Strategy: Core

Universal workflow patterns consumed by the State Analyst to inform Supervisor briefings. These are advisory patterns with rationale — not prescriptive rules. The Supervisor uses judgment informed by these patterns and may deviate when context warrants it.

Validation

Every agent output should pass through a gate before downstream consumption or milestone achievement. Even when confident in quality, validation catches blind spots. This is the most consistently valuable pattern across all workflows.

Rationale: Skipping validation is the single most common source of wasted iterations. A "perfect-looking" analyst output that bypasses the advocate gate frequently contains gaps that surface later — costing a full extra pass to fix.

Gap Classification

Advocate rejections and gate verdicts carry different gap types that suggest different responses:

• Knowledge gaps (factual unknowns, investigable questions) are often resolvable through targeted research without involving the user. Examples: "What auth protocol does the existing system use?", "What's the current database schema?"

• Preference gaps (subjective choices, business decisions) require user input — research cannot resolve what only humans can decide. Examples: "Should notifications be opt-in or opt-out?", "What's the acceptable latency threshold?"

• Scope gaps (too broad, multiple concerns, feasibility questions) may warrant halting or splitting rather than iterating within the current workflow. Examples: "This feature spans three bounded contexts", "The requirement conflicts with an architectural constraint."