ui_tools_launcher — Railspike debug log

2026-10-31T00:50Z — Step 1 (solution assessment)

RAILSPIKE.md › Follow-up/branching ("ALWAYS establish a feature branch before Step 4"; commit discipline: branch after Approved Step 3): caught a feature branch opened too early at Step 1 entry; it was deleted before any planning file was written. Retain; the timing could be stated once in the Step 1 file too.
step1_solution_assessment.md › Effort estimation ("preserve intake before detailed inspection"): made me record the intake estimate and timestamp before reading the Tools source, so the intake is genuinely prospective. Retain.
step1_solution_assessment.md › Structure ("Concepts touched … Mark missing entries as proposed"): surfaced that no Tools or navigation-icon concept entry exists, so both are listed as proposed. Retain.
effort-estimation.md › Estimate presentation (bold Estimate: beneath each option heading, Cycle estimate: below the state fields): clear and quick to apply. Retain.

RAILSPIKE.md › Follow-up Cycles Before Merge: this is a new cycle, not a follow-up on an unmerged branch.
effort-estimation.md › Recovering frozen references: all three R1 hashes matched, so no recovery was needed.

step1_solution_assessment.md › Deliverable ("≤1 page"): the study snapshot table and shared metadata push the artifact past one page. Unclear whether study records count toward the page limit; suggest stating that they don't.
Host checklist marks this cycle "Process: Direct" while the user asked for Step 1. Railspike's mode-selection text covers choosing staged vs one-shot, not a host checklist that pre-assigns Direct; I followed the user's explicit request. A one-line rule ("an explicit user request for a step overrides a planned mode") might help.

step2_feature_description.md › Structure ("Shared component inventory: enumerate every existing UI/API surface"): the search found that Bookmarklets reuses the launcher's classes, styles and icon rules, which became the top risk. Retain.
step2_feature_description.md › Structure ("Risks … earliest validation"): turned that finding into a concrete early check (Bookmarklets screenshots before shared CSS changes). Retain.

step2_feature_description.md › Known user or environment: the request names no user, machine or environment.
step2_feature_description.md › Delivery scope, documentation-only fields: this is application work.

step2_feature_description.md › Guardrails ("Avoid … UI mockups"): the group membership list is close to layout detail, but it is the core requirement the checklist defines; kept as a requirement, not a mockup.

step3_development_plan_do.md › Structure ("Resolve each material risk before dependent work begins"): led me to run Step 2's test-and-docs search before planning, so the plan names each affected test in the stage that changes it instead of leaving it open. Retain.
step3_development_plan_after.md › After Checklist item 1 (risk impact/validation/mitigation): caught that the Bookmarklets baseline had to exclude its own Tools bar, which reorders by design. Retain.

step3_development_plan_before.md › Before Checklist ("Confirm Step 2 is approved and no new scope was added", "Keep Step 1-3 planning docs uncommitted"): both are also stated in RAILSPIKE.md and the after file; light overhead. Suggest consolidating into one line.

step3_development_plan_do.md › Additional requirements (replay a known user or environment failure): Step 2 names none.
Documentation-only completion fields: application work.

step3_development_plan_do.md › "Stages should be about <=1 hour or <=50 lines": Stage 3's theme matrix may exceed 50 lines of test code; kept as one stage because splitting the test from the fixes it reveals would separate cause from correction.

step4_implementation_after.md › Final Verification Checklist items 1–3 (every stage completed with verification recorded; one stage-scoped commit per stage; commit count ≥ 1 + stages): caught that Stage 3 had no stage section of its own in the summary (its work and verification sat under "Review findings after Stage 2", shipped in the Stage 3 commit), so a labelled retrospective Stage 3 record was added at closeout. Retain.
step4_implementation_do.md › Effort estimation ("Collect missing older records only at the current date, labeled retrospective when applicable, not as fabricated originals"): governed how that Stage 3 record and the Stage 4 record were written. Retain.
concepts.md › Implementation and verification ("Verify touched entries and their paths against the resulting code"): the path check established that the icon stylesheet keys tool glyphs on each link's href and group glyphs on data-shape, not on data-tone; the new concept entry says so. Retain.
RAILSPIKE.md › Railspike Debug Mode (separate log-only handoff commit after the final stage): kept this report out of the stage commit. Retain.

step4_implementation_do.md › "complete the retrospective assessment and authorized ledger closeout update in the final stage before its commit" and step4_implementation_after.md › Effort estimation ("Include authorized ledger closeout updates in the final stage commit; verify this before leaving Do"): the same gate stated twice; light overhead. Suggest keeping it once, in Do, with After only confirming.

step4_implementation_after.md › item 5 (deployment, release, external-system, role, migration dependencies): none in scope; recorded as not applicable in the summary.
Documentation-only completion fields: application work.
RAILSPIKE.md › Follow-up Cycles Before Merge: the feature branch was already merged to main before this closeout stage.

effort-estimation.md › single exposed rater: Steps 1–3 and Stages 1–2 were rated by claude-opus-5-5; the Stage 2 review pass, Stage 3 and this closeout ran as claude-fable-5-1. The instructions do not say how a rater change mid-cycle is recorded. The retrospective assessments are labelled with the model that made them and the cycle keeps its original ratings untouched; suggest one line on rater changes.
The closeout stage ran after the feature branch was merged to main (the user merged after Stage 3). RAILSPIKE.md says cycle completion does not imply merge readiness but does not address a records-only final stage after merge; it was done on a separate branch from main with the stage commit and a log-only commit. Suggest stating that a records-only stage after merge keeps the ordinary stage-commit cadence on a new branch.