Whether a task added debt, left a branch or a worktree behind, or grew the backlog is answered by the done invariant from git, the debt baselines and the recorded forge observation, measured from where the task started; a reading that was not taken is unknown, never a pass

What it means

When a person asks at the end of a session whether everything is done, whether any debt was added, and whether there are more branches, worktrees and pull requests than at the start, the answer is a reading the tool takes. A worker reports that reading. It does not answer from what it remembers doing, and a question nothing could read is unknown.

How it works

The done invariant (apps/majordomus-cli/src/gates/done.rs) carries three closing questions, and apps/majordomus-cli/src/gates/closing.rs takes one reading for each, measured from where the task started:

• no-new-debt counts the entries of every .ai/repo/*-baseline.txt at the commit the task started at and in the working tree. A baseline that gained an entry makes the question fail, committed or not; one that appears for the first time is named and is not growth.
• nothing-accumulated reads the first line of each local branch's reflog and of each linked worktree's HEAD reflog, which is when git created it. What was created since the task started and still exists makes the question queued and is named.
• backlog-not-grown reads the recorded forge observation and numbers the pull requests opened since the task started that are still open.

Each reading is a result of its own. One that fails does not take the others with it, and its question says why it is unknown.

How to see it

majordomus check names every question of the invariant that is not answered as id=status on its done line; the evidence behind each is in the questions of gates.completion, over the command line, HTTP, MCP and the Cockpit alike.

test/cases/1037_the_closing_question_is_measured.sh adds an entry to a baseline and sees fail with the numbers, creates a branch and a worktree and sees them owed and named until both are gone, and breaks the task's starting commit to see unknown where a pass would have been a lie.

What it does not cover

It does not say there are fewer branches, worktrees or pull requests than at the start: what was removed in the meantime leaves no record, so the readings name what was added and remains, with the totals now. It does not say who created a branch, because git does not; the readings are the repository's. It removes nothing and refuses no finish. The backlog reading is as old as the last majordomus prs refresh, and says when that was.

Two readings are coarser than the question. Debt is counted in entries, so one entry taken out and another put in reads as no change; only growth is seen. And a branch or worktree is dated by the first line its reflog still holds, so one whose older entries git has expired — thirty days for commits a rewrite left unreachable — reads as younger than it is, and can be named as created since the task started when it was not. Both err towards asking again, never towards a pass that was not earned.

Why it exists

On 2026-10-10 one session was asked the closing question seven times and answered seven times from memory, each time describing only what it had touched itself. Measured on the eighth, the repository had three more open pull requests and twenty-one more worktrees than the answers implied. A worker's memory holds what the worker did, and the worker is the one party with a reason to round up (project.a-closing-question-is-answered-by-measurement).