investigate: dual status classifiers — DO-NOT-RECOMMEND unification (#2898)

[rysweet]

Summary

• Investigated whether unifying the two status classifiers into a canonical _status.py is worth doing
• Added investigation document at docs/investigations/2898-status-classifiers.md
• Added outside-in regression tests at tests/outside_in/test_status_classifiers_investigation.py

Finding: DO-NOT-RECOMMEND

The Two Classifiers

	WorkflowClassifier	SessionDetectionMixin
File	src/amplihack/workflows/classifier.py	.claude/tools/amplihack/hooks/power_steering_checker/session_detection.py
Timing	Pre-action (session start)	Post-hoc (hook invocation)
Input	Single request string	Full transcript with tool calls
Output	4 workflow names	6 session types
Method	Keyword-only	Keyword + tool usage evidence
Purpose	Workflow routing	Power-steering enforcement

They serve different purposes, accept different inputs, and produce different output vocabularies. The apparent similarity is superficial.

What's Actually Shared

~8 keyword strings overlap (investigate, understand, analyze, research, explore, how does, cleanup, clean up, organize). This does not justify coupling the two modules.

If keyword drift becomes a concrete bug, a thin _shared_keywords.py constants module (not a unified classifier) would be the right fix.

Test Plan

• All 12 outside-in tests pass: uv run pytest tests/outside_in/test_status_classifiers_investigation.py -v
• Tests verify both classifiers are importable and functional
• Regression guard on keyword overlap count (alerts if it grows beyond current baseline)
• Test verifies the two classifiers do not import each other

Quality Audit

• No code changes — investigation only
• Investigation document is factual, cites specific files and line counts
• Tests follow existing project patterns (class-based, descriptive names)
• No stubs, no dead code, no security concerns

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[github-actions]

🤖 Auto-fixed version bump

The version in pyproject.toml has been automatically bumped to the next patch version.

If you need a minor or major version bump instead, please update pyproject.toml manually and push the change.

[github-actions]

🤖 Auto-fixed version bump

The version in pyproject.toml has been automatically bumped to the next patch version.

If you need a minor or major version bump instead, please update pyproject.toml manually and push the change.

[github-actions]

Repo Guardian - Action Required

❌ 1 file violates the repository policy on ephemeral content

Violation

File: docs/investigations/2898-status-classifiers.md

Why flagged: This is a point-in-time investigation report with temporal markers:

• Date stamp: "Date: 2026-03-07"
• Branch reference: "Branch: investigate/2898-unify-status-classifiers"
• Content describes development work performed on a specific date

Investigation notes like this become stale as the codebase evolves and belong in:

• PR description/comments (most appropriate for this content)
• Issue Unify dual status classifiers into canonical _status.py #2898 comments as investigation findings
• Commit message with detailed rationale

Not in the repository as a permanent file.

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What to do

Option 1: Remove the file

• Move the investigation content to PR investigate: dual status classifiers — DO-NOT-RECOMMEND unification (#2898) #2933 description or a comment
• Reference the PR number in issue Unify dual status classifiers into canonical _status.py #2898 for traceability

Option 2: Override
If you believe this file should remain (e.g., as a template for future investigations, or to establish a pattern for investigation documentation), add a comment containing:

repo-guardian:override This investigation establishes a pattern for documenting DO-NOT-RECOMMEND decisions; provides reference for future contributors considering similar unifications

The reason must explain why this temporal content should be preserved permanently.

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