---
session_id: S-2026-0217-0841
timestamp: 2026-02-17T07:41:15Z
predecessor: S-2026-0217-0801
tasks_active: [T-097]
tasks_touched: [T-094, T-095, T-096, T-097]
tasks_completed: [T-094, T-095, T-096]
uncommitted_changes: 0
owner: claude-code
session_narrative: "Hardening + validation + multi-agent reflection → Type A inception"
---

# Session Handover: S-2026-0217-0841

## Where We Are

Completed 3 tasks (T-094 heredoc fix, T-095 fw init validation, T-096 FRAMEWORK.md update) then did a deep reflection on multi-agent architecture. Concluded Type A (orchestrator + ephemeral specialists) is the right path — Type B (autonomous peers) deferred until real trigger. User wants next session to deeply explore Type A optimization and whether specialized sub-agents are worth building. T-097 is the inception task for this.

## Work in Progress

### T-097: Deep reflection: Type A multi-agent optimization and specialized sub-agents
- **Status:** started-work (inception phase)
- **Last action:** Created inception task with problem statement, evidence-to-gather, scope fence, and go/no-go criteria
- **Next step:** Deep reflection — catalog all sub-agent dispatches across 96 tasks, identify repeated patterns, analyze token costs, evaluate specialization benefit
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** User specifically interested in whether framework-aware specialized sub-agents would outperform generic Explore/Plan/Code agents

## Key Context For Next Session

### The Multi-Agent Reflection (from this session)

We identified two types of multi-agent architecture:

**Type A (what we do — orchestrator + ephemeral specialists):**
- Main agent dispatches focused sub-agents (Explore, Plan, Code)
- Sub-agents are short-lived, no persistent state
- Works well for research parallelism (4-9x speedup observed)
- Known issues: context explosion from result ingestion (T-073, T-078)

**Type B (autonomous parallel peers — NOT pursuing):**
- Multiple long-running agents with own sessions
- Requires per-agent focus, locking, conflict resolution
- No evidence of need across 96 tasks

### Evidence Already Gathered (sub-agent usage across episodics)

| Task | Pattern | Result |
|------|---------|--------|
| T-061 | 4 parallel investigators | Comprehensive bypass analysis |
| T-072 | 3 parallel auditors | Full project audit |
| T-073 | 9 parallel enrichers | Context explosion (177K crash) |
| T-086 | 5 parallel evaluators | Feature evaluation before build |
| T-058 | Subagent-driven TDD | Caught missing git_log via spec review |
| T-059 | 3 parallel investigators | Root cause analysis |

### User's Key Question
> "Do we need / benefit from starting to think about specialized sub-agents that can be called for sub-agent tasks?"

This means: should the framework have purpose-built agents (e.g., "enrichment agent", "audit-sub-agent", "research agent") with framework-specific context baked in, rather than relying on generic Explore/Plan/Code agents with ad-hoc prompts?

## Inception Phases

**1 inception task(s) pending decision** — run `fw inception status` for details.

## Gaps Register

**1 spec-reality gap(s) being watched** — see `.context/project/gaps.yaml`

- **G-004** [low]: Multi-agent collaboration untested (Type B — explicitly deferred)

## Decisions Made This Session

1. **Type A (orchestrator) is the right multi-agent path, not Type B (peers)**
   - Why: 96 tasks of evidence show orchestrator pattern is sufficient; Type B adds complexity without demonstrated need
   - Alternatives rejected: Building Type B peer coordination, hybrid approach

2. **G-004 scope narrowed to Type B only**
   - Why: Type A is already working; G-004 trigger should only fire for true peer scenarios

## Things Tried That Failed

Nothing failed this session.

## Open Questions / Blockers

1. What repeated sub-agent dispatch patterns exist? (needs systematic catalog)
2. Would framework-aware sub-agents save meaningful tokens over generic + prompt?
3. How should sub-agent results be summarized to avoid context explosion?
4. Should sub-agents write to files directly (like T-073) or return results?

## Gotchas / Warnings for Next Session

- T-073 context explosion: 9 parallel sub-agents returning results spiked context by 30K+. Sub-agent result ingestion is the main Type A risk.
- T-078 transcript bloat: sub-agent results bloated the transcript tail, breaking checkpoint.sh token counting. Had to increase buffer from 500KB to 2MB.
- Beware analysis paralysis — the inception should converge on go/no-go, not endlessly explore.

## Suggested First Action

`fw work-on T-097` then begin the deep reflection:
1. Catalog all sub-agent dispatches from episodic memory (what was asked, what was returned)
2. Identify 3+ repeated patterns that would benefit from specialization
3. Sketch what a specialized sub-agent would look like (prompt template? AGENT.md? tool access?)
4. Estimate token savings vs. generic agents
5. Make go/no-go decision on T-097

## Files Changed This Session

- Created: `.context/episodic/T-094.yaml`, `.context/episodic/T-095.yaml`, `.context/episodic/T-096.yaml`, `.tasks/active/T-097-*.md`
- Modified: `agents/context/check-tier0.sh`, `agents/context/test-tier0-patterns.py`, `metrics.sh`, `agents/context/lib/status.sh`, `agents/context/lib/episodic.sh`, `agents/audit/audit.sh`, `FRAMEWORK.md`, `.gitignore`, `.context/project/gaps.yaml`, `.context/project/learnings.yaml`

## Recent Commits

- 95ffd6a T-097: Inception — Type A multi-agent optimization and specialized sub-agents
- 71a238c T-012: Session handover S-2026-0217-0801
- 6e6d94b T-096: Enrich episodic for FRAMEWORK.md update
- a10ca74 T-096: Update FRAMEWORK.md to reflect current framework state
- d50c3f3 T-095: Add learning L-024, gitignore .playwright-mcp/, add audit record
- 02adb2b T-095: Enrich episodic for fw init end-to-end validation
- 6a87753 T-095: Fix grep -c || echo 0 doubled output in 3 more files
- a244809 T-095: Fix metrics.sh for external projects (PROJECT_ROOT + grep -c)
- 0ab39a2 T-094: Enrich episodic, close G-001 (all enforcement tiers complete)
- bec0ac3 T-094: Add heredoc stripping to Tier 0 false-positive prevention

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## Handover Quality Feedback (for next session to complete)

- Did this handover help? [ ]
- What was missing?
- What was unnecessary?
