sar/.claude/skills/bmad-story-automator/data/retrospective-automation.md

Retrospective Automation Data

This file provides instructions for running retrospectives in YOLO mode (fully automated, no user input expected).

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YOLO Mode Principles

1. No User Input Expected: The retrospective must complete autonomously
2. Data-Driven Decisions: All decisions based on sprint-status, story files, and artifacts
3. Safe Failure: If anything goes wrong, log and skip - never escalate
4. Configured Agent: Retrospectives inherit the configured primary agent unless retro is explicitly overridden

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Agent Constraints

Retrospectives have complex multi-agent "party mode" interactions that require:

• Natural language dialogue synthesis
• Multi-step reasoning across story analysis
• Document generation with rich context

Retrospectives use the configured agentConfig retro selection. If no explicit retro override is present, they inherit the configured primary agent.

Timeout Configuration

Retrospectives analyze all stories in an epic and generate comprehensive reports:

• Base timeout: 60 minutes (3600000ms)
• Extended timeout for large epics (>10 stories): 90 minutes (5400000ms)

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YOLO Mode Prompt Template

When spawning a retrospective in YOLO mode, use this prompt:

Execute the BMAD retrospective workflow for epic {epic_number}.

READ this skill first: <installed-skill-root>/bmad-retrospective/SKILL.md
READ this workflow file next: <installed-skill-root>/bmad-retrospective/workflow.md

Run the retrospective in #YOLO mode.
Assume the user will NOT provide any input to the retrospective directly.
For ALL prompts that expect user input, make reasonable autonomous decisions based on:
- Sprint status data
- Story files and their dev notes
- Previous retrospective if available
- Architecture and PRD documents

Key behaviors:
- When asked to confirm epic number: auto-confirm based on sprint-status
- When asked for observations: synthesize from story analysis
- When asked for decisions: make data-driven choices
- When presented menus: select the most appropriate option based on context
- Skip all "WAIT for user" instructions - continue autonomously

After the retrospective has run and created documents, you MUST:
1. Create a list of documentation that may need updates based on implementation learnings
2. For each doc in the list, verify whether updates are actually needed by:
   - Reading the current doc content
   - Comparing against actual implementation code
   - Checking for discrepancies between doc and code
3. Update docs that have verified discrepancies
4. Discard proposed updates where code matches docs

Focus on these doc types:
- Architecture decisions that changed during implementation
- API documentation that diverged from specs
- README files with outdated instructions
- Configuration documentation

EVERYTHING SHOULD BE AUTOMATED. THIS IS NOT A SESSION WHERE YOU SHOULD BE EXPECTING USER INPUT.

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Multi-Epic Support

When multiple epics are provided to story-automator:

Tracking Multiple Epics

State document should track:

epics:
  - epicNumber: 1
    storyRange: ["1-1", "1-2", "1-3"]
    status: "completed"
    retrospectiveStatus: "completed"
  - epicNumber: 2
    storyRange: ["2-1", "2-2"]
    status: "in_progress"
    retrospectiveStatus: "pending"

Aggregation Rules

1. Complete epics during run: If epic N completes while stories from epic N+1 are being processed, trigger retrospective for epic N
2. Batch retrospectives: After all stories complete, run retrospectives for all completed epics in order
3. Independent failures: If retrospective for epic N fails, continue to epic N+1 retrospective

Safe Skip on Failure

If a retrospective fails:

1. Log: ⚠️ Retrospective for Epic {N} skipped: {reason}
2. Update state: retrospectives.epic-{N}.status = "skipped"
3. Update state: retrospectives.epic-{N}.reason = "{reason}"
4. Continue to next epic - NEVER ESCALATE

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Documentation Verification

See retrospective-doc-verification.md for doc verification patterns and output parsing.

Error Handling

Network Errors

If retrospective session fails due to network:

1. Wait 60 seconds
2. Retry once
3. If retry fails, mark as skipped

Session Crashes

If retrospective session crashes:

1. Check output file for partial progress
2. If retro doc was partially created, mark as partial
3. Log crash reason
4. Skip to next epic

Timeout

If retrospective exceeds timeout:

1. Check if core analysis completed
2. If retro doc exists, mark as partial success
3. Skip doc verification phase
4. Continue to next epic