trace-first-starter

REVIEW — TFW-25: Values & Principles Consolidation

Date: 2026-04-04 Author: Reviewer (AI) Verdict: ✅ APPROVE RF: RF__TFW-25 TS: TS__TFW-25


1. Review Checklist

# Check Status Notes
1 DoD met? (all TS acceptance criteria) 10/11 met. AC-9 (≤120 lines) missed: 138 lines. Justified — §1 Architecture Decisions table (D1-D33) is the driver, which was out of scope. All prunable content fully processed
2 Code quality (conventions, naming) All headings English-only (D29). Values section follows narrative “X Over Y” pattern consistently. P# gap numbering documented. Renumbering in knowledge/ files clean
3 Test coverage RF §4 provides 5 verification commands with exact output. Cross-verified: P# count = 7, fact counts = 6/5/4/3 = 18 total, Legacy = 13 items, no dead §5 refs in knowledge/ headers
4 Philosophy aligned HL §7 principles followed: “Values = beliefs, not rules” — all 8 README values are belief statements. “Promote up, don’t duplicate” — P14 promoted, facts pruned. “Compact > comprehensive” = KNOWLEDGE.md -41 lines
5 Tech debt (shortcuts documented?) 2 observations documented in RF §5. AC-9 deviation explained in RF §3
6 Security N/A Markdown-only project
7 Breaking changes P# gaps are backward-compatible (source links in old HLs still valid). knowledge/ renumbering is internal. README Values = enrichment, not removal of meaning
8 Style & standards Narrative format for values (heading + paragraph). §3 Legacy still uses table format. Design Rules properly nested under §11 as ### subsection
9 Observations collected 2 observations: §1 Architecture Decisions compression opportunity, and KNOWLEDGE.md template §5→§4 desync

2. Verdict

✅ APPROVE

Clean execution of consolidation task. The core deliverables — 8 README values, 7 principles in §0, 13 Legacy items, 18 knowledge/ facts, Design Rules in conventions.md §11 — are all implemented correctly.

Notable quality:

AC-9 deviation assessment:

KNOWLEDGE.md = 138 lines vs ≤120 target. The overrun source is §1 Architecture Decisions (D1-D33 = 34 table rows). This table was explicitly out of scope — TS Step 2-4 only covered §0, §3, §4. All prunable content in scope was fully processed (§0: -10 lines, §3: -22 lines, §4: -10 lines = -42 lines removed). Accepted — the target was aspirational for the overall file, but the scope was limited to specific sections.

3. Tech Debt Collected

# Source Severity File Description Action
TD-63 RF obs. #1 Med KNOWLEDGE.md L39-75 §1 Architecture Decisions table (D1-D33) = 34 rows with long rationale text. Main driver of KNOWLEDGE.md exceeding 120-line target. Consider: compress rationale to 1-liners, move full rationale to linked source files, or split into “active” vs “archived” decisions ⬜ Backlog
TD-64 RF obs. #2 Low .tfw/templates/KNOWLEDGE.md Template references ## 5. Project Facts — should be ## 4. to match live KNOWLEDGE.md post-TFW-25 pruning of §4 Tech Stack ⬜ Backlog

4. Traces Updated

5. Fact Candidates

Reviewing conversation history — the user’s key contribution was confirming the 3-tier taxonomy (values/principles/rules) and approving the “Honesty Over Convincingness” rename. The research session (separate chat) produced FC1-FC2 in RES, both already recorded.

# Category Candidate Source Confidence
FC1 convention “Honesty Over Convincingness” replaces “Determinism and Safety” as TFW’s safety value. Key reframe: confidence without correctness is the deadliest failure mode. Implementation rules (no fabrication, no CL bypass) remain in conventions.md §12 RES R7, RF FC1 High

tfw-docs: Applied — §2 Key Artifacts (TFW-25), §3 Legacy (L119), TECH_DEBT (TD-63/TD-64). Post-review: TECH_DEBT pruned 71→25 lines, template §5→§4 fixed, knowledge.md workflow refs fixed, RF/REVIEW templates +philosophy category.

*REVIEW — TFW-25: Values & Principles Consolidation 2026-04-04*