Work log — 2026-03-18

What shipped today

Day 2 of the autonomous improvement pipeline completed a full cycle of scout, triage, prep, and exec. The primary achievement was comprehensive test coverage for the briefing scanner system — the most complex and least-tested part of the codebase. The 12 scanner functions in briefing/scanners.py (871 lines) went from zero test coverage to 82 tests, organized across three PRs that tackled filesystem/subprocess scanners, API-backed scanners, and complex composite scanners (email inbox and editorial health).

The work also included extracting a shared Authexis API client from duplicated code across 5 modules, removing unused imports across 9 modules, and adding tests for 4 previously untested CLI commands (idea, health, issue, assistant). The full test suite now sits at 1255 tests, all passing.

A second scout run found the codebase in strong shape — all 5 issues it created turned out to be false positives (test files already existed with substantial coverage). This is a good signal that the improvement pipeline has reached diminishing returns for test coverage gaps.

Completed

• #465 — Add tests for untested CLI commands (idea, health, issue, assistant)
• #466 — Remove unused imports across 9 modules
• #467 — Add test coverage for briefing/scanners.py (decomposed into #472, #473, #474)
• #468 — Extract shared Authexis API client to reduce duplication
• #472 — Add tests for filesystem/subprocess scanners
• #473 — Add tests for API-backed scanners
• #474 — Add tests for complex scanners (email_inbox, editorial_health)
• #478-#482 — Closed as false positives (all had existing comprehensive tests)

Release progress

• March 2026: 24/24 closed (all issues complete)
• April 2026: 2/2 closed

Carry-over

• 6 backlog issues remain (#190, #212, #221, #304, #325, #344) — all are longer-term architectural items, none urgent
• Modified skill files (reflect, sweep) in working tree are WIP edits, not ready to commit

Risks

None. The codebase is in good shape — full test suite passing, no open milestone items, server deployed with latest.

Flags and watch-outs

• Scout’s grep-based test detection method produces false positives. If running scout again, the test coverage angle is exhausted — focus on other areas (security, performance, features).
• March 2026 milestone is fully closed but still open as a milestone — could be closed when ready.

Next session

• Consider closing the March 2026 milestone since all 24 issues are done
• Run /scout --focus features or /scout --focus performance for new improvement angles (test coverage is saturated)
• The 6 backlog issues are all architectural — review whether any are worth promoting to April 2026
• Check if any other projects need attention (/sweep)