Done is a contract, evaluated line by line and refused when unmet

A worker does not get to define its own successful completion: every line of the finish contract is printed pass or fail, and nothing is written to the record until all of them pass.

status

stable

exposed through

• ✓cli
• ·api
• ·mcp
• ·cockpit
• ✓docs

area

verification

What it does

The outcome of a task is a typed field with a closed vocabulary, never a sentence. majordomus finish --outcome completed runs the verification command the profile requires, walks every line the policy selects, prints each as pass or fail with the command that reproduces a failure, and writes nothing when any line fails; the task stays open. An open question that names the task blocks acceptance until it is resolved, and a blocker survives a handover rather than being lost with the conversation.

no_match and failed are different facts: the thing sought does not exist, or the work could not be done. A supervisor that cannot tell them apart cannot decide whether to retry, escalate or accept, so the field decides and prose never does.

What it does not do

It does not prevent a worker from touching a file outside its scope while it works; it detects the file at check and at finish and refuses to accept the work. The regression-test line is a path heuristic and says so. Nothing here measures tokens or cost.

The commands that run it

• majordomus start begin

  Begin one scoped task under a profile, and refuse while another is active.

• majordomus check verify · read-only

  Is the current task still consistent with its policy, its scope and this checkout?

• majordomus finish conclude

  Evaluate the finish contract and refuse the outcome if any line of it is unmet.

• majordomus question work

  Open a question that blocks acceptance, resolve it, and list what is still open.

What it answers

Operational moments from the Why catalogue that name one of this feature's mechanisms. Nothing here was assigned: a moment appears because it names a rule, a command, a capability or a claim this feature also names.

• →re-explained the same context to a brand-new session
• →found two agents fixing the same bug in two branches
• →watched the strongest model, at maximum effort, rename a variable
• →accepted "done" because the model said so, and paid for it the next morning
• →watched a session undo last week's decision, for the reason it was made
• →found a task "in progress" that nobody had touched for three weeks
• →watched one worker revert another worker's change, on purpose
• →found five worktrees and could not say which of them still mattered
• →found finished work on a branch that nobody ever merged
• →had two sessions writing into one checkout without either knowing
• →found a rule everyone believed was enforced and nothing ever invoked
• →found a substantial change that no issue, ticket or plan ever asked for
• →closed an issue whose acceptance criteria nothing had actually checked
• →read a promise in the README that no test stood behind
• →pasted a command from the documentation and watched it fail
• →let a fast, cheap session make a decision the whole codebase now lives with
• →could not say why one provider was used for that work and another for this
• →looked at the bill and could not say which of it produced anything
• →published a page that promised more than any test could support
• →could not reproduce a result because nothing recorded the state it came from

The rules that hold it

• blockingVerification integritymajordomus.verification-integrity
• advisoryDefine done before executingmajordomus.define-done-first
• advisoryVerify outcomes, not activitymajordomus.verify-outcomes
• blockingBlocker resolutionmajordomus.blocker-resolution
• blockingNote integritymajordomus.note-integrity
• blockingState consistencymajordomus.state-consistency
• blockingEvery finding carries a reproduce commandproject.finding-carries-reproduce

What is guaranteed

• guaranteed finish evaluates the finish contract line by line and refuses when any line is unmet
• guaranteed An outcome is a value from a closed vocabulary, not free text
• guaranteed An unresolved question blocks acceptance, and an entry the gate cannot parse is a failure rather than a silent pass
• guaranteed check reports whether state, scope, blockers and checkpoint age are consistent right now
• guaranteed Every finding carries the command that reproduces it
• guaranteed Exit codes are a contract, and no code means "warn and continue"
• guaranteed An entry in the questions store that does not parse blocks acceptance exactly as an unresolved question does
• guaranteed A blocking question keeps blocking after the work is handed to a new task

Executable use cases

• completionDecide whether finished work is actually finished
• completionBlock acceptance on a question nobody has answered
• continuityHand work over with a question still open, and keep it blocking