What happened
The review agent on PR #2761 correctly rated the stale plan-doc references as low-severity. However, the retro agent filed issue #2939 from this low-severity finding without additional scrutiny, triggering the full triage-code pipeline. The finding was about stale references in a documentation file that had not been modified in over a month and is not referenced by any active agent workflow. The result was 4+ agent runs (retro, triage, code, contributor PR review) and wasted external contributor time — all from a low-severity doc finding that turned out to be a false positive.
What could go better
The retro agent elevated a low-severity doc finding to an issue without assessing whether the affected documentation is actively consumed or historically important. While the AGENTS.md guidance (companion proposal) is the primary fix for the historical-plans case, a more general improvement would prevent similar false positives for other doc-only low-severity findings. The retro agent could check: (a) is the affected file actively referenced by other docs or agent workflows? (b) has the file been modified recently? (c) would stale references actually mislead anyone? This is a defense-in-depth measure. Confidence is medium — the primary fix is AGENTS.md context, but this would reduce false-positive issue filings more broadly across repos where historical docs exist.
Proposed change
Update the retro agent definition or prompt to include guidance that low-severity documentation-only findings (categories: stale-reference, documentation-drift) should receive additional scrutiny before becoming issues. Specifically, the retro agent should consider whether: (1) the affected doc is actively maintained (recent modifications in the last 60 days), (2) agents or contributors are known to reference the doc for implementation guidance, and (3) the stale content could plausibly mislead someone. If none of these conditions are met, the finding should be noted in the retro summary but not filed as a standalone issue. This change belongs in the retro agent's system prompt or skill definition within the fullsend platform.
Validation criteria
Over the next 20 retro agent runs, zero standalone issues are filed from low-severity stale-reference or documentation-drift findings in files that have not been modified in the past 60 days. Medium and higher severity findings continue to generate issues as before. Track by comparing retro-filed issues tagged component/docs + priority/low before and after the change.
Generated by retro agent from #2939
What happened
The review agent on PR #2761 correctly rated the stale plan-doc references as low-severity. However, the retro agent filed issue #2939 from this low-severity finding without additional scrutiny, triggering the full triage-code pipeline. The finding was about stale references in a documentation file that had not been modified in over a month and is not referenced by any active agent workflow. The result was 4+ agent runs (retro, triage, code, contributor PR review) and wasted external contributor time — all from a low-severity doc finding that turned out to be a false positive.
What could go better
The retro agent elevated a low-severity doc finding to an issue without assessing whether the affected documentation is actively consumed or historically important. While the AGENTS.md guidance (companion proposal) is the primary fix for the historical-plans case, a more general improvement would prevent similar false positives for other doc-only low-severity findings. The retro agent could check: (a) is the affected file actively referenced by other docs or agent workflows? (b) has the file been modified recently? (c) would stale references actually mislead anyone? This is a defense-in-depth measure. Confidence is medium — the primary fix is AGENTS.md context, but this would reduce false-positive issue filings more broadly across repos where historical docs exist.
Proposed change
Update the retro agent definition or prompt to include guidance that low-severity documentation-only findings (categories: stale-reference, documentation-drift) should receive additional scrutiny before becoming issues. Specifically, the retro agent should consider whether: (1) the affected doc is actively maintained (recent modifications in the last 60 days), (2) agents or contributors are known to reference the doc for implementation guidance, and (3) the stale content could plausibly mislead someone. If none of these conditions are met, the finding should be noted in the retro summary but not filed as a standalone issue. This change belongs in the retro agent's system prompt or skill definition within the fullsend platform.
Validation criteria
Over the next 20 retro agent runs, zero standalone issues are filed from low-severity stale-reference or documentation-drift findings in files that have not been modified in the past 60 days. Medium and higher severity findings continue to generate issues as before. Track by comparing retro-filed issues tagged
component/docs+priority/lowbefore and after the change.Generated by retro agent from #2939