No Mistakes

no-mistakes

no-mistakes is a local gate that validates your code changes through a pipeline (intent, rebase, review, test, document, lint, push, PR, CI) before they reach upstream. You drive it through the no-mistakes axi command family, which prints machine-readable TOON to stdout and progress to stderr.

When the user invokes /no-mistakes, report the outcome at the end. If the user asks for something specific, translate that request into the matching axi run flags yourself - for example, "skip the lint step" becomes --skip=lint. Run no-mistakes axi run --help to see the available flags.

Two ways to invoke

/no-mistakes works in two modes, depending on whether the user hands you a task along with the command:

• Validate-only - bare /no-mistakes (optionally with flag-style requests like "skip the lint step"). The user's code changes are already committed; validate them and report the outcome.
• Task-first - /no-mistakes <task>, e.g. /no-mistakes add a --json flag to the status command. First carry out the task yourself, then validate the result through the pipeline:
  1. Check scope. Inspect git status before you change or commit anything. Preserve unrelated pre-existing uncommitted changes, and when you commit, commit only the changes that belong to the user's task.
  2. Do the work. Make the changes the task describes, then commit them on a feature branch. If the user is on the repository's default branch, create a feature branch first - the gate validates committed history on a non-default branch, so the work must land there before you run.
  3. Then validate, passing the user's task as your --intent. The task text is exactly what the user set out to accomplish, in their own words, so it is the intent - pass it through, enriched with the decisions and tradeoffs you made while doing the work (see Intent is required).

Everything below - preconditions, intent, the validate-and-decide loop - applies the same way once the work is committed on a feature branch.

Before you start

• The work you want validated must be committed on a branch. The gate validates committed history, not your uncommitted working tree.
• You must be on a feature branch, not the repository's default branch.
• The repository must already be initialized with no-mistakes init.

If any of these is not met, axi run returns an error: with the exact command to fix it - read it and act on it (commit your work, or create a branch). If the repository is not initialized, run no-mistakes init first; if the no-mistakes command itself is missing or misbehaving, no-mistakes doctor reports what is wrong. Before starting, a quick no-mistakes axi (home view) shows whether a run is already active - resume or axi abort it rather than starting a second run on top of it.

Intent is required

When you start a run you must pass --intent: what the user set out to accomplish - the goal or request behind this work, in their terms. This is not a description of the diff or the files you changed; it is the objective the change is meant to achieve. You know it from the conversation, so pass it directly - no-mistakes uses it verbatim instead of inferring it from local agent transcripts (slower and flakier).

Err on the side of completeness, not brevity. The review step uses --intent to tell a deliberate decision apart from a mistake, so a thin one-line summary makes it flag things the user already chose. Capture the nuance: the user's goal, the specific decisions and tradeoffs they made along the way, any constraints or approaches they ruled in or out, and anything they explicitly asked for that might otherwise look surprising in the diff. A few sentences to a short paragraph is normal - write down what you learned from the conversation that a reviewer reading only the diff would not know.

Validate and decide

Run the pipeline and decide on its findings as they come up:

1. Start the run. It blocks until the first decision point or the end:

   no-mistakes axi run --intent "<what the user set out to accomplish>"

   axi run and every axi respond block synchronously - the review, test, and CI steps can each take several minutes, so a single call may not return for a while. That is normal; allow a long timeout and do not cancel or re-issue the command because it seems slow. To check progress without disturbing the run, use no-mistakes axi status from a separate call.

2. If the output contains a gate: object, the pipeline is waiting on you. Read its findings table. Each finding has an id, severity, file, description, and an action that tells you how the pipeline classified it:

   • auto-fix - mechanical and low-risk; you can authorize the fix on your own judgment by responding with --action fix.
   • no-op - informational only; nothing to do.
   • ask-user - the finding challenges the user's deliberate intent or touches product behavior. This is a call only the user can make - see Escalate ask-user findings below.

   Choose one response:

   # accept the step as-is and continue
   no-mistakes axi respond --action approve
   
   # have the pipeline fix specific findings, then continue
   no-mistakes axi respond --action fix --findings <id1,id2> --instructions "<optional guidance>"
   
   # skip this step
   no-mistakes axi respond --action skip

   While a run is active, never fix findings by editing the code yourself - the pipeline owns both the findings and the fixes. Your job at a gate is to decide and respond; --action fix has the pipeline apply the fix and re-review the result.

   Each respond blocks until the next gate:, checks-passed decision point, or final outcome.

   Two extra flags are available on respond when you need them:

   • --add-finding '<json>' (with --action fix) folds a finding you spotted yourself - one the pipeline did not surface - into the fix round, as a JSON finding object. Use it for a problem you noticed that is not in the gate's own findings table.
   • --step <name> responds to a specific step instead of the one currently awaiting approval. You rarely need this; omit it to answer the active gate.

3. Repeat step 2 until the output has an outcome: instead of a gate:. The outcomes are:

   • checks-passed - the change is validated and CI is green, but the PR is not merged yet. You are done driving the pipeline. Do not wait for the merge: tell the user the PR is ready and ask them to review and merge it (the PR link is in the help line). no-mistakes keeps monitoring the PR in the background, so a human can watch it in the TUI.
   • passed - the changes cleared the gate and the PR was merged or closed.
   • failed or cancelled - they did not; read the output and address it. Fix whatever the output points at (a failing test, a lint error, a finding you skipped), commit the fix on the same feature branch, then drive the pipeline again - no-mistakes axi run --intent "..." starts a fresh run, or no-mistakes rerun re-runs the pipeline for the current branch. Do not leave the user at a failed outcome without either retrying or explaining what blocks it.