0093: Inherit retry specialists from the prior manifest

Status: accepted (2026-08-21) · Scope: durable work and workflow execution

Context

A governor freezes its specialist profiles in the goal intent and passes them to every work attempt it starts. The workflow engine records the normalized profiles in that attempt’s immutable run.json manifest.

The direct work retry path supplied no specialist map. A governed item whose workflow requested release-warden therefore started a charged attempt and then failed because the role was not configured, even though the prior attempt had recorded the frozen team.

Alternatives considered

Scan every governor and load the matching goal. Rejected because work items have no governor back-reference, old goals can be unreadable, and two goals can contain the same work ID. A retry should not guess among coordination records.

Add a governor ID or specialist map to the work intent. Rejected because it would change the durable work schema and duplicate an execution snapshot that already exists in the workflow manifest.

Refuse direct retries for governed work. Rejected because manual retry is a documented recovery path, including for goals whose frozen automation policy does not retry blocked work.

Decision

When runWorkItem starts a retry, the caller did not supply specialist profiles, and the prior attempt has durable proof, read that attempt’s manifest through readWorkflowRunManifest and pass its execution.specialists snapshot to the new run. Validate the manifest before appending attempt.started, so an invalid snapshot cannot spend an attempt.

An explicit library caller remains authoritative and may supply a replacement map. Governor-driven attempts continue to pass the frozen goal profiles directly. Initial attempts and parked-attempt resumes are unchanged.

Do not scan governors, add work-intent fields, or infer profiles from workflow source. A lost attempt with no manifest, or a manifest without a specialist snapshot, contributes no profiles.

Result

The recorded release-warden regression can retry without resupplying the team. Both attempt manifests contain the same normalized profile, including instructions, adapter, and effort. Standalone callers that explicitly supply profiles retain their existing override behavior.