `skills/fable-5/context/execution.md` gains §"Build for what can happen, not what cannot".
+  §"Smallest correct change vs. right design" governs escalating *to* a redesign and
+  §"Scope fencing" governs absorbing adjacent problems, but neither reaches the guard, layer, or
+  option added inside the requested change: validation on internal callers and framework
+  guarantees, cleanup around a bug fix, an abstraction ahead of its second caller, a flag or
+  compatibility shim where changing the code is available. The guide files this under higher
+  effort specifically, so the section says so — the more room there is to deliberate, the more
+  defensible each unrequested addition looks from inside. The cleanup clause defers explicitly to
+  §"Scope fencing"'s absorb bar — in the section and in its core-doctrine line — so the two never
+  issue contradictory instructions for a qualifying in-file, under-two-minute, behavior-preserving
+  cleanup.
+
+- **Core-doctrine lines for all four**, in `skills/fable-5/SKILL.md`. Chapters load at their
+  triggers; the core doctrine is what a bare-armed session carries. Three of these four fire
+  before their chapter's trigger plausibly would — an unrequested fix lands before any
+  turn-ending message is composed, and a context count is noticed before a long-session read — so
+  chapter-only placement would have shipped them where they cannot act.
+
+- **A re-verification line on `reference/model-adaptation/opus-4-8.md`'s Sources block**, scoped to
+  the Fable 5 guide only: re-fetched 2026-08-03, byte-identical to a 2026-07-29 capture. It states
+  its own limits rather than letting one date cover both guides — no comparison against the
+  2026-07-06 reading exists, and the Opus 4.8 guide has not been re-read at all.
+
 ## [0.6.8]
 
 ### Fixed

plugins/playbooks/reference/model-adaptation/opus-4-8.md

@@ -65,4 +65,8 @@ Official Anthropic prompting guides, fetched 2026-07-06:
 - <https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/prompting-claude-opus-4-8> — literalism, effort strictness, tool-use triggering, subagent spawning, review-recall harness effect, progress updates, response-length calibration
 - <https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/prompting-claude-fable-5> — strong instruction following, act-when-enough-info, grounded progress claims, boundaries, parallel-subagent readiness, memory-system guidance, final-summary readability
 
+The Fable 5 guide was re-fetched 2026-08-03 and is byte-identical to a 2026-07-29 capture of the
+same page; it has not been compared against the 2026-07-06 reading above, and the Opus 4.8 guide has
+not been re-read at all since then.
+
 Behavioral claims here decay with model/doc revisions — re-verify against these URLs before propagating them elsewhere.