# Paper Dynasty Session Analysis — 2026-04-04

**Scope:** 53 sessions across 4 PD repos, last 2 weeks (since 2026-03-21)

## Summary

| Repo | Sessions | Turns | Top Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| paper-dynasty (parent) | 43 | 5,296 | Bash (1,694) |
| paper-dynasty-database | 8 | 166 | Bash (75) |
| paper-dynasty-discord-app | 1 | 121 | Bash (46*) |
| paper-dynasty-card-creation | 1 | 46 | Bash (18*) |
| **Total** | **53** | **5,629** | |

*discord/card counts from combined agent report

## Tool Usage (All Repos Combined)

| Tool | Uses | % |
|---|---|---|
| Bash | 1,833 | 39.5% |
| Read | 617 | 13.3% |
| Edit | 575 | 12.4% |
| Agent | 332 | 7.2% |
| Grep | 196 | 4.2% |
| Write | 155 | 3.3% |
| ToolSearch | 164 | 3.5% |
| SendMessage | 75 | 1.6% |
| TaskUpdate | 68 | 1.5% |
| MCP Gitea (all) | ~170 | 3.7% |
| Everything else | ~454 | 9.8% |

## Friction Indicators

| Type | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hook blocks | 40 | Mostly git pre-commit hooks (ruff lint). Low severity. |
| User interruptions | 5 | 4 in discord-app session, 1 in database investigation |
| Compactions | 2 | Only in large parent repo sessions. Context rarely exhausted. |
| Permission denials | 0 | Sub-agents occasionally stall on Bash permissions (see parent retry) |

**Friction is low overall.** The main pain point is sub-agents spawned without `bypassPermissions` or `acceptEdits` mode getting stuck waiting for approvals that never come.

## Workflow Patterns

### Established (working well)
1. **Plan-Read-Edit loop** — Read/Grep to understand, Edit to modify, Bash to verify. The core implementation pattern.
2. **Agent delegation** — Orchestrator spawns sub-agents (pr-reviewer, engineer, issue-worker) rather than implementing directly. 325 Agent calls across 30 sessions.
3. **Council meeting** — 3 parallel PO agents (database, discord, cards) broadcast domain assessments via SendMessage, converge on consensus. Zero friction when tested.
4. **PR review-fix-re-review pipeline** — pr-reviewer → engineer fix → re-review → merge. Chained across 3 sessions.
5. **MCP-first Gitea ops** — All PR/issue/review operations via MCP tools. 170+ MCP Gitea calls, ~0 `tea` CLI calls.
6. **session:end → PR** — Terminal pattern in most feature sessions.
7. **Dev deploy** — Force-update `dev` tag → CI build → SSH verify.

### Emerging (needs refinement)
1. **Ruff lint fix loop** — Commit → lint fail → auto-fix → re-commit. Could be a pre-commit hook fix.
2. **KB save after deployments** — Happens sometimes but not consistently.

## Session Duration Distribution

| Metric | Parent | Database | Card+Discord |
|---|---|---|---|
| Min | 3 min | 1 min | ~1 day* |
| Median | 141 min | 7 min | ~1.5 days* |
| Max | 3,036 min (~51 hrs) | 141 min | ~1.5 days* |

*Card+Discord durations are wall-clock (sessions left open); actual active time is much shorter.

**The parent repo has extreme variance** — most sessions are under 2.5 hours but a few agent-orchestrated work streams run 10-50 hours.

## Automation Candidates

### High Impact
1. **Sub-agent permission mode defaults** — Sub-agents spawned without explicit `mode: "bypassPermissions"` or `mode: "acceptEdits"` get stuck on Bash/Write approvals. The parent repo retry in this session is a live example. **Fix:** Add a hook or CLAUDE.md rule that auto-applies `acceptEdits` for known agent types (engineer, issue-worker, swarm-coder).

2. **Ruff auto-fix before commit** — 37 hook blocks are mostly ruff lint failures caught at commit time. **Fix:** Add `ruff check --fix` as a pre-stage hook so violations are auto-fixed before they block commits.

### Medium Impact
3. **Dev deploy as a single command** — The dev deploy pattern (tag → push → wait → SSH pull) is manual and multi-step. **Fix:** A `/deploy dev` skill that handles the full sequence including waiting for CI and restarting the container.

4. **KB save reminder** — Post-deployment KB saves are inconsistent. **Fix:** Add a post-deploy hook or checklist item to the release skill that prompts for release notes.

### Low Impact (Quality of Life)
5. **Session duration tracking** — Some sessions run 50+ hours wall-clock. Consider adding a session timeout warning or checkpoint prompt after N hours of inactivity.

6. **ToolSearch reduction** — 164 ToolSearch calls means agents frequently need to look up MCP tool schemas. Pre-loading common Gitea MCP schemas could save ~3% of tool calls.

## Notable Observations

- **All 53 sessions are Refractor-initiative focused.** The entire 2-week window is dominated by initiative #19 work across all repos.
- **Agent delegation is heavy and working.** 332 Agent spawns, council meetings, review pipelines — the multi-agent orchestration pattern is the primary way work gets done.
- **Context exhaustion is rare** (2 compactions in 5,629 turns). Sessions are scoped well.
- **The parent repo is the orchestration hub.** 43 of 53 sessions, 94% of turns. Sub-repos are touched by delegated agents, not direct sessions.
- **Median database session is 7 minutes** — these are short, focused agent legs (reviews, council meetings), not long human sessions.