03-consistency

Agent 03 — Consistency & Predictability

Cycles 153–187 · Analysis date: 2026-06-02

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TL;DR

The loop is not predictably consistent across cycles 153–187. Three distinct sub-eras exist with incompatible step schemas, missing logs, and sharply different rework rates. The single recurring root cause is the auto-merge race (CI ~2 min completes before DJ ~3–5 min; auto-merge fires; BLOCKER lands post-merge). This pattern appeared in 0 of 8 iteration cycles in era 153–161, 2 of 10 in era 168–177, and 5–6 of 9 in era 178–187 (56–67%). The trend is sharply worsening. Duration variance is high cross-era (CV 64%) but tight within each era. Pipeline version is superficially frozen at 2026.05.20 for all 35 cycles while the underlying step schema changed three times.

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1. Outcome Stability

Sub-era breakdown (iteration cycles only, brainstorm excluded)

Sub-era	Cycles (iteration)	Shipped clean	Shipped-with-fix	Rework rate	Trend
153–161 (May 25 stream)	7	7	0	0%	— baseline
164 (isolated)	1	1	0	0%	—
168–177 (May 29–Jun 1 stream)	10	8	2	20%	↑ regression
178–187 (Jun 1 stream)	9	3–4	5–6	56–67%	↑↑ sharply worse

Overall 153–187 rework rate (iteration cycles): 7–8 of 27 = 26–30%.

Cycle 181 ambiguity

Cycle 181 (CLOUD-CODE-INSIGHTS) is logged as outcome=shipped in cycles.jsonl but the DJ metrics record blocker_count=1. The stream report classifies it as "shipped | clean." This implies the BLOCKER was caught and fixed pre-merge within the same cycle — the only cycle in 178–187 where the DJ-then-arm gate succeeded by timing luck. If counted as "shipped-with-fix" the era 178–187 rework rate is 6/9 = 67%; if excluded it is 5/9 = 56%.

Era 168–177 detail

Cycles 168–169 shipped but with dispatch violations (orchestrator worked inline rather than dispatching subagents). The violations do not show as shipped_with_fix in the log but represent a process failure. Post-correction (cycles 172–177), 6 of 6 were dispatch-clean. The 2 shipped_with_fix entries (176, 177) are both auto-merge races.