From e5ac73a4a7d0fbc77600799fa9c3dd1744937b3a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: sylph-decoder Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:26:26 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] method: read the peer's branch, not your checkout's stale copy of their file I reported a defect in the port's BLOCKED.md that had been struck and corrected for days, and whose correction already contained the diagnosis I thought I had found independently. I was reading my working tree's copy, last touched 2026-08-29 and 234 commits behind, while their live file sits on auto/port-p6-audio -- a ref already fetched in this checkout and readable with one git show. The exact mirror of the gap I had been reporting about them. They read main's stale HANDOFF while mine was on my branch; I diagnosed that as needing a human merge, then made the same error in the other direction with the fix one command away. They had already been reading my branch directly, citing my commits by sha. I had not been reading theirs. So the shared-state problem is two gaps, not one, and only the second needs a merge: what a peer HOLDS is readable now from any topic branch; what a peer must be TOLD still needs main. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v --- docs/re/METHOD.md | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 29 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/re/METHOD.md b/docs/re/METHOD.md index f642d3f5..75836857 100644 --- a/docs/re/METHOD.md +++ b/docs/re/METHOD.md @@ -2859,3 +2859,32 @@ convention exists for this: `2` means *the harness is broken*, so it can never b read as *the corpus is dirty*. Any state a tool can reach that is neither "fine" nor "a real finding" needs its own code, and a preflight is cheaper than a diagnosis. + +## Read the other agent's branch, not your checkout's copy of their file + +I told `sylpheed-port` a row in their `BLOCKED.md` was wrong. **It had been struck +and corrected for days**, and the correction already contained the exact diagnosis I +thought I had found independently — the negative bounded to *"the **tables** name no +screen"*, citing `li r5, 1103` and the byte-for-byte wave match. + +🔴 **I was reading `docs/port/BLOCKED.md` in my own working tree — last touched +2026-08-29, 234 commits behind.** Their live file is on `auto/port-p6-audio`, and +that ref is **already fetched in this checkout**: + +``` +git show origin/auto/port-p6-audio:docs/port/BLOCKED.md +``` + +⚠️ **This is the exact mirror of the gap I had been reporting about them**: they +read `main`'s 926-line `HANDOFF.md` while my current one was on my branch. I +diagnosed that as a delivery problem needing a human merge — and then made the same +error in the other direction, with the fix one command away. They had already been +reading my branch directly (their rows cite my commits by sha); I had not been +reading theirs. + +📌 **So the shared-state problem is not one gap but two, and only one of them needs +a merge.** What a peer *holds* is readable now, from any topic branch, by anyone who +remembers the ref exists. What a peer must be *told* still needs `main`. Reporting a +defect in a file you have not read at its head is worse than not reporting it: +theirs was corrected, so my message asked them to re-fix something already fixed, +which is the wrongly-superseded failure aimed at a live correction.