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UX Stability Contract

As of 2026-06-02

This contract turns the daily-driver audits into product rules. It is maintainer-facing, but the priority is operator trust.

No silent success

A submitted task must do one of three things:

  1. Execute and show the result.
  2. Reject with a clear reason.
  3. Stop on approval or planning gate with a clear next action.

It must never accept input and quietly do nothing.

No decorative state

State displayed to users must be real or clearly marked unknown.

Decorative state examples:

  • $0.00 cost when no ledger is connected.
  • "background" when work is not continuing.
  • "resume" instructions when task context was not persisted.
  • A green status generated from a helper path, not the runtime path.

No misleading lifecycle copy

Reserved words:

Word Must mean
Running Work is actively executing.
Suspended Work stopped and can be inspected by run id.
Background Work continues outside the foreground UI.
Resume Task context and observations are restored.
Review Human can inspect current evidence before accepting or continuing.
Undo A documented recovery scope will be applied.

Surface parity

Trust-sensitive facts must not depend on the surface:

  • Task submitted.
  • Answer displayed.
  • Cost accumulated.
  • Budget enforced.
  • Undo scope.
  • Approval scope.
  • Run lifecycle.
  • Root path.

Required manual smoke

Run processes/daily-driver-manual-qa-smoke.md before releasing changes that touch:

  • teaagent chat
  • teaagent tui
  • teaagent agent run
  • approval prompts
  • undo/recovery
  • run store or audit logs

Release blockers

Block release when:

  • A path accepts a task but drops it.
  • A cost display shows false zero after real work.
  • A destructive or write-capable approval lacks exact scope.
  • A resume command cannot find the task it claims to resume.
  • TUI and CLI disagree on an already-documented trust-sensitive behavior.
  • Tests pass only because they injected the state they claim to prove.

Product rule

When forced to choose between a less impressive but accurate interface and a polished interface that overclaims, choose accuracy.