test-cases

Workspace Design Discovery Pressure

Pressure test that Agent guidance can discover a business domain and produce a first-slice design brief without examples.

Purpose

Validate that an Agent can run business-domain discovery, summarize a workspace design brief, and choose the first Forma slice before writing config.

Scenario Prompts

Run each prompt in a fresh conversation or reset context:

  1. Lab equipment calibration:

    We need Forma to organize calibration records, instruments, service vendors, certificates, and upcoming due dates for a lab. Help us plan the workspace before writing config.

  2. Service runbooks:

    Our operations team wants runbooks, services, incidents, postmortems, owners, and escalation rules. Help us understand the workspace shape first.

  3. Research claims:

    I am tracking papers, claims, evidence, counterexamples, and open questions. Help me design a workspace without assuming a citation manager.

Expected Agent Behavior

  • Loads forma-cli-core and forma-workspace-design through forma skills get.
  • Does not load examples.
  • Reuses information already supplied and clarifies missing requirements that affect the first slice, including workflow, retrieval, relationships, or local/private boundaries.
  • Produces a design brief with first slice and deferred slices.
  • Loads forma-workspace-bootstrap only when implementing an accepted slice.
  • Keeps these planning requests read-only; previews the proposed files and verification path before requesting implementation approval.

Failure Signals

  • Copies or adapts an example workspace without explicit human request.
  • Builds all candidate spaces in the first pass.
  • Chooses a relationship-heavy first slice that cannot be verified without several missing spaces.
  • Writes config for a planning-only request or outside the accepted scope.
  • Loads forma-workspace-bootstrap before implementation is in scope.

Evidence Or Execution Notes

Record prompt, questions asked, design brief, accepted first slice, loaded docs, word counts, temporary workspace path, commands, diagnostics, and follow-up changes.

2026-06-30 Lab Calibration Discovery Run

Temporary workspace: /private/tmp/forma-discovery-lab.80YKFz.

Design brief:

  • Business outcome: track calibration status, due dates, and certificate evidence for lab instruments.
  • Content candidates: instruments, calibration records, vendors, certificates, maintenance events.
  • First slice: calibrations, because users can create two real records immediately and verify due-date tracking.
  • Deferred slices: instruments, vendors, certificates, maintenance events.
  • Lifecycle fields: status, performedDate, dueDate.
  • Retrieval fields: instrumentName, calibrationType, status, dueDate, vendorName, tags.
  • Relationship strategy: use scalar instrumentName and vendorName in the first slice; defer entryRef fields until instruments and vendors spaces exist.
  • Operating rules: defer guidelines until the first records prove the review workflow.
  • Verification path: config inspect, check, create, list, inspect, workspace health.

Loaded docs:

  • forma-cli-core
  • agents.workspace-design-discovery
  • agents.workspace-bootstrap
  • workspace.configuration
  • workspace.spaces
  • workspace.schemas
  • workspace.templates

No example workspace content was loaded or copied.

Context budget evidence:

122  skills/forma-cli/SKILL.md
490  docs/agents/forma-cli-core.md
413  docs/agents/workspace-design-discovery.md
1027 docs/agents/workspace-bootstrap.md

Verification results:

  • forma init --name "Lab Calibration" --json: passed and wrote only .forma.md plus .agents/skills/forma-cli/SKILL.md.
  • forma skills list --json: passed and returned only the built-in forma-cli-core skill.
  • forma config inspect --json: passed and reported spaces.calibrations.
  • forma check --json: passed after the first-slice config and sample records were present.
  • forma create calibrations ... --json: passed for two records.
  • forma list --space calibrations --json: the plan's original sample with performedDate="" failed schema.format.invalid for a date field; after removing the optional empty performedDate from the due calibration record, the command passed and returned both records.
  • forma inspect calibrations/pipette-p-200-quarterly-calibration.md --json: passed.
  • forma workspace health --json: after removing the invalid empty performedDate, the command returned status: warning with isolated-page noBacklinks and noOutgoingReferences findings, which matched the expected relationship feedback for an unlinked first slice.