Historical field note

This record preserves prior investigation or planning evidence. It is not a current operating contract; use the numbered book and current runbooks for instructions.

Prerequisite Investigation: task_fd2f34b64823410c84a14fc0345610ff

Task: Repair the execution-environment prerequisite for a low-confidence dream-cycle repair finding scoped to the skill subsystem. Parent task: task_7d24b414a8b14ffca5e983040a1bc18f (goal: "Investigate low-confidence dream finding: skill"). Finding fingerprint: dreamrepair:5404b15fffa355d739c21e138c5cc122 Verified by: fleet worker (prerequisite investigation; no deliverable edits) Investigation date: 2026-07-16

Status: NOT-ACTIONABLE (environment healthy, finding is a low-confidence artifact)

The dream-cycle finding that spawned the parent task is a failure_pattern with project scope, low confidence, and exactly one supporting memory record. Its only affected label is the bare skill token skill; no tool, provider, or repo-area label is attached. Investigation confirms the skill subsystem and the execution environment are healthy, so no code repair is warranted. This record closes out the prerequisite with the reason and the evidence gap so the parent retry has an auditable outcome.

Evidence Gap

The finding is supported by a single memory record whose text is a prior attempt's own recap: an environment-prerequisite repair task that "investigated the skill subsystem and ran the canonical contract". In other words, the one evidence record is a meta-observation about a prior investigation, not an observation of a concrete skill defect (no failing assertion, no stack trace, no reproduction, no offending skill asset). The parent's real, repeated blocker recorded in task activity is unrelated to any skill code: the coding-agent sandbox preflight failed at probe time (class=probe_failed) and the run fell back to the gateway. That is an executor/runtime-availability event, not a defect in the checked-in skill subsystem. The skill label is therefore an over-broad classification of a runtime preflight failure, and the finding is not actionable as a source change.

Skill Subsystem Health

Import and behavior of the skill-related modules were confirmed in the task-owned worktree against the checked-out source:

• import mac, mac.skill_auto_repair, mac.dream_repair_tasks, and mac.dream_scanner all import cleanly.
• The guarded skill auto-repair path (mac.skill_auto_repair.stage_skill_patch) enforces its documented guards — allowlist (skills/, deploy/skills/), evidence-excerpt gate, secret scrub, and operator-identity scrub — and its suite passes.
• Combined skill/dream suites pass: test_skill_auto_repair.py, test_dream_repair_tasks.py, test_dream_scanner.py, test_dream_cycle_classifier.py, test_fleet_skills.py, test_hermes_skills_dedup.py, and test_dream_cycle_runner.py collect and pass (156 passed).
• The two checked-in skill assets (skills/mac-agent-terminal-timeout/SKILL.md and skills/setup-mac-fleet/SKILL.md) are present and are covered by the fleet-generic docs guard (test_docs_no_operator_identity).

Toolchain

Measured with <command> --version in the task worktree; all satisfy the repository contract (python3, git, gh).

Command	Version found	Requirement	Result
python3	3.12.13	present	OK
git	2.39.5	present	OK
gh	2.95.0	present	OK

Bootstrap

Command: python3 scripts/bootstrap-project.py. The contract-required artifacts are present and executable: .venv/bin/python, .venv/bin/pytest, and .venv/bin/coverage. The editable mac package imports from the worktree source, so tests exercise the checked-out code.

Recommendation

• Close the parent finding as not actionable: it is a single-record, low-confidence classification of a runtime preflight failure, not a skill source defect.
• If the preflight fallback recurs, file it against the executor/runtime availability path (probe/gateway) rather than the skill subsystem, so future dream findings carry a tool/provider label instead of the bare skill token.

Assumptions

• This is a repo_change prerequisite task and the environment was already healthy, so the tracked deliverable is this investigation record rather than a code repair. Recorded here so the prerequisite outcome is auditable from repository history.
• Canonical synchronization and any rebase are owned by the deterministic host finalizer; this record is self-contained and unaffected by upstream drift.