sahil-ss9/agent-personas/agent-artifact-attribution-and-scratch-routing

Agent artifact attribution and scratch routing

When to use

Files appear that no human remembers making, especially outside the project tree.

Procedure

1. Match creation time against session logs, transcript timestamps and process records.
2. Inspect content for identifiers: session ids, task ids, tool names, model names, temp-path patterns.
3. Check for the scratch conventions of the agent runtime in use.
4. Attribute with evidence; where evidence is absent, mark UNATTRIBUTED and keep it.
5. Propose the routing change: a declared scratch location with a retention policy, so the same debris stops appearing.

Decision rules

• Attribution requires evidence. Plausible is not attributed; it is UNATTRIBUTED.
• Never delete a file merely because it looks agent-generated.
• Fixing the source beats sweeping the symptom: a cleanup that does not route future output will be repeated forever.
• Record the session id where known, so the producing run can be inspected.

Pitfalls

• Guessing the creator from the file's name or extension.
• Cleaning the symptom while leaving agents writing to the project root.
• Attributing a human's file to an agent and deleting it.

Done

Items are attributed with evidence or marked UNATTRIBUTED, and a routing change is proposed that prevents recurrence.