This issue collects six methodology improvement suggestions distilled from a sanitized post-mortem of one RLCR loop session that exited on maxiter. The loop made monotonic, non-circular progress and every reviewer verdict was ADVANCED, but the analysis surfaced several connective-tissue weaknesses between rounds. Suggestions are kept abstract: no project, paths, names, or code.
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Strengthen the per-round validation contract.
Pattern: the most consequential finding (environment-reproducibility) was masked for two rounds because the implementer exit-0 validation suite carried implicit shell state. Exit codes alone do not tell the reviewer which paths were actually exercised.
Suggestion: require (a) per-round branch-coverage attestation that maps each new or modified branch to a regression test or marks it explicitly uncovered, and (b) at least one fresh-shell or container run with a recorded environment fingerprint.
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Mandatory pre-review self-checklist.
Pattern: one full round was largely consumed by long-tail reviewer nits (stale docstrings, plan-flag literal-value pinning, evidence-file revision drift, missing deferral justifications) that a structured checklist would have caught for free.
Suggestion: gate the round summary on a self-checklist covering stale documentation and comment sweeps, literal-value regression pins for plan-mandated flags or recipes, evidence-file revision sync, and explicit deferral entries.
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Tighten the queued side issue lane.
Pattern: one finding queued as non-blocking by reviewer N was promoted to blocking by reviewer N+1; the implementer had planned around the original classification.
Suggestion: use a sticky-queue (queued items stay queued unless an explicit precondition fires) or expiry-queue (each item carries a deadline round). Either removes the moving-goalpost failure mode.
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Trend-based early termination, plus mandatory bonus review on maxiter.
Pattern: the loop terminated by iteration budget, not by reviewer sign-off; the final round summary was unreviewed within the loop.
Suggestion: (a) declare convergence and exit early when two consecutive rounds reduce the open-finding count below a threshold, (b) on maxiter, enqueue a single post-budget bonus review so the final state always carries a verdict.
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Broaden BitLesson capture to cross-round process patterns.
Pattern: every round recorded no lesson because the current rule biases toward implementation-level convergence, yet the session contained extractable process-level lessons.
Suggestion: trigger a BitLesson candidate when a class of finding appears in two or more rounds of any single loop, or in the same round across two or more loops, regardless of whether the underlying code fix took multiple rounds.
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Structured reviewer-environment fingerprint in the review template.
Pattern: when reviewer-environment and implementer-environment diverged, the divergence was described in prose only; the implementer had to guess at the difference.
Suggestion: add a structured Reviewer environment fingerprint section to the review-result template (shell, working directory, environment variables consulted, presence of pre-existing build artifacts). The implementer mirrors it in the next round summary.
None of these change the core RLCR shape (plan, then implement, then review, then repeat). They tighten the contracts at round boundaries so each round delivers more reviewer-novel signal per iteration.
Filed from a sanitized RLCR loop post-mortem; no project-specific information attached.
This issue collects six methodology improvement suggestions distilled from a sanitized post-mortem of one RLCR loop session that exited on maxiter. The loop made monotonic, non-circular progress and every reviewer verdict was ADVANCED, but the analysis surfaced several connective-tissue weaknesses between rounds. Suggestions are kept abstract: no project, paths, names, or code.
Strengthen the per-round validation contract.
Pattern: the most consequential finding (environment-reproducibility) was masked for two rounds because the implementer exit-0 validation suite carried implicit shell state. Exit codes alone do not tell the reviewer which paths were actually exercised.
Suggestion: require (a) per-round branch-coverage attestation that maps each new or modified branch to a regression test or marks it explicitly uncovered, and (b) at least one fresh-shell or container run with a recorded environment fingerprint.
Mandatory pre-review self-checklist.
Pattern: one full round was largely consumed by long-tail reviewer nits (stale docstrings, plan-flag literal-value pinning, evidence-file revision drift, missing deferral justifications) that a structured checklist would have caught for free.
Suggestion: gate the round summary on a self-checklist covering stale documentation and comment sweeps, literal-value regression pins for plan-mandated flags or recipes, evidence-file revision sync, and explicit deferral entries.
Tighten the queued side issue lane.
Pattern: one finding queued as non-blocking by reviewer N was promoted to blocking by reviewer N+1; the implementer had planned around the original classification.
Suggestion: use a sticky-queue (queued items stay queued unless an explicit precondition fires) or expiry-queue (each item carries a deadline round). Either removes the moving-goalpost failure mode.
Trend-based early termination, plus mandatory bonus review on maxiter.
Pattern: the loop terminated by iteration budget, not by reviewer sign-off; the final round summary was unreviewed within the loop.
Suggestion: (a) declare convergence and exit early when two consecutive rounds reduce the open-finding count below a threshold, (b) on maxiter, enqueue a single post-budget bonus review so the final state always carries a verdict.
Broaden BitLesson capture to cross-round process patterns.
Pattern: every round recorded no lesson because the current rule biases toward implementation-level convergence, yet the session contained extractable process-level lessons.
Suggestion: trigger a BitLesson candidate when a class of finding appears in two or more rounds of any single loop, or in the same round across two or more loops, regardless of whether the underlying code fix took multiple rounds.
Structured reviewer-environment fingerprint in the review template.
Pattern: when reviewer-environment and implementer-environment diverged, the divergence was described in prose only; the implementer had to guess at the difference.
Suggestion: add a structured Reviewer environment fingerprint section to the review-result template (shell, working directory, environment variables consulted, presence of pre-existing build artifacts). The implementer mirrors it in the next round summary.
None of these change the core RLCR shape (plan, then implement, then review, then repeat). They tighten the contracts at round boundaries so each round delivers more reviewer-novel signal per iteration.
Filed from a sanitized RLCR loop post-mortem; no project-specific information attached.