champion-epic-standdown

Champion: Step 0.5 — Tracking-Umbrella Stand-Down (#7666)

This file is the body of champion-epic.md → "Step 0.5". Read it when that step tells you to, after Step 0's Completion-First Check has declined to act and before Step 1. It answers the one question the 6 structural criteria cannot: "has this epic already been decomposed, by someone other than Step 3?"

The 6 criteria describe an epic awaiting decomposition — they check the phases, sizing, and success criteria Step 3 needs in order to create Phase 1 issues. An epic whose children already exist and are being worked is past that point. Those children may come from a Curator decomposition pass, native GitHub sub-issues, or a hand-written - [ ] #N task list, none of which carries the <!-- loom:epic:$EPIC_NUMBER:phase:N --> marker that Step 2.75 and "Detecting Phase Completion" search for — so neither phase creation nor phase progression can see them, and a literal reading of Step 2.75 would report EXISTING_COUNT=0 and create a duplicate Phase 1 set. Champion has nothing left to do for such an epic except watch it finish, which Step 0 already does on every pass. A passing epic is never a stuck epic: the correct handling is one durable note and then silence — never a structural re-evaluation, never an operator escalation.

0.5a. Detect the tracking umbrella

Reuses Step 0a's discovery — do NOT re-run discover_epic_children.

# Set by Step 0a: EPIC_CHILD_STRONG_{OPEN,CLOSED}, EPIC_CHILD_SOURCES.
# `phase-marker` in EPIC_CHILD_SOURCES means discovery source (a) contributed,
# i.e. Champion decomposed this epic itself and "Phase Progression" owns it
# from here — such an epic must fall through to Step 1 exactly as before.
case ",$EPIC_CHILD_SOURCES," in
  *,phase-marker,*)
    IS_TRACKING_UMBRELLA=no ;;                  # Champion's own decomposition
  *)
    if [ "$EPIC_CHILD_STRONG_OPEN" -gt 0 ]; then
      IS_TRACKING_UMBRELLA=yes                  # decomposed elsewhere, still in flight
    else
      IS_TRACKING_UMBRELLA=no                   # undecomposed (Step 1), or complete (Step 0 owned it)
    fi ;;
esac