fix(groom): bound finder exploration and spend - #261
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📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe finder workflow now limits execution to 100 turns and an $8 budget. Its inspection brief limits tool calls, preserves time for output, prevents retrying denied calls, and requires dropping weak findings. Tests verify these limits and instructions. ChangesFinder execution bounds
Suggested reviewers: Merge Risk: 🟠 High · up to The new finder limits can cause otherwise valid runs to fail before producing required JSON, so a budget-aware output margin should be added before merge. The workflow comment and regression-test gaps also remain to be corrected. 🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 2✅ Passed checks (2 passed)
✨ Finishing Touches🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
✨ Simplify code
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Actionable comments posted: 4
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Inline comments:
In @.github/groom/tests/test_finder_bounds.py:
- Around line 21-23: Extend the assertions in the test covering FINDER_BRIEF to
verify both the output-reservation clause and the prohibition on seeking a
shell-command substitute, alongside the existing inspection-call checks.
- Around line 17-18: Update the assertions in the test around finder_step to
scope max-turns and max-budget-usd validation to the actual claude -p CLI
invocation rather than all text between step names. Extract the command block or
assert the exact argument lines there, preserving the expected cap values.
In @.github/workflows/groom.yml:
- Around line 1384-1388: Update the workflow comment near the turn and dollar
caps to remove historical usage and spend figures, including “~82 turns” and
“$11.25”; retain only the public limits and their general rationale, without
changing the caps themselves.
- Line 1431: Update the claude invocation’s --max-budget-usd setting to reserve
sufficient budget for the required final JSON write to $FINDER_OUT, or add an
explicit budget-aware handoff that stops inspection before the cap; ensure low
remaining budget is treated as a no-go for continued inspection so Run finder
still completes successfully.
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Addresses #261 (comment) Addresses #261 (comment) Addresses #261 (comment) Addresses #261 (comment)
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🔍 Cursor Review — Consolidated panel
Triggered by @mattmillerai.
Found 9 finding(s).
| Severity | Count |
|---|---|
| 🟠 High | 2 |
| 🟡 Medium | 4 |
| 🟢 Low | 2 |
| ⚪ Nit | 1 |
Panel: 6/6 reviewers contributed findings.
| --model "$MODEL" \ | ||
| --max-turns 150 \ | ||
| --max-turns 100 \ | ||
| --max-budget-usd 8 \ |
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🟠 High — --max-budget-usd is introduced with no evidence that the exact-pinned @anthropic-ai/claude-code@2.1.217 accepts it, and an unknown option aborts argv parsing before any agent turn runs — so if the flag is unsupported, every finder invocation exits non-zero having produced nothing. The neighbouring permission-rule comment records that its rules were verified empirically against the pinned 2.1.217 precisely because this surface is version-specific; verify this flag the same way before merge. Raised by 2 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial, claude-opus-5-thinking-max edge-case).
| claude -p "$PROMPT" \ | ||
| --model "$MODEL" \ | ||
| --max-turns 150 \ | ||
| --max-turns 100 \ |
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🟠 High — The cap drops 150 → 100 in the same hunk that deletes the only recorded measurement: the whole-repo finder brief needs ~82 turns in a healthy environment. That leaves ~18 turns of slack instead of ~68, on a repo that keeps growing. The compensating bound is advisory prompt text in a different unit — 60 inspection tool calls are not turns, and denied calls, retries and synthesis all consume turns without consuming inspection calls — so runs that completed before can now end in error_max_turns. Keep the measurement in the comment and justify 100 against it, or keep the headroom. Raised by 3 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max edge-case, claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial, kimi-k3-high adversarial).
| --model "$MODEL" \ | ||
| --max-turns 150 \ | ||
| --max-turns 100 \ | ||
| --max-budget-usd 8 \ |
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🟡 Medium — If the ceiling trips just after a complete $FINDER_OUT is written — the likely overrun shape now that the brief tells the agent to write the result and stop — the CLI exits non-zero, the step runs exit "$STATUS", and neither Assert finder produced JSON nor Upload finder candidates carries if: always(). A finished, valid handoff is thrown away and audit_verify is skipped after the run has billed the full audit. Validate and upload the result before propagating the exit status. Raised by 2 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial, gpt-5.6-sol-max edge-case).
| # The brief reserves both turn and dollar margin for producing the result | ||
| # rather than treating broad coverage or a finding minimum as completion. | ||
| # The dollar ceiling is intentionally separate: turn cost varies with | ||
| # context size, so a turn cap alone is not a reliable spend boundary. |
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🟡 Medium — This comment claims the brief "reserves both turn and dollar margin", but a claude -p agent has no live cumulative-spend readout, so "stop before the estimated inspection spend reaches $6" is an unverifiable self-estimate and the hard $8 cut — which can land mid-Edit of the handoff file — is the only real enforcement. $8 is also a fixed constant while model is a caller input defaulting to an Opus-class model, so per-turn spend varies by an order of magnitude across callers, and a dollar bound makes coverage a function of untrusted repo content (bulky files cut inspection short). The 60-tool-call bound is the half the agent can actually count; the dollar reserve needs enforcement outside the prompt. Raised by 5 of 6 reviewers (gpt-5.6-sol-max adversarial, claude-opus-5-thinking-max edge-case, claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial, kimi-k3-high adversarial, kimi-k3-high edge-case).
| HARD PRECISION BAR — this is the entire point: only things you'd stake your credibility on; ~6-12 findings MAX, ranked. EXPLICITLY AVOID premature abstraction (in Go especially, a little duplication beats the wrong abstraction; never DRY incidentally-similar-but-semantically-distinct code), bikeshedding, and anything linters/formatters already enforce. For EACH finding include a 'steelman-against' (the strongest reason NOT to do it) and DROP it if the steelman wins. | ||
| Work to a bounded inspection plan. The run has an $8 hard ceiling: treat $6 as the inspection budget and reserve the final $2 for synthesizing and writing the required JSON. Stop inspecting before the estimated inspection spend reaches $6; low remaining budget is a no-go for another inspection call. After at most 60 inspection tool calls, stop exploring, write the best valid result supported by the evidence already gathered, and finish. Reserve enough time to write the result; broad repository coverage is NOT a completion requirement. If an inspection call is denied, do not retry it or seek a shell-command substitute — continue with the available Read, Glob, Grep, git log, git show, grep, cat, ls, head, tail, and wc tools. | ||
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| HARD PRECISION BAR — this is the entire point: only things you'd stake your credibility on; ~6-12 findings MAX, ranked. Fewer than 6 findings is valid, including zero, when that is all the bounded inspection supports. EXPLICITLY AVOID premature abstraction (in Go especially, a little duplication beats the wrong abstraction; never DRY incidentally-similar-but-semantically-distinct code), bikeshedding, and anything linters/formatters already enforce. For EACH finding include a 'steelman-against' (the strongest reason NOT to do it) and DROP it if the steelman wins. |
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🟡 Medium — Blessing zero findings turns a starved run into a silent green no-op: findings: [] sets have_candidates=false, audit_verify and everything downstream are skipped by their if:, the job is green, and the cadence clock still advances — so "gave up at the budget line" is indistinguishable from "repo is clean" for a full GROOM_INTERVAL_DAYS. That is the outcome groom.yml refuses elsewhere (it fails turn exhaustion loudly, and logs dropped counts because a silent drop looks like a clean directory). Have the agent record its stop reason in the output, or emit a warning when it stops early. Raised by 2 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial, claude-opus-5-thinking-max edge-case).
| # Two independent ceilings bound a runaway finder: 100 turns and $8. | ||
| # The brief reserves both turn and dollar margin for producing the result | ||
| # rather than treating broad coverage or a finding minimum as completion. | ||
| # The dollar ceiling is intentionally separate: turn cost varies with |
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🟡 Medium — Both new ceilings abort inside the Run finder step, and interval.py's agent_step_started counts any non-skipped start of that step as a spent audit, so a cap-induced failure still advances the GROOM_INTERVAL_DAYS clock. A repo that reliably trips either tightened cap therefore gets one loud failure followed by a full interval of silently skipped ticks rather than a retry on the next daily tick — and tightening both caps makes that path materially more reachable. Raised by 2 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max edge-case, claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial).
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| self.assertRegex(claude_command, re.compile(r"--max-turns\s+100\s+\\")) | ||
| self.assertRegex(claude_command, re.compile(r"--max-budget-usd\s+8\s+\\")) |
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🟢 Low — This suite is textual only: asserting that --max-budget-usd 8 appears in the YAML stays green whether or not the pinned CLI accepts the option, so it reads as coverage for the new ceiling while proving nothing about it and would not catch the unknown-option failure mode. It also pins the brief's $6/$2 prose and the workflow's 8 with independent literals, so the two can drift apart with both tests passing, and split("- name: Run finder", 1)[1] raises IndexError on a step rename instead of failing usefully. test_claude_code_pin.py, which shells out rather than trusting a literal, is the pattern that would actually bind. Raised by 3 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max edge-case, claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial, kimi-k3-high adversarial).
| # The dollar ceiling is intentionally separate: turn cost varies with | ||
| # context size, so a turn cap alone is not a reliable spend boundary. | ||
| # `git grep` is deliberately NOT allowlisted: `--open-files-in-pager=<cmd>` | ||
| # executes an arbitrary command. The Grep tool covers content search. |
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🟢 Low — The stated rationale — turn cost varies with context size, so a turn cap alone is not a reliable spend boundary — applies identically to the verifier and builder agent steps, which this change leaves at --max-turns 150 with no dollar ceiling. Both read the same untrusted repo content that drives context size, so the runaway-spend vector closed here on the finder stays open on the rest of the pipeline. Raised by 1 of 6 reviewers (claude-opus-5-thinking-max adversarial).
| Find genuine, high-value refactor opportunities a thoughtful senior engineer would actually greenlight — NOT an exhaustive lint. Dimensions: (1) genuine duplication (same non-trivial logic ~15+ lines or a clear repeated shape across >=2 sites); (2) inconsistent patterns (one concept done N ways where converging helps — list the variants); (3) missing abstractions; (4) complexity hotspots; (5) dead/vestigial code. | ||
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| HARD PRECISION BAR — this is the entire point: only things you'd stake your credibility on; ~6-12 findings MAX, ranked. EXPLICITLY AVOID premature abstraction (in Go especially, a little duplication beats the wrong abstraction; never DRY incidentally-similar-but-semantically-distinct code), bikeshedding, and anything linters/formatters already enforce. For EACH finding include a 'steelman-against' (the strongest reason NOT to do it) and DROP it if the steelman wins. | ||
| Work to a bounded inspection plan. The run has an $8 hard ceiling: treat $6 as the inspection budget and reserve the final $2 for synthesizing and writing the required JSON. Stop inspecting before the estimated inspection spend reaches $6; low remaining budget is a no-go for another inspection call. After at most 60 inspection tool calls, stop exploring, write the best valid result supported by the evidence already gathered, and finish. Reserve enough time to write the result; broad repository coverage is NOT a completion requirement. If an inspection call is denied, do not retry it or seek a shell-command substitute — continue with the available Read, Glob, Grep, git log, git show, grep, cat, ls, head, tail, and wc tools. |
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⚪ Nit — "do not retry it or seek a shell-command substitute" is immediately followed by a tool list that includes the shell substitutes (grep, cat, ls, head, tail, wc), so retrying a denied Grep via Bash(grep:*) is both forbidden and apparently sanctioned by the same sentence. Reword so the no-substitute rule and the available-tools list do not contradict each other. Raised by 1 of 6 reviewers (kimi-k3-high adversarial).
3 participants
Finder now stops exploring before its execution ceiling.
Spend is independently capped at $8.
Regression tests pin both constraints.
Full context for agent readers
Cloud Groom run 33884019269 exhausted the existing 150-turn limit after 151 reported turns, 16 denied Bash calls, 19m49s, and $11.25, without producing finder JSON.
This change:
--max-budget-usd 8cap;Verification:
python3 -m unittest discover -s .github/groom/tests -p 'test_*.py' -v— 376 passedshellcheck -x .github/groom/*.sh .github/groom/tests/*.sh— passedgit diff --check— passedA live bounded Cloud dry run remains required after this workflow commit is merged and the Cloud caller pin is updated. The worker cannot authenticate that run locally:
ANTHROPIC_API_KEYis GitHub-secret-only and the fallback Claude client is not logged in. No billed workflow was blindly rerun.Program row:
cifix-16923.