Majordomus reasons, decides, implements and validates with no advisor at all: absent advisors are reported as ordinary state, material uncertainty gets a structured local review, and the conclusion claims no independent review

With none of the declared advisors installed, configured or reachable, a session still

declared statusdeclared status: guaranteed Declared deterministic and blocking, implemented, and naming the behavioural test that is to prove it. Whether a recorded run supports it is the evidence verdict, shown beside it.

recorded evidencerecorded evidence: not run Declared guaranteed, and not supported by a recorded run: the test is named, and no passing run of the current inputs is recorded. how evidence is recorded

the case builds its environment from nothing (env -i, a PATH holding git and node only, no credential), so it holds on a machine where every advisor is installed.

What it means

With none of the declared advisors installed, configured or reachable, a session still runs the whole workflow: it starts a task, states a material uncertainty with its evidence, plans, concludes on local evidence, implements, validates and hands over. Every advisor is reported with why it is absent (executable_not_found, credential_absent), reasoning reports itself operational, and the conclusion's independent review count is zero rather than a review that never happened.

How it works

Availability is a pure function of presence (an executable on PATH, a credential variable set), the reasoning mode and recorded outcomes (apps/majordomus-cli/src/reasoning/availability.rs). The policy (apps/majordomus-cli/src/reasoning/policy.rs) treats zero available advisors as a plan: decide_locally, with the structured local review spelled out. The transport (scripts/advisor-consult) consults nobody and exits 0. The writer computes the review count from the consultations a conclusion cites, so a local conclusion counts zero.

How to see it

env -i PATH=/usr/bin:/bin majordomus reasoning advisors   # 0 available · N optional unavailable
majordomus reasoning plan --materiality high              # outcome decide_locally, local review steps

test/cases/730_reasoning_works_with_no_advisor.sh runs the workflow end to end, through the derived handover, and in the ci and offline modes.

What it does not cover

It does not make local reasoning as good as review; it makes its absence explicit. It does not check that the executor actually performed the local review steps — the record says what was decided and on what evidence, and the evidence is what a reviewer reads.

Why it exists

Optional providers are optional only if the work survives their absence. A workflow that merely avoids crashing without an advisor, then asks a person what to do, is not provider-independent (ADR 0098).

Detail rendered from docs/claims/reasoning-works-with-no-advisor.md.

From the statement to the proof

1 · the public statement

Majordomus reasons, decides, implements and validates with no advisor at all: absent advisors are reported as ordinary state, material uncertainty gets a structured local review, and the conclusion claims no independent review

Made on Reasoning.
2 · the canonical claim

reasoning-works-with-no-advisordeclared status: guaranteed in docs/CLAIMS.yaml

Defined in read it on this site · docs/REASONING.md
3 · the implementation

apps/majordomus-cli/src/reasoning/policy.rs
4 · the test and the scenarios
Test: test/cases/730_reasoning_works_with_no_advisor.sh
5 · the recorded runs

recorded evidence: not run how evidence is recorded

Verify it yourself

The test runs in a disposable temporary repository and asserts the behaviour, not a string in the source.

from a clone of the repository

bash test/run.sh 730_reasoning_works_with_no_advisor