---
description: "System default workflow for ordinary issue work"
targets:
  - issue
autoSelect: false
updateMode: strict
requires:
  skills: []
  mcp: []
---
# Default Issue Work

## Goal

Use this workflow for bounded ordinary issue work when no more specific reusable workflow applies. The worker should understand the requested outcome, choose the smallest useful path to make progress, verify or substantiate the result with observable evidence, and clearly report what is complete, blocked, assumed, or still risky.

## Rules

- Treat the issue's requested outcome as the final target state. Do not redefine a broad request as a prototype, partial report, or feasibility note unless the issue asks for that boundary.
- Separate wrapper or coordination instructions from the target work. The target work defines what evidence must prove completion.
- Inspect available issue, local, artifact, and tracker context before guessing. Prefer the most direct source of truth available in the current environment.
- Keep actions scoped, minimal, and reversible when possible. Avoid unrelated improvements, broad rewrites, or irreversible operations unless explicitly required and safe.
- Use external or live sources only when local context is insufficient or freshness matters, and name the source of truth used.
- For broad goals, execute the next runnable frontier and preserve later dependent phases as child issue seeds, checkpoints, or unresolved frontier notes until they are actionable.

## Suggested Process

### 1. Reconstruct Intent And Boundaries

- Identify the requester outcome, in-scope deliverable, non-goals, constraints, approvals, and safety boundaries.
- Define completion evidence before acting: name the evidence type, the target state or artifact to inspect, and the expected observed result.
- If requirements conflict, first resolve what can be verified from available context; ask or hand off only for decisions that cannot be inferred safely.

### 2. Choose The Smallest Useful Path

- Execute directly when the task and success evidence are clear.
- Research or analyze first when facts, current state, risks, or options are uncertain.
- Produce a plan when the issue asks for a plan, when execution would be unsafe without approval, or when the remaining work is broad and must be split.
- Update artifacts only when they are part of the requested outcome or necessary evidence.
- Split into separately tracked work when an independent deliverable, review boundary, blocker, or later phase cannot be completed inside the current issue.

### 3. Perform The Work

- Use existing context, conventions, and available instructions as the default path.
- Make only the changes or decisions needed to satisfy the issue's current frontier.
- Record important assumptions, decision points, and evidence as they are discovered.
- Stop before unsafe, irreversible, credentialed, or preference-dependent actions that require human approval.

### 4. Verify Or Substantiate

- Run the narrowest reliable checks that prove the requested outcome or current frontier.
- When direct verification is unavailable, use the best available substitute evidence and state its claim boundary.
- Distinguish proof of the requested outcome from proof that a plan, note, or blocker report exists. A report is completion evidence only when reporting is the requested deliverable.
- Name failed, skipped, or unavailable checks and explain what remains unproven.

## Handoff To Human When

- The safe scope, desired outcome, or acceptance standard remains ambiguous after inspecting available evidence.
- Required credentials, permissions, approvals, private data access, or external availability are missing.
- The next action is irreversible, operationally risky, legally sensitive, or depends on product or business judgment.
- Conflicting constraints cannot be reconciled without requester preference.

## Success Criteria

- The final response states the requested outcome and whether it was completed, partially completed, blocked, or deferred.
- Completion claims are backed by observable evidence: the inspected target state or artifact, the check or source used, and the expected result that was observed.
- Any produced plan, artifact update, research result, operational action, or coordination step is tied to the issue's requested outcome and scope.
- Blockers include the missing prerequisite, evidence showing why it blocks completion, and the next safe action.
- Assumptions, skipped checks, residual risks, and recommended follow-up work are concise and limited to what materially affects the requested outcome.
