cold-read-gate

Cold-Read Gate

Text written inside a long session inherits the session's context — codenames, version baselines, internal PR numbers, "the obvious fix" — and the author can no longer see which parts won't survive contact with a reader who has none of it. Before publishing an outward-bound artifact, dispatch an isolated, cheap, context-free agent to read it cold and interrogate it. What confuses the cold reader is what will cost you a round-trip question (or a silent deprioritization) from the real audience.

The reader is deliberately haiku, isolated, and shown only the artifact. This is a measured exception to the "always Opus for subagents" rule: the subagent here is not doing delegated work — it is the measurement instrument. The test is "can a low-context reader act on this text alone?", and a stronger model (or one with session context) would answer a different, easier question. If haiku can act on it, a busy maintainer can.

When to Use This Skill

"Outward-bound" means any audience that lacks your session context — external maintainers and future teammates reading internal docs cold both qualify.

Use this skill when...	Skip when...
Filing issues/MRs on an upstream tracker (external maintainers)	Internal scratch notes, commit messages, chat replies
Publishing docs a new team member will land on cold	The artifact is throwaway or has a captive expert audience
PR descriptions for reviewers outside the work's context	The text is one paragraph — just reread it yourself
Emails / announcements leaving the team	The same artifact already passed a gate and only typos changed
Batch-producing N artifacts (one reader per artifact, parallel)

The Gate Protocol

Step 1: Artifact on disk

The artifact must be a file. The reader gets a path, not pasted text — paste invites the orchestrator to "helpfully" add context, which defeats the test.

Step 2: Dispatch the cold reader — synchronously

One Agent per artifact, all in a single message when batching. Run each reader synchronously (run_in_background: false, the default) — the reader's entire job is a one-shot critique, and a synchronous run returns that critique directly as the Agent tool result. There is nothing to gain from backgrounding it.

If a reader was spawned with run_in_background: true, read its critique from the task-completion result the harness returns when the task ends — never by SendMessage. A completed background agent only emits idle_notifications on the message channel, so asking it there for its output loops forever without ever returning the analysis (issue #2063).

Template:

subagent_type: general-purpose
model: haiku
run_in_background: false
prompt: |
  You are <persona — see table>. You have NO context beyond the text itself.
  Read ONLY this file (no other files, no repository exploration, no web):
  <absolute path>

  Produce:
  1. QUESTIONS — anything unclear, ambiguous, undefined (jargon, acronyms,
     unexplained references), or missing that you'd have to ask the author
     before acting. Quote the exact phrase that confused you.
  2. HESITATIONS — claims you can't verify from the text alone, confusing
     structure, anything that would make you deprioritize it.
  3. Verdict: exactly one of `clear` | `needs-revision`.

  Ignore: <known artifacts of the test — see Step 3. Example:
  "Ignore the HTML comments at the top (they are stripped by the filing
  script before publishing) and do not ask which repository this is —
  the issue is filed on the target project's own tracker.">
  Concise bullets. Your final message is the deliverable.

Audience	Persona
Upstream bug report	"an open-source maintainer triaging a newly filed issue"
Team documentation	"a new team member reading this doc with no project context"
PR description	"a reviewer seeing this change for the first time"

Step 3: Triage the critique — genuine gaps vs test artifacts

The cold reader cannot know the publishing context, so some complaints are artifacts of the test, not defects. Triage before revising:

Genuine gap — fix it	Test artifact — ignore it
Bare file paths instead of clickable links pinned to a ref	"Which repo is this?" when the artifact is filed on that repo's tracker
Unexplained acronym/jargon on first use	Complaints about metadata the publish step strips (HTML comments, frontmatter)
Symptom asserted without the actual error output	Demands for repro environments beyond what quoted source code shows
Three suggested fixes with no preference	Critique of pre-existing scope the current change didn't touch
Internal references (PR #s, ticket IDs) leaking into external text	Requests to restructure a document section you didn't write
Internal arithmetic that doesn't add up ("12 across two waves" — which 12?)

Step 4: Revise once, re-read only on failure

Apply the genuine gaps with a revise pass (the orchestrator or a revise agent). Re-dispatch a fresh cold reader only if the first verdict was needs-revision; a clear verdict with minor notes means apply the genuine ones and publish without a second opinion. Do not loop more than twice — a third round means the artifact has a structural problem the gate can't fix.

Fallback when the reader can't deliver. If the critique cannot be retrieved (reader died, harness hiccup, background-spawn confusion), do not block publication on the gate: perform the deterministic portion inline — scan the artifact yourself for internal references (PR/ticket numbers, codenames), unexplained jargon, and self-containment — and publish on that basis. The cold read is the better instrument, but a hand scan beats an abandoned gate.

Workflow-Script Integration

Inside a Workflow script the gate is one schema-enforced stage per item:

const cold = await agent(
  `You are an upstream maintainer triaging a newly filed issue. NO context
   beyond the text. Read ONLY ${draft.path}. QUESTIONS / HESITATIONS /
   verdict. Ignore the top HTML comments (stripped before filing).`,
  { label: `coldread:${item.id}`, phase: 'ColdRead', model: 'haiku',
    schema: { type: 'object', properties: {
      verdict: { type: 'string', enum: ['clear', 'needs-revision'] },
      critique: { type: 'string' } },
      required: ['verdict', 'critique'] } },
)
if (cold?.verdict === 'needs-revision') { /* revise agent, then one re-read */ }

Evidence

First production run (FVH infrastructure, 2026-06-11, 7 upstream issue drafts + 5 docs): the gate surfaced a timeline whose headline number didn't reconcile with its own breakdown, an undefined role name (NOTARY) at the moment of its dramatic payoff, a Spring Boot issue that never named Spring Boot, a fix section offering three options with no recommendation, and two drafts judged "not actionable as written" that were revised before filing. All 12 issues filed after the gate drew zero clarification round-trips.

Common Mistakes

Mistake	Correct approach
Using opus/sonnet as the reader "for better critique"	The weak reader is the point — it measures, not advises
Spawning the reader with run_in_background: true	Run synchronously — the critique is the tool result of a synchronous run
Polling a completed background reader via SendMessage	It only emits idle_notifications there; read the task-completion result instead (#2063)
Pasting the artifact into the prompt	Give a path; pasted text tempts context smuggling
Letting the reader explore the repo	"Read ONLY this file" — exploration restores the context the test removes
Acting on every complaint	Triage first (Step 3); artifacts of the test produce busywork
Looping until the reader is silent	One revise round; persistent confusion = structural problem
Gating drafts but not the docs that reference them	Anything a cold audience lands on qualifies

Related

• verify-before-plan — verifies premises before work; this skill verifies legibility after
• workflow-orchestration-plugin:workflow-verify-before-filing — the filing pipeline this gate slots into as the pre-publish stage
• parallel-agent-dispatch — batching N readers follows its single-message dispatch contract