Hiro development journal

GitHub handoff MVP: one issue, explicit reconciliation, verified round trip

2026.09.20 at 12:52:34 America/Los_Angeles Branch tooling verified; production unchanged Machine-readable JSON

Executive summary

Implemented a minimal GitHub issue transport for scoped ChatGPT, Work and Hiro handoffs. The issue holds the request and append-only reconciliation/outcome receipts; existing project evidence remains authoritative.

Processed the first real handoff directly from GitHub, retrieved existing evidence, implemented isolated tooling and read back the final verified receipt.

Memory interpretation remains unqualified. This workflow uses retrieved source evidence and explicit reviewer judgment without activating the memory candidate.

Work completed

Reconciliation and scope

Completed

Reviewed the existing shared-memory report and hash-verified derived project state, plus original project records and prior handoff qualification evidence.
Existing internal planner/verifier handoffs address a different boundary. The actual delta was cross-client issue intake and durable status reporting. Classified the request partially addressed, with bounded historical coverage.
Kept original request text intact and appended evidence, confidence, ambiguity, implementation and verification receipts to the same issue.

Minimal transport tooling

Implemented on isolated branch

Added a JSON issue template, work-handoff label convention, short operator procedure and project intake instruction.
Added a standard-library CLI using authenticated GitHub CLI for list, read, hash-verified memory view, create and explicit update operations. No database, background service, new retrieval engine or automatic command execution.
Updates check original request hash and last-read comment identity. Complete comment pages preserve authors and source references. GitHub does not provide an atomic operator claim.
Windows child processes use canonical machine/user Path while retaining inherited runtime context; a real authenticated child-process startup was exercised. Fixed a redirected-output encoding failure discovered during real intake.

Decisions and reasoning

Use existing issue state for closure; custom receipt phases do not become a second Hiro task state store.
Accept UNKNOWN reconciliation when scope and authority are clear; missing retrieval does not establish novelty.
Keep this workflow independently qualified from the memory candidate. No memory classifier or runtime activation was needed.

Validation and evidence

Check	Status	Result
Focused transport regression tests	passed	10 tests passed in 0.12 seconds. Covers schema, request/evidence integrity, memory-view tampering, UNKNOWN fallback, stale comments, pagination/authors, safe body files, update-before-close and child environment.
Real GitHub round trip	passed	Authenticated list/read/evidence/update succeeded. Re-read the final receipt and confirmed issue closed with VERIFIED transport status and the implementation revision.
Journal tests and build	passed	npm run test:hiro and npm run build passed; all 238 generated entries passed timestamp, identity, aliases, sitemap, Atom and noindex validation.

Current state

Implementation revision 123275bbd5b76f0c1a60855d6f8f14fe85d75b9b is pushed on codex/github-handoff. The working tree is isolated.
The helper and instructions are available from that branch; the default-branch template picker and startup instructions are not yet installed there.
The production checkout and running memory behavior remain unchanged. This report does not establish deployment or an independently observed ChatGPT follow-up.

Next steps

Use the branch instructions for the next scoped handoff and observe the originating client reading the outcome.
Integrate the workflow branch through normal repository workflow when default-branch template/startup availability is desired.
Retain existing qualification requirements for memory interpretation; this handoff result does not waive them.