# Template maturity — what our agents can actually be asked to do A review of the 6 workflow recipes and 12 team templates, on 2026-09-22. Graded by evidence, not by what the TOML declares: a recipe is mature when a mission built from it has completed and something checked the result. ## Workflow recipes | recipe | phases | standing check | staffing | grade | |---|---|---|---|---| | `research_and_code` | 2 (research → coding) | **13 harness scenarios** | research→`topic_research`, coding→`rust_sdlc` | **Proven** | | `research_only` | 1 (research, repo-less) | 2 scenarios | `topic_research` | **Proven** | | `security_hardening` | 3 (scan → research → coding) | 1 scenario | +`rust_sdlc` | Exercised | | `benchmark` | 1 | 1 scenario | `rust_sdlc` | Exercised | | `refactor` | 1 | 1 scenario | `rust_sdlc` | Exercised | | `continuous_research` | 2 (analysis → script) | **none** | `continuous_research` | Runs live, unguarded | `research_and_code` is the workhorse: every delivery, gate, judge, memory and triage scenario is built on it, so it is re-proven on every harness run. `research_only` earned its grade differently — its staffing was **measured and corrected**: under the old `rust_sdlc` default it delivered 5 roles, 14 skill deliveries and ~50 KB of prompt with **1 of 9** skills applicable; on `topic_research` it is 3 roles, 4 deliveries, 24 KB, **4 of 4**. `continuous_research` is the outlier and the one to fix first. It has the most moving parts of any recipe — harvest → triage → manifest → analysis → ranking → script → `episode.json` → vault commit — it ran twice today and produced real output both times, and **nothing in the harness would notice if it broke tomorrow.** Every other recipe has a standing check; this one has operator attention, which is not the same thing. ## What the recipes declare that does not fire `phase_config::DECLARED_BUT_UNREAD` is the honest list, and recipes lean on it: | key | used by | status | |---|---|---| | `loop` | `research_and_code` (`until_no_more_int_items`), `refactor` (`single_pass`) | **inert** — iteration is `max_iterations` + `done_when` | | `produces` | almost every recipe (`["md"]`) | **inert** — artifact rendering is not driven by it | | `input_from_phase` | `security_hardening` | **inert** — phases share a checkout | | `mcp_bundles` (phase level) | `security_hardening` | **inert** — bundles come from the TEAM template | None of this is hidden: `security_hardening.toml` carries a "what is real here and what is decoration" section and annotates its own dead keys inline. That is the right pattern and the other five should copy it. The risk is not the dead keys themselves — it is that a reader takes `loop = "until_no_more_int_items"` for a loop. ## Team templates All 12 are structurally sound and **every declared skill resolves to a real file — 0 unbound across all of them**, which is the `skill-binding-repair` work holding (it was 55 of 85 dangling once). | team | slots | risk profile | skills | evidenced? | |---|---|---|---|---| | `rust_sdlc` | planner coder tester reviewer committer | coding_readwrite | 19 | **yes** — harness default | | `topic_research` | lead_researcher evidence_checker report_writer | research_web_readonly | 4 | **yes** — measured | | `continuous_research` | paper_reader signal_ranker script_writer | research_readonly | 11 | **yes** — live runs | | `backend` | api_designer db_engineer coder tester committer | coding_readwrite | 20 | **yes** — first run 2026-09-22 | | `frontend` | designer coder tester committer | coding_readwrite | 12 | no | | `mobile` | designer coder tester committer | coding_readwrite | 11 | no | | `gpu` | arch_analyst kernel_author bench_engineer coder committer | coding_readwrite | 13 | no | | `threejs` | scene_designer coder shader_author perf_engineer committer | coding_readwrite | 13 | no | | `codebase_research` | code_archeologist architecture_mapper flow_tracer vault_scribe | research_readonly | 11 | no | | `papers_research` | domain_scout paper_reader library_curator | research_web_readonly | 8 | no | | `insight_research` | implementation_tracker novelty_hunter publication_drafter | research_readonly | 8 | no | | `continuous_improvement` | brain_inspector improvement_proposer improvement_evaluator | research_readonly | 7 | no | **Four of twelve are evidenced.** `backend` was exercised on 2026-09-22, the first time anything had been staffed from it: all five roles provisioned with real agents (api_designer, db_engineer, coder, tester, committer), and the mission delivered cursor pagination — `Paged`, `paginate`, module declared, `cargo test` 3 passed — judged **met on the first pass**, 2 files pushed. It also gave the task-permission shadow its first confirmed `Edit` call. **Three of the remaining eight are still unevidenced.** The other nine are well-formed scaffolding: roles, prompts, brain seeds and resolving skills, and no run behind any of them. They will probably work — they are structurally identical to the three that do — but "probably" is the word, and this codebase has a name for the gap between a thing being wired and a thing being proven. Five of the nine need something we do not have: `frontend`, `mobile`, `threejs` and `gpu` target stacks with no repository in the harness to point them at, and `insight_research` needs a vault plus commit history. Those are blocked on a target, not on the template. The remaining four — `codebase_research`, `papers_research`, `continuous_improvement`, `backend` — could be exercised against repositories we already have. ## What this means we can ask for today **With confidence:** a repo-backed research→code loop on a Rust project, with a judge, a commit gate, a verifier subagent and delivery to a branch. A repo-less research report with sourced claims. Both are re-proven on every harness run. **With supervision:** a security scan and plan, a benchmark, a refactor. Each has completed once under a standing check; none has the depth of evidence the first two have. **With attention:** continuous research. It works, it produced two good digests today, and it has no guard. **Not yet:** anything staffed from the other nine teams. Nothing is known to be wrong with them; nothing is known to be right either. ## The two things worth doing next 1. **A `continuous-research` harness scenario.** The recipe with the most moving parts is the only one with no standing check, and it now also carries the paper triage (`kind` + `evidence`). A scenario that launches it, waits, and asserts the manifest has tags and a spread, `analysis.md` covers every paper, and `episode.json` parses would turn operator attention into a guard. 2. **Exercise the four unblocked teams once each**, against repositories we already have, and record what came out. Not to prove them mature — one run is not maturity — but to find out whether they run at all, which nobody currently knows.