scope-check

Scope Check

Hold up a mirror — compare the original task intent to the actual work done. Present data, not judgment.

Step 1: Find the Original Intent

Check these sources in order. Use the first one found:

1. Active plan file — search your agent's plan/scratch directory for a plan referencing this project. Read the Goal and Context sections.
2. Task list — if your agent has a tracked task list, the earliest task often captures the original intent.
3. Ask the user — if neither exists, ask: "What was the original task or goal? I want to compare it to what's actually happened."

Step 2: Measure the Actual Work

Detect default branch first: git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed 's|refs/remotes/origin/||' — fall back to main if unset.

Run in parallel:

• git diff --stat — unstaged changes
• git diff --cached --stat — staged changes
• git diff {default-branch}...HEAD --stat — all changes on this branch vs default (skip if current branch IS the default branch)
• git ls-files --others --exclude-standard | wc -l — new untracked files
• Count new vs modified files
• Sum lines added/removed

Step 3: Categorize by Concern

Group changed files by their top-level directory or domain:

• Read the list of changed files
• Group by the first 2 path segments (e.g., Models/Proximity/, Scenes/ActiveWalk/, src/handlers/)
• Count files and lines per group

Step 4: Check Time Spent

If your agent keeps a session log, count sessions and estimate total time spent on this project today and yesterday.

Step 4.5: Cost-tier classification

For each changed file, classify by reasoning space per the Agentic Coding Flywheel cost model:

Tier	What it touches	Rework cost
plan-space	design docs, plans, architecture markdown, ADRs, READMEs	1×
bead-space	task lists, scope-of-work specs, project tracking, IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md, .beads/*	5×
code-space	actual implementation files, tests, configs	25×