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Reasoning Trace (RENAR)

A reasoning trace is an ordered, append-only chain of typed steps attached to a task. It records why the agent did something — the rationale a fresh agent could not reconstruct from the diff alone. It is the reasoning half of RENAR reproducibility (the other halves are events, verification runs, and receipts). The trace is read on its own via tausik task show; tausik task replay <slug> produces a fuller chronological timeline that interleaves all four sources.

The /reason skill is the agent-facing surface; this page is the reference.

The four kinds (closed list)

Steps are one of a closed list of kinds. The four form the canonical cycle and seq auto-increments per task:

kind	answers
`intent`	What am I trying to achieve right now?
`premise`	What belief/assumption drives the choice?
`action`	What I'm doing about it
`verification`	How I confirmed it worked

An invalid kind is rejected twice — once by the service (friendly error) and again by the DB CHECK constraint (hard guarantee), so a malformed step is never silently stored.

Recording steps

MCP-first (preferred):

tausik_reason_step(slug="my-task", kind="intent", content="…")

CLI fallback — arguments are positional <slug> <kind> <content>:

bash

.tausik/tausik task reason-step my-task intent "…"

Read the trace back via CLI — .tausik/tausik task show my-task — or MCP — tausik_task_show(slug="my-task"). Both print a Reasoning trace (N) section after plan and decisions.

Worked example — a full trace

The trace below is from v16r-reason-skill itself: shipping a /reason skill whose nudge must not become a new gate.

bash

.tausik/tausik task reason-step v16r-reason-skill intent \
  "Ship a /reason skill + a /task nudge that records reasoning at forks."

.tausik/tausik task reason-step v16r-reason-skill premise \
  "Reasoning capture is a discipline, not a gate — QG-2 must gain no new blocker."

.tausik/tausik task reason-step v16r-reason-skill action \
  "Add an escalating SOFT nudge to /task step 6; leave task_done gates untouched."

.tausik/tausik task reason-step v16r-reason-skill verification \
  "Closed a task with zero reasoning steps end-to-end — task done succeeded, no new gate fired."

Rendered by tausik task show v16r-reason-skill:

Reasoning trace (4):
  1. (intent) Ship a /reason skill + a /task nudge that records reasoning at forks.
  2. (premise) Reasoning capture is a discipline, not a gate — QG-2 must gain no new blocker.
  3. (action) Add an escalating SOFT nudge to /task step 6; leave task_done gates untouched.
  4. (verification) Closed a task with zero reasoning steps end-to-end — task done succeeded, no new gate fired.

The chain reads as a self-contained argument: the intent states the goal, the premise names the constraint that shaped the design, the action records the concrete choice, and the verification closes the loop by testing the very constraint the premise asserted. A correction never edits a prior step — append a new step (often a fresh premise) instead.

When to record — and when not to

Record a step at a fork: choosing between approaches, adopting a non-obvious premise, or verifying a claim whose rationale would otherwise be lost.

Do not use it as a per-edit journal — that is task log. Three surfaces, three jobs:

Surface	Shape	Use for
`reason-step`	typed, ordered, append-only	the reasoning behind a fork — replayable
`task log`	freeform timestamped line	progress journal, crash-safety
`tausik_decide`	a committed project decision	choices that bind future work

Guarantees

Append-only. Steps are never edited or deleted; the trace is an audit record. Wrong premise → new step, not a rewrite.
Advisory, never blocking. Neither QG-0 (task start) nor QG-2 (task done) inspects the trace. A task with zero reasoning steps starts and closes normally — the /task nudge is a soft, escalating reminder only.
One trace per task. Steps are scoped to a task slug; there is no global trace.

Reasoning Trace (RENAR) ​

The four kinds (closed list) ​

Recording steps ​

Worked example — a full trace ​

When to record — and when not to ​

Guarantees ​