The hook that kept blocking us

ork · context-file-budget-guard · 2026-09-01 · why every handoff write in two lanes raised a permission dialog, and the two fixes

It was our own hook, not Claude Code. context-file-budget-guard projects the post-write size of MEMORY.md and, when it crosses the 17 KB budget, answered ask in every mode except bypass. Both indexes on the machine were over budget, both lanes ran in auto mode, and since CC 2.1.211 a hook's ask wins over auto mode. Every handoff write asked.

Where the two indexes sat

orchestkit MEMORY.md 24,202 B (200 B under the load ceiling)

hq-ext MEMORY.md 23,163 B

after compaction 17,346 B (orchestkit, 99.6% of budget)

amber line = 17,408 B budget · bar end = ~24.9 KB read ceiling where the index silently stops loading

Try it: what did the guard answer, before and after

projected MEMORY.md size: 24.2 KB permission mode

BEFORE (asked unless bypass)

AFTER (advisory-only)

Two fixes, both shipped

1. Compact the index (root cause). index-budget.mjs --entry-days 14 --handoff-days 5 --apply demoted 53 aged entries to MEMORY-ARCHIVE.md: 24,202 to 17,346 B, 97 indexed + 210 archived, invariant OK (0 missing, 0 duplicated, 0 dead links). The guard is silenced by making its claim false.

2. Downgrade the guard to advisory-only (structural). The opinion is "trim the index", which the model can act on itself, so it now arrives as additionalContext merged by the write-edit dispatcher and never as a dialog. isBypassMode and outputAsk leave the file. The probe, the dispatcher verdict test, and the bypass-gate test moved with it; the bypass-gate file keeps the guard as a negative pin so a revived ask path fails there instead of in every lane.

// before                                   // after
if (bypass) return advisory(...);           return outputPreToolAdvisory(
return outputAsk(reason);                      "not asking, advising: ... run /ork:dream");

Why it survived the purge

The #3835 purge deleted 16 of 29 blocking hooks and kept this one: the failure it guards is real (past the ceiling the index degrades with no error). What it got wrong was the channel. An ask is only useful when a human is the right decider; here the remedy is a script the model can run, and the dialog just taught users to reach for bypass mode (the same lesson as the #3835 wave 2 ask storm).

Related: #3741 (bypass-mode advisory, the half-step) · #3835 (the purge) · self-contained page, no external assets.