docs_landing Railspike debug log

2026-10-20T00:00Z — Step 1 (solution assessment)

RAILSPIKE.md "Follow-up Cycles Before Merge": required a distinct prefix (docs_landing), predecessor link and recorded branch reuse; prevented overwriting docs_discovery artifacts. Retain.
step1 "Original Query … do not summarize or omit anything": conflicted with a very long pasted brief that was itself truncated; forced an explicit note about truncation and a condensed-verbatim excerpt. Suggest clarifying how to preserve very long or truncated pasted queries (e.g. allow an appendix file).
step1 "Understood Intent": useful because the brief came from a reviewer without code access and the user asked for system-aware adaptation. Retain.

The ≤1-page limit is in tension with the "do not omit anything" Original Query rule when the query exceeds a page; the artifact currently exceeds one page mainly because of the query.

step2 "Known user or environment": the brief names a low-vision maintainer; the rule forced concrete entry, failure, recovery and evidence (zoom/width/theme screenshots, contrast report). Retain.
step2 "Risks (2–4): impact, earliest validation, mitigation": surfaced the category-taxonomy redundancy found during the Step 1 page count as a blocking risk rather than a buried note. Retain.
step2 "Shared component inventory": confirmed reuse of PlatformDocsCatalog/static routing instead of a parallel results route. Retain.

≤1 page limit: a reviewer brief with many hard accessibility requirements makes "3–5 core requirements" dense; bullets were consolidated rather than dropped, which may exceed the intended glance-ability.

step3_do "include a stage that replays each reported failure as acceptance evidence": produced Stage 8's known-user matrix (zoom/width/theme/JS/host). Retain.
step3_do "Key Risks … Prefix usability, data, or rollback risks High risk": made static/dynamic divergence and theme contrast explicit blockers for dependent stages. Retain.
step3_before "reconcile recorded requests against approved Step 2": surfaced that a skip link touches shared layout, which Step 2 excluded; flagged for explicit approval instead of silently widening scope. Retain.

"Stages ≤1 hour or ≤50 lines" vs "≤ about eight stages": a UI rework of this breadth cannot satisfy both; Stages 4, 6 and 8 likely exceed 50 lines. The instructions give no tie-break besides rescoping in Step 2.

step4_before "Planning Docs Commit Gate" and "organization rule": produced a clean planning commit (93e98f89) with only Steps 1–3, the debug log and the plan index entry; the summary followed afterwards. Retain.
step4_do "Stage Boundary Protocol": one commit per stage (8 stage commits) with summary updates kept the audit trail diffable against Step 3. Retain.
step4_after item 7 "A focused pass is never reported as a full-suite or user-outcome result": forced an honest partial-suite record and a baseline-worktree comparison separating 5 pre-existing failures from 2 non-reproducing ones. Retain.
RAILSPIKE "Enhancement Requests": the skip-link deferral (todo.txt) stayed visible in the summary instead of being silently dropped. Retain.

Stage sizing (≤1 hour / ≤50 lines): Stages 4, 6 and 8 exceeded it substantially; the guidance offers no way to keep a UI rework within eight stages and this size. Consider explicit guidance for verification-heavy stages.
Resource guidance: nothing addresses running heavy suites/builds concurrently; overlapping full-suite, baseline and browser runs loaded a shared machine until the user intervened. Suggest a note to run long verification serially and stop helper servers after use.