Expert guide: observation and correction

Updated: 2026-08-05
Architecture: ADR-046

Clients communicate with a named Specialist backed by a managed Hermes session. Every successful Hermes reply is delivered directly and exactly once. Expert work is optional, after-delivery observability and correction; it is not a release step.

In the Expert workspace you may:

• inspect a delivered conversation and its canonical audit/runtime evidence;
• investigate a genuine failed run;
• write an internal note;
• correct delivered Specialist text when authorized; or
• author a human follow-up as the Specialist when the product workflow calls for one.

Do not wait for or manipulate confidence thresholds, risk gates, held_for_review, approval continuations, clarification cards, or auto-reply modes. They are retired and cannot control delivery.

Corrections target the exact Hermes SessionDB locator. A genuinely human-authored follow-up with no Hermes row is appended once and uses the returned locator as its identity. If a canonical write conflicts, surface the conflict; do not hide it with UI deduplication or create a synthetic <delivered_message> projection.

If Hermes fails, the client flow reports a real failure. Do not present canned fallback prose as though the Specialist authored it.