Surface stalled / refining / awaiting-operator briefs in the /briefs UI — a brief can sit in 'refining' indefinitely with unresolved design questions and NO visible "needs attention" / "waiting on you" / "blocked" signal. Operator hit this on #229.

INCIDENT (2026-07-04, operator Mike): #229 (child of decisions epic #95) sat in `refining` ~3.5h — fully specced by flower-refine with a strawman + 6 open design questions and an explicit "run a light design-loop" recommendation — but nothing advanced it and the /briefs UI showed NO signal. The operator couldn't tell whether it was stalled, blocked, or awaiting them, and asked "why isn't #95 done / is nothing telling me it's waiting on me?" TWO GAPS: 1. **`refining` is a holding pen with no forward mechanism.** There is auto-dispatch for `planned` briefs but nothing auto-advances a `refining` brief (no design-loop queue / no nudge). A refined-but-unlaunched brief just sits. 2. **No UI surfacing of needs-attention briefs.** /briefs shows no indicator for: stalled-in-refining beyond a threshold, awaiting-operator (open decision/question), blocked-by an incomplete dep, or a parent epic held open solely by one non-terminal child. IRONY / relevance: #95 — the parent epic here — is *literally* "turn your waiting-on-approval/decision into something surfaced" (the decisions feature). Decisions surface explicit *decisions*, but a brief silently stuck in refinement isn't a decision, so it slips through the exact net #95 built. SUGGESTION: a /briefs "needs attention" lane or per-row badge (stalled-refining / awaiting-you / blocked / lone-open-child), and optionally a refinement-advance mechanism (queue a design-loop, or nudge). Relates to #243 (charter/prompt refresh), #244 (refs index), #95/#229. Filed at operator request while diagnosing #229.

{
    "gaps": [
        "refining has no forward mechanism",
        "no stalled/awaiting-operator surfacing in /briefs"
    ],
    "observed": "brief stuck in refining ~3.5h with 6 open design questions, no UI needs-attention signal",
    "parent_epic": 95,
    "trigger_brief": 229
}

created

19h ago

triaged

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resolved

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resolved by

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