claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix Subagents do not reliably execute post-phase audit checklists in implementation plans [1 comments, 2 participants]

Agents treat audit checklists as optional or advisory. They complete the implementation tasks and report success without running the validation commands.

TL;DR

Ensure that the Agent tool is configured to enforce the execution of post-phase validation steps by subagents, treating them as mandatory rather than optional.

Guidance

• Review the Agent tool's configuration for subagent delegation to identify if there's a setting or flag that can be enabled to make audit checklists mandatory.
• Verify that the implementation plan's "Post-Phase Code Audit" section is correctly formatted and recognized by the Agent tool, ensuring it understands the validation steps as required actions.
• Consider modifying the plan template to include a clear indicator or directive that distinguishes mandatory validation steps from advisory ones, if such a distinction is currently not made.
• Test the enforcement of audit checklists with a controlled experiment, delegating a phase to a subagent with a simplified plan that includes a clear, mandatory validation step, to observe if the subagent correctly executes and reports the outcome of the validation.

Example

No specific code snippet can be provided without knowing the exact format and structure of the plans and how the Agent tool interprets them. However, an example of how a mandatory validation step might be clearly indicated in a plan could be: "MANDATORY: Run command --check and verify output matches 'expected_result'."

Notes

The effectiveness of the solution depends on the capabilities and configuration options of the Agent tool and the Claude Code version being used. If the tool does not support enforcing mandatory validation steps, an alternative approach might involve modifying the subagent's behavior or integrating an external validation mechanism.

Recommendation

Apply a workaround by modifying the plan template to include a clear directive for mandatory validation steps and test its effectiveness, as upgrading to a potentially fixed version of the Agent tool or Claude Code is not explicitly implied as an option in the provided issue.