activity-core/history/2026-06-16-intent-gap-analysis.md

type, title, date, author, repo, related_workplan

type	title	date	author	repo	related_workplan
history	activity-core INTENT gap analysis	2026-06-16	codex	activity-core	ACTIVITY-WP-0009

activity-core INTENT Gap Analysis - 2026-06-16

Context

This note preserves the findings from a repository review against INTENT.md. The review refreshed SCOPE.md for the current repo state and identified the remaining gaps between the intended Event Bridge boundary and the implemented / deployed surface.

Files and surfaces reviewed:

• INTENT.md
• SCOPE.md
• src/activity_core/
• activity-definitions/
• docs/runbook.md
• docs/issue-core-emission-boundary.md
• k8s/railiance/
• workplans/ACTIVITY-WP-0006-post-triage-operational-hardening.md
• workplans/ACTIVITY-WP-0007-ops-inventory-probe-runner.md
• workplans/ACTIVITY-WP-0008-weekly-coding-retro.md

Summary

activity-core matches the core INTENT boundary in shape: it owns trigger durability, context resolution, rule/instruction evaluation, outbound task/report/evidence emission, and local audit records. It still must avoid owning task lifecycle, project state, privileged ops execution, or service inventory authority.

The current implementation has grown a useful bounded report/evidence surface: instruction reports can write working-memory notes and State Hub progress, and ops-inventory context sources can emit compact non-secret ops_inventory_probe summaries. This is still consistent with INTENT as long as those outputs remain records of activity-core activations rather than an authoritative task, project, or ops control plane.

Findings

1. Scheduled-run trust gap

INTENT.md expects recurring coordination work to run without Bernd as the manual coordination layer. The daily State Hub WSJF triage path is implemented and has produced validated reports, but ACTIVITY-WP-0006-T03 still lacks three clean consecutive scheduled runs after the June 7 runtime projection failure.

Current evidence as of 2026-06-16:

• State Hub daily_triage progress only shows activity-core entries through 2026-06-06.
• /home/worsch/the-custodian/memory/working only has daily-triage-* notes for 2026-06-02 through 2026-06-06.

Impact: daily triage is production-backed, but not yet fully proven as a standing substrate.

2. Live task creation gap

INTENT.md says each activation emits task creation requests to issue-core and records only the spawn audit trail. The REST issue sink exists, but Railiance is currently configured with ISSUE_SINK_TYPE=null, so production runs record synthetic audit references instead of consistently creating live issue-core tasks.

Impact: the task emission boundary is implemented but not yet broadly proven in the production deployment.

3. Review queue gap

The original ADR text described review_required as routing instruction output to a pending review queue. Current code records review_required in report/spawn metadata but does not integrate with an issue-core review queue.

Impact: current behavior is safe as metadata. As of the ACTIVITY-WP-0009 implementation pass, ADR-003 and SCOPE.md have been aligned to that behavior.

4. Evidence backend gap

The State Hub fallback evidence path works for ops_inventory_probe, and ACTIVITY-WP-0007 has live Railiance evidence. Inter-Hub / ops-hub submission is intentionally deferred behind operator-owned OPS_HUB_KEY custody, widget mapping, and approval.

Impact: activity-core can preserve non-secret continuity evidence, but richer per-entity ops evidence publication is not yet live.

5. Execution-boundary residue

TaskExecutorWorkflow remains registered as a stub that persists a done task_instances row. INTENT explicitly says activity-core must not execute the work or track lifecycle state.

Impact: low immediate risk because the workflow is inert, but it is an attractive wrong hook for future execution creep.

6. API exposure gap

The FastAPI admin surface is useful for internal CRUD and manual triggers. Railiance docs keep it as ClusterIP until an authenticated ingress and access policy are chosen.

Impact: operationally acceptable for now, but production access posture remains an explicit decision.

Follow-up

workplans/ACTIVITY-WP-0009-intent-gap-closure.md was created to turn these findings into tracked closure work.