Turn Feedback Into Guidance
turn-feedback-into-guidance
Summary
Repeated steering signals that a preference is missing from durable repo guidance or tooling. Fix the current artifact and encode the reusable lesson at the right level when the feedback applies beyond one line.
Problem
Repeated steering wastes maintainer attention. If the same correction is needed across sessions, the agent treated feedback as a one-off patch instead of a signal that the repo lacks durable guidance, tests, lint, snippets, or workflow support.
Preferred Move
When feedback reveals a reusable preference, update the system that should have prevented the miss. That might be a pattern, guide, template, lint rule, test, snippet, or agent instruction. Fix the current artifact and capture the generalized lesson at the right level.
Tradeoff
Do not turn every comment into a permanent rule. Capture feedback when it applies beyond the current line, when it has repeated, or when failing to encode it will likely cost future review time.
Agent Instruction
When maintainer feedback points to a broader preference, propose or make a small durable guidance
update in addition to fixing the immediate issue. Name the generalized lesson in the handoff.Examples
Bad: the agent fixes only the specific example.
Changed this one bool return into a named error.
Good: the agent fixes the instance and records the reusable rule.
Changed this bool return into a named error and added the API pattern that fallible operations
should report the failing condition instead of collapsing it into success/failure.