T-89GV-task-work-backgrounds-baseline-capture

Status: closed/superseded · Impact: medium · Complexity: small

AUTO-DEFINED: this spec was best-effort machine-authored by /sdlc:task-auto-define on 2026-08-03 because the task is autonomy: autonomous/pr. Review the Goal, Approach, Today, Files-to-touch, and Acceptance-criteria carefully before trusting it.

Goal

/sdlc:task-work Step 3a captures a quality baseline by running the project’s full quality suite in the foreground, which on a repo with multi-minute gates exceeds the default Bash timeout and forces the operator to re-run the capture by hand in the background. Step 3a should background the capture by default, or state plainly that projects with multi-minute gates need an extended timeout. This gap was reported from [T-JOXA-task-kind-field-and-leaf-dispatch](/planning/tasks/task-kind-field-and-leaf-dispatch/) on git@github.com:sksizer/dev.git:

task-work’s Step 3a quality baseline capture runs the full quality suite — over 10 minutes on this repo (full tsc plus the whole bun test apps/sdlc suite) — which exceeds the default foreground Bash timeout and forces a manual re-run in the background. Step 3a should either background the capture by default or state that projects with multi-minute gates need an extended timeout. Note for the receiver: T-2T20-task-work-backgrounds-quality-gate is marked closed/done citing PR #970, but that PR’s only changed file was the task file itself — no apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md change ever landed, and the current Step 3a (around line 396) still shows a plain foreground invocation with no backgrounding guidance. The gap is live.

Today

Location	Role today
`apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md:401`	Step 3a sub-step 2’s baseline-capture invocation. A plain foreground shell-out to `sdlc quality baseline capture`; the surrounding prose names no backgrounding affordance and no timeout expectation, so an operator following the step verbatim runs it as a default-timeout foreground Bash call.
`apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md:430`	Step 3a’s closing cost statement — “The baseline is cheap (one extra full run of the gate, sequenced before any code is written).” The only wall-clock signal in the step, and it reads as sub-minute.
`apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md:894`	The pre-PR dogfood block’s second `sdlc quality baseline capture` invocation, in the Step 7 section. Same verb, same foreground shape, same timeout hazard.
`sdlc.yaml`	This repo’s declared `quality_checks:` — eleven verbs including `bunx tsc --noEmit`, `bun test apps/sdlc`, `bun test ./.claude`, and a full docs-site build. One capture pass runs every one of them in sequence.
`apps/sdlc/lib/services/quality/ops/baseline/capture.ts`	The op Step 3a shells out to. Runs each declared verb against the current tree; its wall-clock is the sum of the project’s verbs, with no internal time budget and no backgrounding affordance of its own.
`apps/sdlc/lib/services/gate/ops/_skill_prose_contract.ts`	`SKILL_PROSE_REGISTRY`, the gate that pins load-bearing SKILL.md prose. Its `task-work` entry pins the final-verdict markers and the Notes/Failure-modes sections; nothing in Step 3a is pinned, so Step 3a prose can regress silently.
`docs/planning/tasks/T-2T20-task-work-backgrounds-quality-gate.md`	A `closed/done` task whose `completion_note` claims this fix shipped via PR #970. That PR’s only changed file was the task file itself, so no SKILL.md change landed and the gap it describes is still open.

Proposed

Step 3a documents a capture that completes on a project whose quality suite runs for double-digit minutes: the invocation is backgrounded by default with an explicit completion check the operator gates on, plus a named fallback for harnesses without a backgrounding affordance (raise the Bash timeout explicitly rather than accept the default). The step’s cost statement reflects real wall-clock instead of calling the capture unqualifiedly cheap. The pre-PR dogfood capture — the same verb, later in the file — carries the same shape, so there is one documented way to run a capture. A SKILL_PROSE_REGISTRY pin makes the backgrounding guidance load-bearing, so a future PR that touches only the task file cannot claim the fix a second time.

Approach

Rewrite Step 3a sub-step 2 in apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md so the documented invocation is backgrounded by default. Keep the sdlc quality baseline capture argv byte-identical (SHA positional, --config, --baseline-dir); change only how it is launched — the Bash tool’s run_in_background, with combined output redirected to a run-scoped log under <project-root>/.sdlc/quality-baselines/.
Add an explicit completion check as a new sub-step between the launch and today’s sub-step 3 (the finding-count report): poll the background task until the capture process exits, then gate on its bare exit code — no pipe through head/tail, per the “Don’t pipe commands you gate on” rule in apps/sdlc/skills/CLAUDE.md. Only after that does the operator read the written JSON for the finding count.
Add one sentence naming the fallback for a harness with no backgrounding affordance: set an explicit non-default Bash timeout sized to the project’s suite rather than accepting the default. This is the “or state that projects with multi-minute gates need an extended timeout” half of the reported gap, kept as the documented alternative rather than the primary path.
Replace the closing sentence at apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md:430 (“The baseline is cheap …”) with an accurate cost statement: the capture is one full pass of the project’s declared quality_checks:, so its wall-clock scales with that list and runs into double-digit minutes on a large one. Keep the existing follow-on sentence about the 5-SHA prune unchanged.
Apply the same backgrounded shape to the pre-PR dogfood capture at apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md:894 so both quality baseline capture invocations in the file read the same way. Leave the sdlc quality run line in that same block on its current foreground shape — the gate verb is out of scope here.
Add a task-work entry to SKILL_PROSE_REGISTRY in apps/sdlc/lib/services/gate/ops/_skill_prose_contract.ts pinning the Step 3a backgrounding guidance: a section entry for the Step 3a heading with a requires pattern matching the backgrounding instruction, carrying an id in the established skill-prose/task-work/<kind><n> shape and a note citing this task and the PR #970 non-landing as the reason the pin exists.
Verify: run bun apps/sdlc/cli/sdlc.ts gate skill-prose (must exit 0 against the edited SKILL.md) and bun test apps/sdlc. Then confirm the pin bites by temporarily reverting the Step 3a edit and re-running the gate — it must fail — before restoring the edit.

Files to touch

Location	Kind	Change
`apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md`	modify	Step 3a sub-step 2 launches the capture backgrounded, a new sub-step gates on its exit code, a sentence names the extended-timeout fallback, the closing “cheap” cost statement is replaced with a wall-clock-accurate one, and the pre-PR dogfood capture gets the same backgrounded shape.
`apps/sdlc/lib/services/gate/ops/_skill_prose_contract.ts`	modify	Add a Step 3a section + `requires` pin under the existing `task-work` registry entry so the backgrounding guidance cannot silently disappear again.

Acceptance criteria

AC-1: Step 3a of apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md instructs the operator to launch sdlc quality baseline capture as a background task by default, and names the completion check to gate on before reading the baseline JSON.
AC-2: Step 3a names an explicit non-default Bash timeout as the documented fallback for a harness without a backgrounding affordance.
AC-3: command grep -c "quality baseline capture" apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md still reports 2, and both hits sit inside a backgrounded launch block.
AC-4: command grep -n "The baseline is cheap" apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md returns no match, and the replacement sentence names the project’s quality_checks: list as what the capture’s wall-clock scales with.
AC-5: SKILL_PROSE_REGISTRY in apps/sdlc/lib/services/gate/ops/_skill_prose_contract.ts contains a task-work entry whose requires pattern matches the Step 3a backgrounding instruction, with an id of the form skill-prose/task-work/....
AC-6: bun apps/sdlc/cli/sdlc.ts gate skill-prose exits 0 on the edited tree, and exits non-zero when the Step 3a backgrounding instruction is removed.
AC-7: bun test apps/sdlc passes.

Out of scope

Backgrounding Step 7’s sdlc quality run gate invocation, and passing it an explicit main-repo --baseline-dir. Those are the other two halves of T-2T20-task-work-backgrounds-quality-gate and need their own decision about baseline-dir resolution inside a worktree.
Correcting T-2T20-task-work-backgrounds-quality-gate’s status: closed/done and completion_note. That is a task-state frontmatter fix that lands on main, not on this branch.
Changing sdlc quality baseline capture itself — an internal time budget, parallel verb execution, or a --background flag on the op. This task is a prose change in the skill plus the gate pin that holds it.
docs/skills/task-work.md’s flowchart. Its Step 3a node label describes what the step does, which this fix does not change.

Dependencies

none

Discovery context

Spawned by /sdlc:spawn-task-pr on 2026-08-03 UTC from T-JOXA-task-kind-field-and-leaf-dispatch in git@github.com:sksizer/dev.git. The receiver should note that T-2T20-task-work-backgrounds-quality-gate already describes this gap and is marked closed/done citing PR #970 — that PR’s only changed file was the task file itself (verified against the merged PR), so no apps/sdlc/skills/task-work/SKILL.md change ever landed.

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