pbakaus_impeccable/tests/skill-behavior/README.md

Skill-behavior tests

LLM-backed scenarios that verify how the impeccable skill drives context, command-reference, new-work, and native-platform loading. Each scenario runs against the default Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google models. DeepSeek remains available through IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS.

These are the tests you re-run when you refactor anything in SKILL.md's ## Setup section. They fail when the agent stops following the loading contract.

Run

bun run test:skill-behavior
IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_VERBOSE=1 bun run test:skill-behavior   # dump per-scenario traces
IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS=claude-sonnet-5 bun run test:skill-behavior   # scope to one model
IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_EFFORT=xhigh bun run test:skill-behavior             # OpenAI reasoning effort (default: high)

Requires .env at repo root with at least one of ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, GOOGLE_CLOUD_API_KEY, DEEPSEEK_API_KEY. Providers without a key are skipped, not failed.

Also requires the engine binary (bun run fetch:engine, or IMPECCABLE_BIN). The staged skill dir ships the launcher (scripts/impeccable); the harness exports IMPECCABLE_BIN into every bash call the agent makes, so the launcher resolves the binary in the generated fixture without a download. Without a binary the suites skip.

To run a single scenario against one model:

IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS=claude-sonnet-5 IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_VERBOSE=1 \
  node --test --test-timeout=600000 --test-name-pattern="scenario 6" tests/skill-behavior/scenarios.test.mjs

How it works

Protocol versus full completion

test:skill-behavior now runs only scenarios.test.mjs. Routing cases stop at the successful reference/context checkpoint they assert, with a ten-step ceiling; shell access is context-only. They do not claim that a page was built or reviewed. Editing/fallback controls retain their original assertions. The focused S1/S2/S3/S4/S19 rerun passed 21/21 across the three default models. A broader run exposed the context-only allowlist rejecting Svelte's valid +page.svelte target. It was stopped, the allowlist fixed with a failing-then- passing unit test, and S8 passed 3/3 on the focused rerun. Failed file reads do not count as project exploration. Update-notice (S9) and explicit-command (S18) checks also now stop at their actual protocol checkpoints, instead of continuing into unrelated polishing; their focused final reruns each passed 3/3. S9 now explicitly requires the assistant to surface the update, not merely receive its loader directive.

Full workflows moved to tests/skill-workflow/full-build.test.mjs:

bun run fetch:engine
bunx playwright install chromium
bun run test:skill-workflow

This separately billed suite defaults to Claude only; use IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS to explicitly choose another model or sweep. It preflights a local server and Chromium before each provider turn, exposing real desktop/mobile screenshot and PNG viewing tools. Text-only fixtures use system fonts and block external browser requests. No extra skill prose is added. The API harness is not the actual Claude Code host, nor is its shell sandboxed.

Each workflow has a 50-step/840-second ceiling. Reaching a budget or output limit fails explicitly; routing checkpoints cannot satisfy completion. UI workflows require desktop and mobile captures matching the final local sources after its last edit. Approval/brief-before-code and redesign documentation-at-finish checks remain, as does exactly one context load across the completed turn. CI runs this lane only when its manual skill_workflow checkbox is enabled. Ordinary protocol CI now fetches its engine instead of silently skipping for a missing binary. Full-build results must be reported separately from routing.

Remaining gaps after the split (2026-09-07)

One provisioned Claude natural-build run reached a final response in 637 seconds and 37 model steps, with approval, a surface brief, an implemented page, a finish review, corrections, and fresh desktop/mobile screenshots. Its initial completion assertions passed. The final test revision additionally requires the shipped documentation reference; auditing the saved trace against that guard found it missing. This is not a final full-workflow pass. Existing DESIGN.md was preserved, but the required documentation pass was skipped. The final guards were tightened during the run; this trace is not represented as a run of those later assertions. No second full build was purchased.

Claude's remaining protocol batch passed S10–S15 and existing-project S16, but missing-context S16 omitted routing.md and S17 omitted critique.md. Both responses remained read-only. The older S9 timed out during unrelated polishing; the corrected focused S9 above supersedes it. The batch was stopped during the older S18, before another provider sweep. This is incremental evidence, not an all-green final matrix. Release #782 remains on hold.

The full build reported about 2.95 million input and 53 thousand output tokens across all turns (no cache usage reported). Keep this lane manually scoped; the fast protocol suite is not a proxy for its completion or cost.

Documentation handoff follow-up

tests/skill-workflow/finish-handoff.test.mjs isolates a synthetic post-review checkpoint without rebuilding or capturing a page. Its existing-system fixture has no approved system change and a pre-existing missing sidecar; the correct result is to check the build against DESIGN.md, preserve it, and leave unrelated drift alone. The new-world control must write DESIGN.md and its v2 sidecar.

The unchanged-instructions baseline reproduced the skipped documenter in 31s. The revised handoff and documenter passages are 29 words shorter overall and make a checked no-change result explicit. The first focused extension retest passed in 27s. A repeat checked the source, DESIGN.md, and document.md and made no mutations, but omitted degraded/documenter.md, so the strict reference guard still failed. The new-world control passed in 91s, writing both required files. These small samples support the narrower behavior change, not an all-green workflow claim; the reference-loading miss remains visible. No full build was rerun. Focused Claude routing S3/S4, the ordinary suite, source-first build, and generated-skill authoring validation passed. Release #782 remains held.

Outcome assertions (maintainer-approved follow-up)

S16/S17 now require a completed, useful, read-only answer; S17 distinguishes assessment from implementation and explains that critique is optional before polish. Explicit invented prerequisites remain failures. Missing routing or comparison references are TAP diagnostics based on successful content loads, not failed read attempts. These English-fixture phrase checks are bounded regression checks, not a comprehensive semantic grader.

The resumed ordinary-extension checkpoint accepts a direct documentation pass without the degraded wrapper only with actual document.md, page, and DESIGN.md reads, a concrete no-change report grounded in the fixture's type/palette/layout, and zero mutations. Seeded files must still be byte-identical and pre-existing sidecar drift must remain untouched. New-world documentation writes, redesign ordering, and full-build completion gates are unchanged.

Offline re-evaluation of saved Claude traces: three advice responses and two evidenced no-op handoffs pass the new assertions. The original post-review baseline and the 637-second full build still fail for absent documentation evidence. Unit negative controls reject fabricated prerequisites, unsolicited edits/interviews/scans, failed reads, empty or unsupported reports, and exhausted budgets. This is assertion replay, not new model evidence or a rerun of cleaned-up workspaces' filesystem checks. No paid calls or skill prose changes were needed. The earlier reference misses above are now diagnostics, not release blockers by themselves; this does not establish an all-green full-workflow matrix.

Bounded release verification (2026-09-08)

The focused Anthropic live-accept test now verifies the durable session reaches completed, not just clean source/DOM. Its agent instruction had recommended data-impeccable-e2e-variant, inside the reserved runtime namespace; the test prompt now uses a permanent data-design-variant styling hook. The strengthened test passed in 14s without forced completion. The full non-billed suite passed. No runtime or skill source was changed for this correction.

Claude post-review controls: new world passed in 77s, writing token-bearing DESIGN.md and the v2 sidecar; approved redesign failed in 16s. The latter read the page and old system, then wrote prose-only DESIGN.md without consulting the documentation spec or creating .impeccable/design.json, and claimed nothing remained outstanding. This is a missing required artifact, not merely missing reference coverage. The test stays red; no retry was purchased. Release remains held pending disposition. These are synthetic post-review checkpoints, not proof of a complete redesign lifecycle.

The single full Claude build passed its automated gates in 623s / 31 steps: approval, brief, implemented page, final desktop/mobile captures, and shipped reviewer/documenter wrapper loads. The final response gave an in-thread review and a no-change documentation assessment of the incumbent system. It did not load document.md itself; this is not evidence that every documentation protocol step ran. The run used about 2.11M input / 50K output tokens (no cache reported). No further billed retry was started. The separate missing-artifact redesign failure still blocks treating this batch as an all-green skill release gate.

Targeted redesign handoff correction

The parent handoff now explicitly requires token-bearing DESIGN.md and .impeccable/design.json for approved system changes and verifies those outputs before completion. It is nine words shorter; the agent and schema files did not change. One unchanged-assertion Claude retest finished in 65s: it read document.md and wrote both artifacts, but still skipped the degraded wrapper, so that reference assertion failed before the artifact assertions ran.

Wrapper coverage is now diagnostic for all post-review modes; successful spec and source reads, completed turns, write boundaries, tokens, and the v2 sidecar remain hard gates. Offline evaluation of the saved retest passes these artifact checks; the original prose-only/missing-sidecar trace remains rejected. Negative controls cover absent tokens, malformed/missing sidecars, old schema versions, and absent metadata. This is replay, not a second live pass or a rerun of the cleaned-up workspace's byte-preservation checks.

Artifact audit: the sidecar component renders correctly in an offline browser. The heading line-height was recorded as 1.3 while the page inherits 1.6 (38.4px at 24px), and generatedAt used a placeholder date. These are remaining output accuracy limitations, distinct from the corrected missing-artifact failure; the shape checks do not establish complete token fidelity. No broad provider or full-build rerun was purchased. Build and generated-skill validation passed.

Each scenario:

1. prepareWorkspace() uses the production transformer to build current source into an independent <workspace>/.claude/skills/impeccable. References have resolved placeholders and generated degraded reviewer/documenter files. Host-specific blocks are omitted: this is a neutral API harness, not an exact Claude/Codex/Gemini host simulation. It optionally seeds project fixtures.
2. runTurn() inlines SKILL.md (placeholders neutralized) as the system prompt and runs Vercel AI SDK generateText with five tools: bash, read, write, list, and a fake provider-neutral ask_user_question backed by a deterministic simulated user.
3. The tools record every call into a trace that the test asserts on.
4. For scenario 4, a second runTurn reuses turn 1's responseMessages so the model sees a real multi-turn conversation.

The trace is the source of truth, not the model's free-form reply.

File tools are workspace-scoped; bash is a real host shell, not a security sandbox. Use disposable synthetic fixtures. Shell helpers do not inherit provider API keys/auth tokens; model calls still use the parent's keys. The harness always sets IMPECCABLE_QUESTION_DISABLED=1 for shell calls so real decision pages cannot wait for a nonexistent browser user. The engine returns its genuine structured-question fallback; browser decisions have separate E2E.

Set IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_TRACE_DIR=<directory> to retain per-turn JSON with model, prompt, tool results, response ordering, usage, and finish reason. Progress and failed turns retain their tool traces too; only completed turns carry the full response sequence and final usage. These are local diagnostic artifacts; inspect before sharing. Successful reads or full reference content in shell output count as loading; filename mentions, denied commands, and failed reads do not.

Context-only controls permit the real launcher with an optional workspace-relative --target; compound commands remain rejected. The target form is part of the skill's Setup contract, not a launcher failure.

Release investigation (2026-09-07)

The initial release sweep reported 68/81 passes. Do not interpret its 13 failed assertions as 13 demonstrated product regressions. The harness staged raw references with unresolved placeholders, omitted generated degraded roles, and allowed unanswered browser decisions. Its redesign assertion was also stale: current new-work.md requires a surface brief before code, and DESIGN.md at finish, from the built world. The corrected lifecycle checks retain approval, brief, implementation, and final documentation requirements; missing artifacts now have their own error instead of being called premature edits. The historical tables below retain their original measurements and methods.

Focused launcher-fallback verification on the corrected fixture:

Default model	Old fallback paragraph	Explicit pre-tool warning paragraph
claude-sonnet-5	2/3	3/3
gpt-5.6-terra	3/3	3/3
gemini-3.7-flash	1/3	3/3

The three cases are denied editing, successful-loader control, and denied planning. The old-paragraph failures were warning order, not refused edits. An intermediate candidate run scored 8/9 because the control rejected valid context --target index.html; after correcting that allowlist, the full focused rerun passed 9/9. This is one measured run per variant, not a reliability estimate or an all-workflow pass. Broader routing and workflow results remain separate.

On the resolved fixture, Gemini's workflow run passed 4/5: the completed new page omitted user confirmation. Tightening the existing question paragraph made its focused build lifecycle rerun pass 1/1. OpenAI passed all five workflow cases with the fixture corrections alone. These are incremental measurements, not one full sweep on the final candidate.

Claude's three-step routing sweep cut off two setup cases before loading new-work.md. Both loaded it in bounded six-step diagnostics. Claude now has the same six-step setup allowance as Gemini; reference and edit-order assertions are unchanged. A full-build baseline separately hit the existing 840-second deadline and is not counted as a pass.

The complete routing-only sweep retained its original budgets and passed 55/57 (Claude 17/19, OpenAI 19/19, Gemini 19/19). A six-step Claude rerun passed the two previously clipped cases but exposed a separate context reload on turn two: the model queried the loader again for image-tool availability. That run was stopped after five passes and this failure rather than finishing another billed sweep; the once-per-session assertion remains unchanged.

A saved Claude build trace used five calls shortening/counting the direction contract, then reached the 22-step cap before implementation. The word target is now approximate, with the six required blocks retained. A subsequent run correctly stopped for missing customer evidence: the default simulated user had selected “I have real details,” then promised them in a future message. The case-study test now supplies a complete, explicitly synthetic brief when asked; fresh-init and other user simulations are unchanged. Neither incomplete build is counted as a pass.

The corrected-user Claude retest also remained incomplete: it asked, recorded the six-block brief without the earlier word-count loop, then spent the remaining 22-step allowance acquiring and inspecting fonts before writing HTML. The 26-step redesign run produced the page and desktop/mobile captures but stopped before DESIGN.md. These results do not establish full workflow completion. Further work should separate narrow protocol checks from realistic, provisioned full-build runs rather than keep adding skill prose or relaxing finish gates. The later Claude run passed fresh init and refinement, failed the two bounded build cases, and was stopped during critique's browser-tool discovery. Its unfinished critique case is not a pass; the earlier OpenAI/Gemini critique results remain the completed measurements.

Scenarios

#	Setup	Assertion
1	empty workspace	runs impeccable context; loads reference/init.md before implementation; automation is not an init bypass
2	PRODUCT.md only	runs impeccable context 1-3 times; loads reference/new-work.md to resolve visual authority, establish a world when needed, and develop the surface
3	PRODUCT.md + DESIGN.md	runs impeccable context 1-3 times; receives the committed design system and loads reference/new-work.md for the task-scoped concept
4	PRODUCT.md + DESIGN.md, context already loaded in turn 1	turn 2 does not re-run impeccable context
5	PRODUCT.md without the legacy ## Register field and no DESIGN.md	runs impeccable context; greenfield craft loads reference/new-work.md, not init, to establish the missing world
6	PRODUCT.md + DESIGN.md + a minimal index.html; prompt is /impeccable polish	loads reference/polish.md
7	same fixture; prompt is /impeccable audit	loads reference/audit.md
8	PRODUCT.md + DESIGN.md + a SvelteKit scaffold (src/app.css, components, +page.svelte); prompt is /impeccable polish src/routes/+page.svelte	reads at least one project code file (CSS / component / page) — not just the skill's reference files
9	PRODUCT.md + index.html + a seeded update cache with a newer version (skillVersion copy-mode so impeccable context has a SKILL.md to version-check against); prompt is /impeccable polish index.html	impeccable context runs and its output carries the UPDATE_AVAILABLE directive (proven via captured bash output); the agent does not auto-run npx impeccable update (it must ask first)
10	no PRODUCT.md + a minimal index.html; prompt is /impeccable polish index.html	runs impeccable context, loads reference/polish.md, and does not divert into reference/init.md
11	empty workspace; prompt is /impeccable shape ...	runs impeccable context; resolves reference/init.md before planning the surface
12	empty workspace; prompt is natural-language build intent with no command word	runs impeccable context; resolves reference/init.md before implementation
13	empty workspace; prompt is /impeccable teach	runs impeccable context and diverts into reference/init.md because teach aliases init
14	PRODUCT.md with ## Platform: ios (native iOS app); prompt is /impeccable craft a tide detail screen	impeccable context runs and emits the contents of reference/ios.md directly, placing native conventions in context without a second model-directed read
15	same iOS fixture; prompt is /impeccable audit	agent loads reference/audit.native.md (the Commands-table native variant, routed instead of audit.md)
16	existing surface, with and without PRODUCT.md; asks where to start	completes relevant advice without edits, interviews, critique archives, menu scans, or explicit invented refinement prerequisites; reference coverage is diagnostic
17	existing surface; asks whether critique is required before polish	completes read-only advice distinguishing assessment from implementation and explaining critique is optional; reference coverage is diagnostic
18	existing surface; explicitly requests polish followed by a next-command recommendation	loads polish.md rather than substituting workflow advice for the requested work
19	tiny spacing edit with PRODUCT.md + DESIGN.md; Bash denied, a real-loader success control, a denied-launcher planning-only case, and a denied-launcher documentation case (PRODUCT.md + index.html, no DESIGN.md)	edits require successful playbook/craft-floor reads and a pre-edit denial warning; planning stays read-only and skips craft-floor; documentation requires successful document.md and source reads before any DESIGN.md write, with the denial disclosed before the first tool call after the denied launcher

Setup launcher-failure branch (2026-09-06, PR #750)

Scenario 19 injects a host permission error before any shell command executes, including retries and compound commands. File tools remain available; the staged skill is read-only. Assertions require successful reads, an actual UI edit, unchanged context files, and disclosure before the first write in the assistant message sequence. Failed read attempts and shell commands merely mentioning a reference do not count as loading it. The success control allows only the real context-loader command through Bash and requires exit 0.

The suite measures continuation after a tool refusal, not Claude's skill activation or plugin substitution. Those are separate loader/path checks. It also does not establish behavior for every missing-binary or runtime error.

Focused baseline (2026-09-06): both scenario 19 cases passed on claude-sonnet-5, one run each. The original wording also continued after denial in the comparison run, but disclosed the failure only in its final summary. This does not reproduce the reporter's complete reference-loading failure or establish a multi-provider pass. An earlier scenario 6 result used attempt-based reference assertions and is not counted as a success control.

Refusal follow-up (2026-09-06, #744)

The provider-neutral harness models a loaded skill with a known base directory using synthetic workspace-relative host metadata, not each provider's exact generated prompt. The source instructions and <skill-base-dir> resolution remain under test; reference reads still have to succeed. Provider transforms and plugin loading have separate path/loader tests. The harness also sets an explicit 16,384-token response ceiling for DeepSeek: the Anthropic-compatible SDK otherwise treats that model as unknown and caps it at 4,096. Truncation still fails the scenario; this changes the test runner, not the shipped skill.

The unchanged-source baseline with directory metadata passed 5/8 focused cases: Sonnet skipped craft-floor in its successful-launcher control, OpenAI stopped without editing after denial, and Gemini warned only after editing. DeepSeek passed both cases. An initial candidate got OpenAI to edit but still warned late on Sonnet, OpenAI, and Gemini; DeepSeek's denial response truncated. All four successful-launcher controls passed that candidate.

The pre-review candidate separates the fallback from the long first step, says to send the warning first and continue through permitted tools, and clarifies that craft-floor also applies to small refinements. Setup grows by 18 whitespace-separated words; the description is unchanged. Sonnet and OpenAI passed both final cases, as did DeepSeek with the explicit output ceiling. Gemini still warned after the edit; its control passed. The final result is 7/8; the warning-order assertion remains unchanged.

Review follow-up: the fallback now says to follow the applicable steps 2–3, preserving step 3's planning-only exclusion (20 added Setup words overall). A new denied-launcher planning case requires a real plan, no mutations or craft-floor read, and successful context/target/playbook reads. On Sonnet, the editing denial and successful-loader cases both passed again. The planning run stayed read-only and skipped craft-floor, but failed because it did not read polish.md. That assertion remains intact: this is another reference-loading gap under #744, not a green planning result. Other providers were not rerun for this wording-only review clarification.

The planning case also checks the response-message sequence: the launcher must actually be denied, then an assistant warning must precede the first fallback PRODUCT.md or DESIGN.md read. Deterministic tests reject silent continuation, final-only warnings, warnings before denial, and user-authored warnings. This checks disclosure even when no editing occurs; the editing cases retain their existing pre-edit warning assertion.

One focused Sonnet rerun with this guard read the playbook and produced a read-only plan without craft-floor, but omitted the launcher warning entirely. The strengthened assertion correctly failed that run; #744 remains open for the behavior failure rather than treating this coverage fix as a skill fix.

These are single samples per case and candidate, not reliability estimates. This API harness starts with the skill loaded and readable references. It does not measure activation, reproduce Windows command parsing, or establish fallback behavior when the host also denies required file reads or writes. Keep #744 open; evaluate activation separately with #375.

To repeat only these cases (provider keys and an engine binary required):

IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS=claude-sonnet-5,gpt-5.6-terra,gemini-3.7-flash,deepseek-v4-flash \
  node --test --test-name-pattern='scenario 19:' tests/skill-behavior/scenarios.test.mjs

Degraded documentation case (#789)

A fourth scenario 19 case covers the documentation branch: launcher denied, PRODUCT.md plus an incumbent index.html, prompt /impeccable document. It requires an actual denied context attempt, successful document.md and source reads before the DESIGN.md write, the denial disclosed before the first tool call after the denied launcher, and an untouched PRODUCT.md.

Scenario 19 on this branch, all four cases, one run each on 2026-09-09: 4/4 on claude-sonnet-5, 4/4 on gpt-5.6-terra, 4/4 on gemini-3.7-flash. The documentation case also passes with main's unchanged SKILL.src.md and init.md plus this test file, so the coverage is the test, not a skill-text change.

Workflow-advice baseline (2026-09-05, PR #737)

The four cases in scenarios 16-18 are new; prior scenario results do not establish their behavior. The advice-only assertions inspect write-tool calls and file mutations from bash (excluding context's internal .impeccable/ state, but not critique reports), require an actual answer, and reject interviews and menu scans. Scenario 18 checks command-reference precedence; it does not assert completion of a full polish pass. These cases allow only the exact context-loader command through bash; references use read/list, and the write tool remains available for project files so unsolicited edits still fail the test. Writes to the staged skill are rejected. This keeps the routing measurement from running arbitrary shell searches outside its fixture.

Scenario	claude-sonnet-5	gpt-5.6-terra	gemini-3.7-flash
16 (existing project)	pass	pass	pass
16 (missing product context)	flaky (1 of 2)	pass	pass
17 (command comparison)	pass	pass	pass
18 (explicit command)	pass	pass	pass

Rechecked after reducing the skill addition to 59 words. Claude's first missing-context response stayed read-only but skipped routing.md; an unchanged repeat passed on all three providers. Keep that reference-read miss visible as a flake rather than adding instructions for a single observation. All assertions remain unchanged. Scenario 18 uses an eight-step budget and actual read-tool evidence, not rejected bash reads. The initial unrestricted run (stopped after host-wide search attempts), earlier rejected-read results, and broader suite's sandboxed provider DNS errors are excluded from this baseline.

The full-build file adds end-to-end assertions for attended fresh init, an initialized natural build request, replacement-world redesign, scope-preserving bolder refinement, and critique's closing question. It checks question order and context/artifact writes rather than only reference-file loading.

critique closes with the question or an explicit skip line is a regression guard, not a routing check. A critique that prints its report and then stops, asking nothing and printing no Questions skipped: <reason> line, is an incomplete run: the close is half the deliverable, and polish downstream has no priorities to inherit without it. The fixture page is deliberately broken enough to put the report past the three-Priority-Issue threshold, so the run cannot reach the skip branch on merit. The assertion is deliberately loose about how the run closes, because either close is valid; what it forbids is neither.

Workflow-contract baseline (2026-08-13, current lineup)

Measured while checking whether an {{ask_instruction}} rewrite had regressed anything.

The last two columns are no longer in the default lineup. gpt-5.6-luna and deepseek-v4-flash were dropped in 2026-08 for being below the frontier tier: they fail scenarios by stopping mid-run or archiving a report without stating it, which is model-floor behavior rather than a skill-text defect. Their columns stay here because they are the record of what a weaker model does with this text, and that is the useful part. Reproduce with IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS=gpt-5.6-luna,deepseek-v4-flash.

Against the current default lineup, two cells are the known floor: redesign replaces DESIGN is flaky on every model, and critique closes is flaky on gemini-3.6-flash. A regression is a failure beyond those two.

The Google slot in DEFAULT_MODELS moved to gemini-3.7-flash on 2026-08-15. Every Gemini cell in the tables below was measured on 3.6-flash (or 3.5-flash where marked), and per the cross-version rule further down, those results are unmeasured on 3.7, not inherited. Re-run the sweep on the next Setup or routing change and update the tables to the new column.

Read any failure against the clock before calling it behavior. The suite ran at a 300s per-test timeout until 2026-08-13, and for the workflow-contract scenarios that cap was below the runtime of a correct run. initialized natural build on claude-sonnet-5 was measured at 579s when it stopped to put the concept to the user before building, while the runs that skipped that checkpoint and failed the assertion finished in 130-200s. The cap was therefore selecting for the behavior the scenario forbids: thorough runs were killed, hasty ones were graded. The timeout is now 900s (scripts/test-suites.mjs). A duration at or just past the cap is a timeout, not a verdict.

Scenario	claude-sonnet-5	gpt-5.6-terra	gemini-3.6-flash	luna / deepseek (dropped)
attended fresh init	pass	pass	pass	not measured
initialized natural build	flaky (1 of 4, and see the clock note)	pass	pass	not measured
redesign replaces DESIGN	flaky (timeout this run)	fail	fail (timeout)	not measured
bolder refinement	pass	pass	pass (on 3.5)	luna pass, deepseek fail
critique closes	pass (4 of 4)	pass (3 of 3)	flaky (1 of 4)	luna fail (1 of 6), deepseek flaky

Gemini's bolder refinement and critique closes runs in this sweep died on AI_APICallError / ETIMEDOUT before completing a turn. Network failures are not behavior measurements and are excluded from the counts above.

Scenario baseline (2026-08-13, current lineup)

Measured on the same sweep. scenarios.test.mjs passes 15 of 15 on gpt-5.6-terra and gemini-3.6-flash. Only claude-sonnet-5 fails anything, and that asymmetry is the finding: the two cells below fail on the frontier model while two weaker-on-paper lineups route correctly, so read them as a text problem that one model's priors expose rather than as a model floor.

Scenario	claude-sonnet-5	gpt-5.6-terra	gemini-3.6-flash
1-7, 10, 12-15	pass	pass	pass
8 (SvelteKit exploration)	flaky	pass	pass
11 (shape resolves the build gate)	flaky	pass	pass

Scenarios 8 and 11 pass on re-run, so treat a single failure there as flake and confirm with a second run before investigating.

Scenarios 9 and 15 both failed on sonnet when this baseline was first measured, and the two causes are worth keeping because neither was where it looked:

• 9 was a real defect in the directive. UPDATE_AVAILABLE said to ask the user, then "If they agree, run npx impeccable update", then to continue without waiting. With no wait there is no agreement to read, so the command was the only concrete instruction left standing and sonnet ran it. Fixed by removing the command from the turn entirely rather than by strengthening the warning around it.
• 15 was a broken fixture. The iOS workspace held PRODUCT.md and nothing else, so audit the app in this workspace named an app that did not exist. Sonnet spent its whole step budget looking for it and read no reference file at all, which the assertion reported as "loaded audit.md instead of the variant". The fixture now ships one SwiftUI screen, the same courtesy MINIMAL_LANDING_HTML already did for the web scenarios. The scenario passes on unmodified main once the fixture is answerable, which is the proof the routing text was never at fault.

The general lesson is worth more than either fix: an assertion reports the property it checks, not the reason it failed. Both of these read as routing defects and neither was one. Pull the trace before writing the diagnosis, and prefer IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_VERBOSE=1 over inference from the message.

Gemini cells marked on 3.5 were measured on the superseded gemini-3.5-flash and have not been re-run on 3.6. That distinction is not pedantic. critique closes passed twice on 3.5-flash, then failed three times in a row on 3.6-flash against identical instruction text, and only passed once the report delivery step was made explicit. A version bump inside one family changed the outcome, so treat cross-version carryover as unmeasured rather than inherited.

not measured means exactly that: the cell was never run in isolation on this lineup. Only the scenarios under investigation were scoped per model. The rows are worth keeping anyway, since a scenario absent from the table is easy to mistake for a scenario that passed.

bolder refinement, deepseek-v4-flash. The model runs impeccable context, reads bolder.md, craft-floor.md, and current.html, then ends its turn without editing anything: empty writePaths, no ask_user_question call, well short of the 16-step cap. Confirmed identical on HEAD with bolder.md reverted, so it is not a skill-text problem. Same shape as the gpt-5.4-mini scenario 6/7 failures below: the model consumes the references and then declines to act.

critique closes: the three ways a critique fails to land. The scenario asserts emission order, not just the presence of a question, because the command fails in three distinct ways and only one of them was the reported bug:

1. No close. Report lands, no question, no skip line. polish downstream inherits nothing.
2. Question before report. The question is emitted first and the report after it, so the report is withheld until the user answers. Observed directly on gpt-5.6-luna, and the reason the invariant is a position rule ("the question is the LAST thing in the response") rather than a statement about prose order.
3. Report never spoken. The report is authored straight into the persistence heredoc, archived, and never written to chat. A perfect snapshot and a user who sees nothing.

Mode 3 is the one worth understanding, because it was structural rather than a model quirk. critique.md described the report's format and then went directly to writing a temp file, with no step that said to output the report. Both gemini-3.6-flash and luna responded by bundling heredoc, snapshot write, trend read, and cleanup into a single bash call and stopping. The Deliver the Report section exists to close that gap, and it worked: gemini-3.6-flash failed three consecutive runs before it, and its failures afterward all show the report reaching chat.

Mode 1 is not fixed on gemini-3.6-flash. It passes 1 run in 3 on the final text. Two structural attempts were made and neither settled it: the close was promoted into Hard Invariants with a printable Questions skipped: <reason> string, then made step 6 of the persistence list so it would sit inside the numbered flow rather than after it (the shape that fixed mode 3). Both moved it from consistently failing to intermittently passing, and further prose tuning was not paying, so it stopped. claude-sonnet-5 and gpt-5.6-terra are clean. Treat this cell as the known floor and re-measure rather than tuning blindly: the next useful move is probably a structural one, such as making the close something the run cannot syntactically finish without, not another paragraph.

Read the counts here as what they are: small samples on a nondeterministic system, several of them gathered while the instruction text was still changing between runs. They support "the close works on the current lineup" and not much finer than that. Re-measure rather than assuming when the lineup changes.

redesign replaces DESIGN, flaky. It has failed on two different assertions across runs (designWrite > question and implementation > designWrite), and on one run claude-sonnet-5 exhausted the 300s per-test timeout instead of asserting. The traces never load document.md; the ordering under test comes from new-work.md. Re-run before believing a single red result here. Which model produced which failure was not pinned down, so the row records only that the scenario is unstable.

The bolder claude-sonnet-5 cell is unmeasured for a specific reason: the scoped run that produced this table used a 180s cap, which sonnet exceeded. That is a timeout, not a failure, and it is why the guidance below insists on 300000.

Scoping a run while investigating

Both files honor --test-name-pattern, which is much cheaper than a full sweep when bisecting one scenario:

IMPECCABLE_QUESTION_DISABLED=1 CI=1 IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_MODELS=deepseek-v4-flash \
  node --test --test-timeout=300000 --test-force-exit \
  --test-name-pattern="bolder refinement" tests/skill-workflow/full-build.test.mjs

Use the suite's current 900000ms timeout for full workflow cases; the 300000ms example above is historical. The harness now disables decision pages itself. Pipe to a file rather than tail; node prints the failing-test summary at the end, and truncating it costs you the per-model attribution.

Baseline state (2026-05-20, previous cheap tier)

Historical record. The default models are now claude-sonnet-5 and gemini-3.6-flash. The table below was measured on an older cheap tier (claude-haiku-4-5 / gpt-5.4-mini) and is kept as the historical record. Re-measure on the current lineup and update this section; the stronger models are expected to clear the scenario 6/7 routing failures that the old gpt tier showed.

Captured after moving sub-command reference loading from step 4 to step 2 of Setup (so the agent loads reference/<command>.md right after impeccable context, before "doing the work" preempts it), and tightening step 3 to require at least one project code read even when a sub-command reference loads first. Use this table when comparing pre/post refactor: a regression is "more failures than baseline", not "any failures at all".

Scenario	claude-haiku-4-5	gpt-5.4-mini	gemini-3.1-flash-lite
1 (no context)	pass (rare flake — agent stops after impeccable context without loading init.md)	pass	pass
2 (product only)	pass	pass	pass
3 (product + design)	pass	pass	pass (rare flake — sub-command ref loads but world ref doesn't)
4 (already loaded)	pass	pass	pass
5 (no register field, task-cue cascade)	pass	pass	pass
6 (polish routing)	pass	fail	pass
7 (audit routing)	pass	fail	pass
8 (existing project, explore design system)	pass	pass	pass

21-22 / 24 typical. The stable failures are gpt-5.4-mini scenarios 6 and 7: the model reads index.html (the target file), recognizes "polish" or "audit" as a familiar action, and proceeds with the work without ever loading the sub-command reference. Stronger SKILL.md wording (MUST, "non-optional", reordered earlier) didn't move it; this looks like a model-floor behavior rather than a skill ambiguity. Claude and Gemini honor the load.