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Persona notices when a subject deserves a durable artifact #185

Description

@LinseCed

Dependencies

  • Paired with sprintstart-backend#212, which sharpens the tool descriptions and supplies the
    repeat-subject signal. Neither half works alone.

Summary & Goal

Teach the buddy persona to notice when a subject was hard enough to deserve something durable, and
to reach for the board when it was.

The capability exists — the backend mounts board tools and executes them. What is missing is the
judgement about when, and that lives here: the backend describes the persona as being rebuilt
from the AI service's own skeleton on every turn with no system message
(sprintstart-backend · BuddyService.agentRequest).

Technical Specification

  • The persona should treat a subject as worth a durable artifact when it took several turns to get
    through, when the hire has returned to it, or when the explanation will not survive the
    conversation. The backend supplies a repeat-subject signal per turn (sprintstart-backend#212) — use it as
    evidence, not as a trigger to obey blindly.
  • Placing a card is not the answer to every hard question. A one-line clarification is not a
    diagram. Over-placing is the failure mode that makes a board unusable; say so in the persona rather
    than leaving it implied.
  • DIAGRAM is the kind that fits an explanation, and it takes a subject — the question the
    picture should answer. The persona chooses that subject; the boxes come back derived from the
    project's corpus with a citation each, and an ungrounded box is dropped server-side. The persona
    must not assert what the diagram will contain.
  • Once sprintstart-backend#210 lands, the buddy can also create notes and checklists. The persona should prefer the narrowest artifact that helps, and must say
    what it did — the hire is told, never surprised.
  • Say it once. If a card is already on the board, point at it rather than placing again. The
    backend already answers ALREADY_THERE and DISMISSED_BY_HIRE in words, including
    "Do not add it again — if it matters, say it in the conversation instead." The persona should
    honour those rather than retry.

Acceptance Criteria

  • The persona names the conditions under which a durable artifact is warranted
  • It explicitly discourages placing a card for routine questions
  • It uses the backend's repeat-subject signal as evidence rather than as an instruction
  • It chooses a DIAGRAM subject without asserting the content
  • It respects ALREADY_THERE and DISMISSED_BY_HIRE instead of retrying
  • It tells the hire what it placed
  • Tests with scripted LLM clients cover: hard subject → places, routine question → does not,
    already-placed → points instead of re-placing

Definition of Done

  • uv run ruff check . clean
  • uv run ruff format --check . clean
  • uv run pyright src/ 0 errors
  • uv run pytest green

Activity

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