Before reporting any memory hit containing "pending/awaiting/needs/consider" as current fact, verify it against the actual source. Prevents propagating resolved items that memory hasn't caught up to.
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---
name: stale-pending-memory-guard
description: Before reporting any memory hit containing "pending/awaiting/needs/consider" as current fact, verify it against the actual source. Prevents propagating resolved items that memory hasn't caught up to.
---
## When to use
Run this guard inside `prior-art-check` whenever a memweave (`mw_search.py`) hit's body contains action-pending language. Without it, a stale "awaiting review" entry gets reported as current fact even after the upstream work completed — as happened with an upstream PR whose note said "awaiting review" after it had already merged.
This guard fills a gap that healthcheck 9e does **not** cover: 9e catches technical staleness (are we behind upstream?), not tracking staleness (does our note still match reality?).
## Trigger words
Flag any memory hit whose body contains: `pending`, `awaiting`, `needs`, `consider`, `TODO`, `blocked`, `in progress`, `not yet`, `will be`, `outstanding`.
## Steps
1. **Surface hits normally** via memweave (`.venv-memweave/bin/python scripts/memweave/mw_search.py "<query>" --k 5`).
2. **Scan each hit's body** for trigger words (case-insensitive).
3. **Verify flagged entries** before reporting:
- PR/issue → `gh pr view <number>` or `gh issue view <number>`
- Package/code → freshness check or `git log --oneline -5`
- Config/infra → read the live file or service status
4. **Report the verified state**, not the memory text.
5. **Update stale entries** by editing the corresponding note in the memweave corpus (`~/.uncle-j-memory/memory/`) with corrected status + date; the nightly `sync_memory.sh` re-embeds it.
6. Continue with the rest of `prior-art-check` normally.
## What NOT to flag
- Entries describing completed past facts: "was fixed in v3.3.5", "merged 2026-05-15" — historical, not pending.
- Entries where "pending" appears in a key name but doesn't imply outstanding action.
## Why this matters
Memory records are hypotheses, not facts. Any entry written when work was in-flight can silently become wrong after the work completes. Propagating a stale "pending" status wastes a session turn and erodes trust in memory as a source.
