superpowers/skills/subagent-driven-development/spec-derived-e2e.md

Spec-Derived E2E Verification

Live end-to-end evidence for the branch: scenario cards derived from the governing spec, run against the built code. Results land before superpowers:finishing-a-development-branch, so "ready to merge" includes live-scenario evidence, not just review verdicts.

Finding the governing spec

Open the spec the plan names. If the plan names none, check the repo's spec directory (e.g. docs/superpowers/specs/) for specs governing the code the plan touches.

• Spec with an "E2E scenario cards" section: cards derive from the table's falsification lines verbatim.
• Spec without the section: the bootstrap path in superpowers:agentic-end-to-end-testing's authoring-cards-from-a-spec.md backports a table from the spec's requirements (flagged for human review).
• No governing spec at all: there is nothing to derive cards from. Tell your human partner and proceed to finishing — or they can write a spec first and re-run the offer.

Procedure

Use superpowers:agentic-end-to-end-testing:

1. Require a clean working tree (git status --porcelain is empty) before dispatching the card author. Record E2E_BASE=$(git rev-parse HEAD) before any card or bootstrap-spec work.
2. Dispatch a card-author subagent per its authoring-cards-from-a-spec.md. Ask the author to report every authored card path and, on the bootstrap path, the governing spec path it changed.
3. Run scripts/check-cards-against-spec yourself on the author's output — self-attestation is not the gate. Preserve the complete checker output and compare the resulting paths with the author's report.
4. If the author changed the governing spec, present the spec-only diff to your human partner and wait for explicit approval before continuing. This approval gate is conditional: a pre-locked, already-approved scenario table does not require a new approval.
5. Dispatch a runner subagent per its runner-prompt.md against the built branch and the checked cards while those artifacts remain uncommitted. Retain the runner report, ledger, and evidence; a successful card is not yet a shipped artifact.

6. After every card passes, stage only the card paths reported by the author plus the approved bootstrap spec path, if any. Do not stage product code or unrelated evidence. Commit the unchanged successful artifacts with:

   test(e2e): add spec-derived scenario cards
   

7. Dispatch a focused artifact reviewer for that commit, using the governing spec, author report, independent checker output, and runner evidence. The reviewer checks the exact artifact paths, their unchanged spec assertions, and the evidence for every passing card.

8. If the focused review requires an artifact change, dispatch one separate artifact-fix subagent with the review findings. The original card author and focused reviewer remain finders, not fixers. Rerun the checker and every affected card, stage only the corrected artifact paths (and approved bootstrap spec path, if applicable), commit them with the same message, and repeat the focused artifact review over the new commit range.

9. Before invoking superpowers:finishing-a-development-branch, require empty git status --porcelain output and verify every authored path is tracked in HEAD with git ls-files --error-unmatch -- "$path". Report E2E_BASE, the artifact commit range, reviewer verdict, and exact durable paths.

Failure handling

Card FAILs are findings: dispatch ONE fix subagent with the complete list, then re-run the failed cards. The card author never fixes. Fix-wave commits land after the final whole-branch review, so give the fix diff its own task-review gate before finishing — a green re-run alone does not ship unreviewed changes.