When things go wrong
Situations and what to do: drift, conflicts, emergencies.
Building with agents goes wrong in recognisable ways. An agent forgets yesterday's decision, follows a document you abandoned, rewrites a requirement to fit its code, reports work as done without proof, or keeps retrying the same failing test. None of these is a bug in the agent; each is what an agent does when nothing tells it otherwise.
This section collects those situations as cases. Each one describes what happened, why it happens, what Corpole does about it, what you should do now, and how to keep it from happening again. Some end with a sentence you can say to your agent.
Some cases are about the unusual day: production is down and the fix cannot wait for a requirement, two agents picked the same story, a secret ended up in something an agent wrote, or a file in the repository tried to give the agent instructions. Others are about the long run: a new developer joining, a client asking why something was built the way it was, or the same mistake coming back.
If you are here because something just went wrong, the titles are written the way people describe the problem. Find yours and start with “What you do”.
Articles in When things go wrong
- CaseMy agent forgot what we decided yesterdayA decision made in one chat session is gone in the next. Decisions belong in records, not in chat history.
- CaseMy agent followed a decision we had droppedAn old document in the repository still describes the approach you abandoned, and the agent read it as current.
- CaseMy agent changed a requirement to fit its codeThe code did not meet the requirement, so the agent tried to change the requirement instead. In Corpole it can only propose.
- CaseThe requirement changed while the agent was workingSomeone updated a requirement mid-story, and the agent kept building against the old version.
- CaseThe agent says "done" but a criterion is not metThe agent reported the work finished, but a criterion has no proof, or its test is failing.
- CaseThe same test keeps failingThe agent is going round in circles, trying variations of the same fix.
- CaseThe agent wants to run a migration or add a dependencySome actions should never happen without a person. The agent policy decides which.
- CaseProduction is down: declaring an emergencyThe fix cannot wait for a requirement. A time-boxed emergency lets the agent fix it now, on the record.
- CaseAgent health shows a warningA drift signal means an agent is going off course. Resolve it with a root cause, and it can become a lesson.
- CaseAn agent is flooding the review queueToo many proposals, or too many that get rejected. Corpole limits the volume and flags the pattern.
- CaseA secret ended up in something the agent wroteCorpole masks what it recognises as a secret before storing it. Rotate the secret anyway.
- CaseA file or web page tells the agent to do somethingText the agent reads is data, not an instruction. Corpole makes that a rule agents cannot drop.
- CaseTwo agents picked the same storyCorpole shows who is on a story and warns a second agent. It does not block; people decide.
- CaseI just need to fix a typoA trivial change needs no requirement and no interview. Label the pull request and move on.
- CaseWe keep making the same mistakeWhat an agent learns the hard way stays in its memory unless it is written down. Lessons make it shared.
- CaseThe client asks why we built it this wayDecisions are records with their reasons, and every change keeps who made it and why.
- CaseA new developer joins mid-projectThey connect their own agent under their own name and read the same records as everyone else.
- CaseI inherited a half-built vibe-coded appOnboarding reads the code and proposes what it seems to do, for people to confirm before anything binds.
- CaseOur CLAUDE.md is 800 lines and contradicts itselfMove the rules into Corpole as proposals, resolve the contradictions, and hand authority over step by step.
- CaseMy agent insists on something Authority forbidsEven when you ask, the agent will not act against an Authority record. It proposes the change and shows who can make it.