Lecture 07: Scope Control & Atomic Tasks

The Overreach Trap

When given broad authority, coding agents suffer from scope creep:

• Asked to add a meta description, the agent refactors the entire theme header.
• Asked to implement a Breadcrumb schema, it rewrites the site navigation menu.
• Half-finishes three different features, leaving all three unverified.

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The One-Task Invariant

The Genisoft Harness enforces a strict operational rule:

One agent session = Exactly ONE task from seo_tasks.json.

Definition of Done (DoD)

An atomic task cannot be closed until all four criteria are fulfilled:

1. php -l exits code 0 with zero syntax errors.
2. php tools/verify-seo-safety.php <modified files> exits code 0 with zero critical violations.
3. Relevant Schema entities pass node tools/schema-graph-validator.js <rendered JSON-LD file>.
4. Evidence string is recorded in both seo_tasks.json and progress.md.