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Research: the Mikado Method for refactoring - #228
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Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
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## Summary The refactor skill's red-step revert could throw away finished work. **The bug.** On a red suite, the skill ran `git checkout`/`git restore` on the touched files whenever git was available and the tree was clean *at the start of the run*. Commits during a run only happen if you ask for them, and even then can be grouped. Git restores a file to its last commit, so when two steps touch the same file with no commit between them, reverting the second step also discarded the first, already-green step. That contradicted the skill's own stop-rule promise that "everything already applied is green and stands." **The fix.** A red step now undoes only its own edits directly: reverse each edit, delete any file the step created, and move renamed or moved files back. The skill never restores files from git to undo a step, never runs `git reset --hard`, `git clean`, or `git stash` for it, and re-runs the suite to show the revert is back to green. ## Changes - `han-coding/skills/refactor/SKILL.md`: Step 4, item 4 rewritten. - `han-coding/docs/skills/refactor.md`: the "what you get" bullet now says a revert touches only that step's edits. Found during the Mikado Method research in #228. That research's Mikado recommendations are deliberately out of scope here. ## Test plan - [x] `npm run lint` passes - [x] `npm test` passes - [ ] Manual: run `/refactor` on a target where two planned steps edit the same file, with no commits requested, and force the second step red; confirm the first step's change survives the revert. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
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Summary
Research report on whether, and how, to add the Mikado Method to
han-coding:refactor, produced with/han-research:research(medium band, strict evidence mode, adversarially validated).docs/research/mikado-method-refactor.mdFindings
plan-a-change, or as a separate skill). Its discover-by-breaking loop conflicts with three rules the skill rests on: plan before editing, scope as a contract, and stop after two undos.Confidence: Medium. The Mikado evidence is practitioner accounts only, with no measured studies, and nothing in the repo shows people hitting the scope stop today.
No skill or doc changes yet. This PR carries the research only.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code