Handoff: Spire guidance pass + gremlins MVP wiring

From: Igor, session 2026-10-15-21-grotto-work, 2026-10-17 00:04 For: a dedicated coordinator. This is Spire self-maintenance, so spire:zathras (/spire:zathras guidance-pass) is the natural fit; an Igor works too. Status: not started. Every decision marked (user) needs the user's answer before it's built.

Why

The headless-forks build (post-mortem) delivered 4,155 lines where about 600–800 were needed, in ~9 active hours. Half of the root causes are in the guidance text itself (text audit):

Single sentences steer toward completeness and audit-style output ("answer every … flag … one by one", "hunt", eight-field handoff notes with no length cap, an attacker asked for more scope).
Nothing steers toward the structure and size the requirement needs.
About 23% filler, 9% general knowledge, and rules repeated up to 11 times.
Stale text, such as the Agent-tool fork in athanor.md:32.
Planner, attacker and reviewer carry about 83% preloaded text from other skills.

The gremlins MVP (branch gremlins-mvp, 972 lines, built by gremlins in 21 min) worked first time. The guidance should make that path the normal one.

Inputs (read these, nothing else up front)

reports/2026-10-16-23-spire-guidance-text-audit.md: per-file sizes, a/b/c/d/e classes, duplication table, steering list, lean target sizes. The main work list.
reports/2026-10-16-23-headless-forks-postmortem.md: root causes and the 14 lesson options.
brainstorm/2026-10-16-22-grotto-plan-structure.md: the user's thinking. Especially "Steering sentences cut both ways": don't fix over-building with "small / happy path / delete", which can fire the other way. Use the safer framing listed there.
On branch gremlins-mvp: plugins/spire/skills/gremlins/SKILL.md and docs/workpad/reports/2026-10-17-gremlins-mvp-review.md.

Scope: four parts, in this order

A. Wire gremlins into the Athanor (small, mechanical)

athanor.md and implementation SKILL.md: replace the Agent-tool "fork of yourself" path (athanor.md:32, implementation SKILL.md:45-50) with the gremlins path:
- train one base on plan, design and trunk;
- spawn per complex block via Bash run_in_background;
- stop a gremlin with TaskStop;
- fresh Agent-tool agents stay for mechanical blocks.
Add the gremlins skill to the Athanor's preloaded skills.
igor/SKILL.md:66 "Fork sparingly": reword or drop it; it refers to the dead Agent-tool fork.
Done when no Spire text tells an agent to Agent-tool-fork itself, and the Athanor's procedure names the gremlins call sequence in ≤ ~15 lines (details stay in gremlins/SKILL.md).

B. Stale and contradicting text (audit class e)

zathras SKILL:74 "Always pass model" contradicts the pin rule.
The injected .claude/spire/project.md: its agent list lacks planner, attacker and reviewer; it has no ## Build section; it still lists g4b_ai as legacy.
Everything else in the audit's class-e table.

C. Steering sentences (audit §4): the part that changes behaviour

Rewrite, don't just delete, using the brainstorm's safer framing:

reviewer.md:22 "answer every deviation and flag … one by one". Move to: findings first; flags answered only where they change a verdict; a size and unrequested-surface section where the decision stays with the user.
run-log.md:54 and the eight-field handoff note: give it a length expectation; findings, not narration.
attacker.md:25 "missing function … error handling, security", which conflicts with :33 "scope cut back to the goal". Tie it to the goal's boxes.
Planner: plans fix code structure (modules, data model, main interfaces) and include an ecosystem inventory (what harness, CLI output, stdlib and existing tools already provide) before anything is designed to be built. These are grotto lessons. Put them here now; grotto can lift them later.
Igor and Athanor: briefs carry a time budget; re-plan when a preflight removes a design premise; mechanical blocks get a cheaper model; a fresh Athanor per phase; check the self-written contract digest before building.
Each changed sentence gets its counterweight in the same sentence (see the brainstorm).

D. Size and duplication (audit classes c and d, §3, §5)

Stop preloading workpad and implementation into planner, attacker and reviewer. Their briefs name the output paths. Audit target: ~500–800 words each.
One home per repeated rule ("stamp the model id" ×11, leaf-brief ×11, delegation ×9, test cadence ×7). Other files point to it in one line.
Igor persona and mindset: trim to the audit's moderate target (~4k words for the boot bundle). (user) how much of the voice to keep.
Remove general knowledge the model already has (audit class c quotes).

Decisions needed from the user (user)

The 15 unjustified unrequested items in the MVP (review §2). Keep, cut, or keep with a reason. The build report justified the other 15 of 30. Candidates the coordinator can propose a default for: unused stream fields and the leftover SPIRE_GREMLIN_CHILD marker (cut), briefs/<job>.md (keep, useful for debugging), torn-line ledger repair (keep).
Merge order: merge gremlins-mvp first and do A on main, or do A on the MVP branch. The headless-forks branch stays an unmerged prototype record either way.
Version: 0.3.0 for MVP plus guidance pass together, or MVP alone first.
How far to trim Igor's persona (D).
The three live checks still open on the MVP: TaskStop on an MVP spawn, rebase, a WSL or Linux run. Before the merge or after.

Answered 2026-10-17 (user)

Decision 1: keep the useful items, throw out the ones that aren't useful. The coordinator applies that per item, using review §2's list, and records the keep/cut call for each with a one-line reason in its report. Commit before cutting.
Part A is confirmed: bring gremlins into the Athanor.
Decision 2: apply the decision-1 cuts and the pre-merge check, merge gremlins-mvp, then do A on main.
Decision 3: 0.3.0 for MVP plus guidance pass together, one bump at the end.
Decision 4: moderate (audit option I-2): Voice cut to ~150 words; drop the example flourishes, "yeth, marthter", the furnace grammar rule, mindset.md's editor note, repeated delegation lines, history and Pinky. Workpad stays preloaded.
Decision 5: TaskStop on an MVP spawn before the merge; rebase and a WSL/Linux run after.
Steering proof run: not taken (no answer; default skip).

How to run it (lessons applied)

Timebox: A + B ≈ 30 min; C ≈ 45 min; D ≈ 45 min. One agent per part. Text is small, so a cold start is cheap. Sonnet for B and the mechanical parts of D; Opus for C.
Order matters: C before D, so the trimmed text keeps the new steering.
Commit before deleting text, so the history keeps every line.
One review at the end, asking: did each bundle reach its target size, did any rule lose its only home, and does any new sentence over-steer the other way? No per-part review loops.
Proof that the steering changed (optional, cheap): re-run the experiment's planning step, or a small plan, before and after C, and compare plan size and structure. (user) whether to spend the run.
Accretion rule for Igor still holds: dated refinement sections in existing docs; compression is the curator's job. This pass is a deliberate compression, run as Spire maintenance, which is why Zathras fits.

Out of scope

Grotto itself (design → plan → handoff procedure, standalone storage). Use this pass's planner changes as input.
The Rust session-harness app (reports/2026-10-16-01-session-harness-app-forms.md).
Fixing the headless-forks prototype.

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