A deep adversarial review of automaton identified **12 bugs** that are difficult to spot — complex logic errors, race conditions, infinite loops, and memory/resource exhaustion issues. All bugs have been fixed. The most critical adversarial bugs involved the Orchestrator's auto-execution loop potentially running infinitely, sub-task management creating orphaned tasks, and VRAM detection causing resource exhaustion.
- **Description**: The auto-execution loop has no maximum iteration count or timeout. If the agent produces an artifact but doesn't output CONTRACT_MET (e.g., the agent crashes), the loop will spin forever.
- **Description**: When the Orchestrator creates sub-task folders, it doesn't check if they already exist.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "Check for existing sub-task folders: For each sub-task, check if the folder `tasks/{parent-task-name}/subtasks/{sub-task-name}/` already exists. If it does, skip the creation and report that the sub-task has already been created."
### Bug 3: Orchestrator — Auto-detect VRAM can cause resource exhaustion (HIGH — FIXED)
- **Description**: If the VRAM detection script is run in a loop (e.g., the Orchestrator is invoked multiple times), it will repeatedly probe the GPU and RAM, causing performance degradation.
- **Fix Applied**: Added VRAM detection caching: "When the Orchestrator is invoked multiple times (e.g., the user says 'orchestrate' twice), it MUST cache the VRAM detection results and reuse them instead of running the detection script again."
- **Location**: `prompts/orchestrate.md`, "Sub-Task Completion and Parent Task" section
- **Description**: The Orchestrator doesn't check if there are orphaned sub-tasks — sub-tasks that were created by the Orchestrator but are no longer referenced in the DECOMPOSITION.md.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "Check for orphaned sub-tasks: Before checking completion, verify that each sub-task is still referenced in the DECOMPOSITION.md. If a sub-task is orphaned (no longer in the DECOMPOSITION.md), remove it from the parent's completion check."
- **Description**: The auto-execution loop only drives one sub-task at a time, even when sub-tasks are in the same wave and can run in parallel.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "Sub-task Parallel Execution: When sub-tasks are in the same wave and can run in parallel, the Orchestrator should drive them simultaneously instead of sequentially."
### Bug 6: Orchestrator — State Determination can produce ambiguous states (MEDIUM — FIXED)
- **Severity**: Medium
- **Location**: `prompts/orchestrate.md`, "State Determination" section
- **Description**: The state determination has multiple overlapping conditions that can produce ambiguous states.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "Note on overlapping conditions: If a task has both `TEST_PLAN.md` and `DESIGN.md`, the Orchestrator should prioritize the more advanced state (TEST_PLAN.md → Implement) over the optional state (DESIGN.md → Test Design)."
### Bug 7: Orchestrator — Sub-task PARENT_SPEC.md can cause circular references (MEDIUM — FIXED)
- **Description**: The PARENT_SPEC.md contains the parent task's SPEC.md content. If the parent's SPEC.md references the sub-task's SPEC.md files, a circular reference is created.
- **Fix Applied**: Changed the PARENT_SPEC.md content to include "The sub-task's own scope/acceptance criteria from the DECOMPOSITION.md" and added: "Do NOT include the parent task's full SPEC.md — this can cause circular references if the parent's SPEC.md references the sub-task's SPEC.md files."
### Bug 8: Orchestrator — Auto-detect VRAM can cause memory exhaustion (MEDIUM — FIXED)
- **Description**: If the detection script doesn't exist, the Orchestrator tries to read multiple config files to detect the model name. If the .env file is large, reading it could cause memory exhaustion.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "Only read the specific lines needed (e.g., the model name line), not the entire file. Limit file reads to 10KB to prevent memory exhaustion."
- **Location**: `prompts/orchestrate.md`, "Sub-Task Completion and Parent Task" section
- **Description**: When a sub-task FAILs during the Referee phase (before producing BUG_REPORT.md and ADVERSARIAL_BUG_REPORT.md), the Orchestrator wouldn't have the bug reports needed to create a fix task.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "If the sub-task failed during the Referee phase (before producing BUG_REPORT.md and ADVERSARIAL_BUG_REPORT.md), the Orchestrator still creates the fix task but only copies the artifacts that exist (BUG_REPORT.md if it exists, ADVERSARIAL_BUG_REPORT.md if it exists)."
- **Description**: If the DECOMPOSITION.md is updated after the Orchestrator has already created sub-task folders, the Orchestrator doesn't handle the update.
- **Fix Applied**: Added: "Check for DECOMPOSITION.md updates: Compare the DECOMPOSITION.md with the existing sub-task folders. If the DECOMPOSITION.md has been updated (new sub-tasks added or existing sub-tasks removed), update the sub-task folders accordingly."
- **Description**: The VRAM_CONFIG.md includes "Max peak context per sub-task: {from detection script or config.md override}" which is the global max peak context from the detection script. But it doesn't include the sub-task's own estimated peak context from the DECOMPOSITION.md.
- **Fix Applied**: Added to the VRAM_CONFIG.md template: "This sub-task's estimated peak context: {from DECOMPOSITION.md}k tokens (e.g., "10k")" and "Fits within VRAM: Yes/No"
