Bug: quality sweep dashboard and supervisor pulse create parallel issues for same findings, causing duplicate work dispatch

[superdav42]

Description

The quality sweep creates a persistent dashboard issue (e.g., superdav42/tgc.church#14) listing ShellCheck findings. Minutes later, the supervisor pulse independently creates an actionable issue (#17) for the same findings and dispatches a worker. The worker fixes the code (PR #18), closes #17, but the dashboard issue #14 retains the stale findings in its body. A human later reads #14, sees the unresolved findings, and manually dispatches another worker — which discovers the work is already done.

Timeline (superdav42/tgc.church, 2026-03-27)

Time (UTC)	Event
00:45:05	Quality sweep creates #14 (persistent dashboard) with SC2181 + SC2155 findings
01:41:45	Supervisor pulse creates #17 — same SC2181 + SC2155 findings
01:44:38	Worker merges PR #18, closes #17
Later	Human reads #14, sees stale findings, dispatches duplicate /full-loop

Root cause

Two gaps in the quality sweep → supervisor → worker pipeline:

1. No cross-reference between dashboard and actionable issues. The supervisor pulse creates actionable issues from its own analysis without checking whether the persistent quality dashboard already tracks the same findings. Neither system deduplicates against the other.

2. Dashboard not updated after fixes merge. When PR feat(security): add max-security OpenCode GitHub AI agent integration #18 merged and closed docs: update branch creation to recommend worktrees for parallel sessions #17, the persistent dashboard issue feat: Ralph Loop iterative AI development workflows #14 was not updated to reflect that the SC2181/SC2155 findings are resolved. Its body still shows them as open findings.

Expected behavior

• The supervisor should check the quality dashboard issue before creating actionable issues for findings already listed there (or vice versa — the dashboard should link to the actionable issue).
• When a fix PR merges, the dashboard issue body should be updated (or a comment added) to mark those findings as resolved.
• A human reading the dashboard should be able to distinguish resolved vs. unresolved findings.

Proposed fixes

1. Dedup at actionable issue creation: Before the supervisor creates an issue for a quality finding, search for existing open issues (including persistent dashboard issues) that reference the same file + ShellCheck code. Skip or cross-reference if found.
2. Post-merge dashboard update: When a PR closes a quality-related issue, trigger an update to the persistent dashboard issue — either re-run the sweep to refresh findings, or add a comment noting which findings were resolved by which PR.
3. Staleness indicator: Add a "last verified" timestamp to dashboard findings so readers can tell whether findings predate recent merges.

Related issues

• t1459: prevent duplicate quality-debt recreation across users #4299 (duplicate quality-debt recreation across users) — CLOSED, different scenario
• Bug: pulse dispatches workers for duplicate issues when feature already merged #6419 (pulse dispatches for duplicate issues when feature already merged) — CLOSED, similar but focused on pulse-created duplicates, not dashboard vs. pulse

Environment

• aidevops version: 3.1.386
• AI Assistant: OpenCode
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
• Shell: bash 5.2.21(1)-release
• Working repo: tgc.church (master)
• gh CLI: gh version 2.45.0

[github-actions]

Thanks for the report, @superdav42.

This issue has been queued for maintainer review. A maintainer will review it and either:

• Approve it for the development pipeline (status:available)
• Ask for more information if the report needs clarification
• Close it if it's a duplicate or out of scope

Tip: For faster, higher-quality issue reporting, use /log-issue-aidevops in your AI assistant session. It gathers diagnostics automatically and checks for duplicates.

[github-actions]

Completed via PR #12094. merged to main.

[marcusquinn]

Completed via PR #12094.

• aidevops.sh: v3.4.191
• Model: sonnet (anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6)
• Attempts: 1
• Duration: resolved via PR GH#10308: Fix duplicate issue creation between quality sweep and pulse LLM #12094 (bugfix/sweep-pulse-dedup)

[marcusquinn]

Completed via PR #12094 (merged), released in v3.4.191

What was done

• Split prefetched issues in pulse-wrapper.sh into dispatchable vs sweep-tracked categories, so the pulse LLM sees which findings are already filed
• Added "Sweep-pulse dedup" section to pulse.md with a 4-point dedup contract for the LLM
• Added staleness disclaimer to the quality dashboard body in stats-functions.sh

Testing Evidence

• Level: self-assessed
• ShellCheck: both modified shell scripts pass clean
• markdownlint: pulse.md passes clean
• All CI checks passed on PR

Key decisions

• Used label-based separation (source:quality-sweep, source:review-feedback) rather than title matching — more reliable and follows existing label conventions
• Kept sweep-tracked issues visible to the LLM (in a separate section) rather than hiding them — the LLM needs to see them to dispatch as quality-debt work, it just shouldn't create duplicates
• Dashboard staleness disclaimer is informational — the codebase remains the primary source of truth

Files changed

• .agents/scripts/pulse-wrapper.sh — split issue prefetch into dispatchable vs sweep-tracked sections (GH#10308)
• .agents/scripts/commands/pulse.md — added sweep-pulse dedup contract section
• .agents/scripts/stats-functions.sh — staleness disclaimer + updated docstring

Blockers

• None

Follow-up needs

• Monitor next few pulse cycles to verify the LLM respects the dedup guidance and stops creating duplicate issues

Released in

• v3.4.191