Friction Retrospective

Purpose / When to Activate

Activate to aggregate and analyze friction captured during delivery. This skill reads ## Friction Log sections from delivery artefacts and detects patterns that warrant promotion to durable memory (conventions, decisions, rule updates).

Recommended triggers (conventions, not rules):

• Per-Epic: when an Epic is marked done
• Monthly: alongside memory-refresh
• Incident: if a single Story generates 3+ friction events

Constraint: Only the Discovery Agent may invoke this skill. Delivery agents capture friction; Discovery analyzes it.

Process

1. Scope resolution — determine which artefacts to scan:

   • If epic filter: scan artefacts matching {epic_id}S*
   • If date_range filter: scan artefacts within date range (from frontmatter created_at)
   • If type filter: scan all artefacts but only extract entries matching the specified friction type
   • If no filter: scan all artefacts (full retrospective)

2. Friction extraction — for each artefact containing a ## Friction Log:

   • Parse the table rows
   • Tag each entry with: Story ID (from filename), date (from frontmatter), artefact type (impl-report / qa-report / micro-delivery-report)

3. Pattern detection — analyze extracted entries:

   • Group by type (ac-ambiguity, missing-context, tool-failure, etc.)
   • Count frequency per type
   • Identify thematic clusters within each type (e.g., multiple missing-context about the same domain)
   • Flag all entries with signal: high
   • Flag types with frequency ≥ 3

4. Classify promotion candidates — for entries meeting promotion threshold:

   • signal: high → automatic promotion candidate (CAND-XXX)
   • frequency ≥ 3 for same type+theme → promotion candidate
   • Map each candidate to its promotion target (see Promotion Path below)

5. Produce the report — structured in 4 sections:

   • Pattern Summary: type distribution, top themes, overall friction density
   • High-Signal Events (CAND-XXX): each candidate with evidence, proposed promotion target, and recommended action
   • Low-Signal Events: grouped by type, listed for awareness
   • Retrospective Notes: observations, cross-cutting themes, questions for human review

6. Write or return — if scope is named (epic or date range), write to contexts/artefacts/retrospectives/{scope}.retro.md; otherwise return inline

Promotion Path

Important: This skill identifies candidates and recommends actions. Actual promotion to memory is performed by the Discovery Agent using memory-ingest — never automatically by this skill.

Outputs

• Retrospective report with pattern analysis
• Promotion candidates (CAND-XXX) with evidence and recommended targets
• Friction density metrics (events per Story, per type)

Quality Checks

• Every CAND-XXX has at least 2 supporting evidence entries (or 1 with signal: high)
• Promotion targets are specific (file path + section), not vague
• Low-signal events are listed but never promoted
• Report does not contain implementation fixes — only identifies what to fix and where

Non-Goals

This skill must NOT:

• Write to memory directly (it produces candidates; Discovery promotes)
• Modify rules, conventions, or decisions
• Re-run or remediate delivery — it is purely analytical
• Assign blame to agents or sub-agents