# Side-Effects Review: Reflection-Trigger Signal Fix

**Version:** 0.28.47 (in-flight)  
**Files affected:** `src/commands/init.ts`  
**Change type:** Instrumentation (non-blocking signal emission)  
**Risk level:** Low

## Summary

Updated reflection-trigger job prompt to call POST /reflection/record after updating MEMORY.md. This notifies the ReflectionMetrics system when a reflection successfully occurs, fixing a 20-day instrumentation gap.

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## Side-Effects Analysis

### 1. Over-block
**Q: What legitimate inputs does this reject?**

N/A — not a blocking change. The job accepts the same inputs (activity logs) and makes the same decisions (whether to update MEMORY.md). The curl call is pure signal emission downstream.

**Verdict:** No over-blocking.

### 2. Under-block
**Q: What failure modes does this still miss?**

- Job completes successfully but curl to POST /reflection/record fails (network error, server down). 
  - **Acceptable**: The metrics system degrades gracefully. Reflection still happened (MEMORY.md updated); metrics just weren't notified. Future reflection checks may over-suggest ("time for reflection!") but no decisions are blocked.
- Job updates MEMORY.md, then curl succeeds, but the metrics file write fails (disk full, permissions).
  - **Acceptable**: Instar's ReflectionMetrics class handles write failures non-fatally. The in-memory counters will be reset, but persistence is best-effort.

**Verdict:** Acceptable failure modes. Instrumentation is fire-and-forget; failures don't cascade.

### 3. Level-of-Abstraction Fit
**Q: Is this at the right layer?**

Yes. The job itself is the source of truth about whether a reflection occurred. Notifying the metrics system from here is natural and clean. The metrics system is a passive consumer that aggregates these signals. No higher or lower layer should own this responsibility.

**Verdict:** Correct layer.

### 4. Signal vs Authority Compliance
**Q: Does this comply with the signal-vs-authority principle?**

Yes. 
- **Signal producer:** The reflection-trigger job emits a signal (POST /reflection/record).
- **Signal consumer:** The ReflectionMetrics system passively consumes it to reset counters and update timestamps.
- **No blocking authority:** The job doesn't block on curl success. Claude's decision to update MEMORY.md is independent of whether the signal is received.
- **Brittle logic:** Zero. The signal is deterministic — "if I updated MEMORY.md, signal now."

**Verdict:** Fully compliant. No authority held with brittle logic.

### 5. Interactions
**Q: Does this shadow, race with, or double-fire adjacent checks?**

- **Shadowing:** No other component signals reflections or reads reflection metrics.
- **Racing:** The metrics file is protected by atomic write (rename after tmp file). If two jobs try to record simultaneously, one wins; no corruption.
- **Double-fire:** If reflection-trigger runs twice within 4 hours (manual trigger + scheduled), POST /reflection/record is called twice. This is benign — the counters are just reset twice, and the second call updates `lastReflectionTimestamp` to a newer value. No side effect.
- **Downstream:** The CLI endpoint `GET /reflection/check` now returns accurate data instead of stale "no reflection since startup" data. This is the intended effect.

**Verdict:** No problematic interactions.

### 6. External Surfaces
**Q: Does this change anything visible outside this agent?**

Yes, but only to the agent itself:
- **Local surfaces:** `GET /reflection/metrics` and `GET /reflection/check` endpoints return current data instead of permanently stale data.
- **Cross-agent impact:** None. Metrics are per-agent, local storage. No inter-agent dependencies.
- **Timing dependencies:** The curl call is synchronous within the job prompt. If POST /reflection/record is slow, the job takes longer. Expected duration is 5 minutes; curl adds <100ms. Acceptable.
- **State dependencies:** The job prompt depends on the instar server being up and the /reflection/record endpoint existing. Both are guaranteed by the instar bootstrap (server is a prerequisite for running any job).

**Verdict:** Safe. Local-only visibility change.

### 7. Rollback Cost
**Q: If this is wrong, what's the back-out?**

- **Revert:** One-line revert in src/commands/init.ts. Remove the curl line from the job prompt.
- **Data migration:** None needed. ReflectionMetrics.json is self-healing — old files load fine.
- **Agent state repair:** None needed. Agents can continue without reflection metrics (they just won't get reflection suggestions).
- **Downtime:** Zero. Revert can be deployed via standard release cycle.

**Verdict:** Trivial rollback.

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## Conclusion

This is a low-risk instrumentation change that fixes a real observability gap without introducing any gating, blocking, or side-effect cascades.

**Approval:** ✅ Side-effects review complete. Safe to commit.
