brachnha-insight/_bmad-output/implementation-artifacts/epic-2-retro-2026-01-23.md

Epic Retrospective

Epic: Epic 2: "The Magic Mirror" - Ghostwriter & Draft Refinement Date: 2026-01-23 Participants: Max (Dev), Bob (SM), Alice (Principal Engineer)

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1. Epic Review

Successes (Start doing / Continue doing)

• Ghostwriter "Magic Moment": The transition from chat to the "Draft View" slide-up sheet (Story 2.2) successfully delivered the "Magic Moment" UX. The visual distinction between the casual chat (Inter) and the professional draft (Merriweather) is impactful.
• Streaming Architecture: The implementation of streaming responses for the Ghostwriter (Story 2.1) provides immediate feedback to the user, improving perceived performance.
• Refinement Loop: The conversational refinement flow (Story 2.3) works seamlessly, maintaining context and allowing natural iteration on drafts.
• Logic Sandwich Enforcement: We successfully caught and fixed a critical architecture violation in Story 2.4 (Store accessing DB directly) before it became technical debt. This proves the value of our adversarial code review process.
• Local-First Data Boundary: We maintained strict adherence to keeping user data local (IndexedDB), even while interacting with the LLM API for generation.

Challenges (Stop doing / Improve)

• Architecture Violations: Story 2.4 initially implemented completeDraft with restricted DB calls inside the Store, violating our Service Layer pattern.
  • Root Cause: Developer convenience/shortcut to avoid passing data through the Service layer.
  • Fix: Refactored to ChatService.approveDraft to orchestrate DB and Clipboard actions.
• Inline Component Definitions: Story 2.4 implemented the "Copy Button" inline within DraftActions.tsx instead of creating the specified CopyButton.tsx.
  • Root Cause: Missed requirement detail during implementation.
  • Fix: Extracted to standalone component during review.
• Mocking Streams: Initial testing for streaming responses (Story 2.1) was flaky due to complex ReadableStream mocking.
  • Fix: Standardized mockFetch pattern in llm-service.test.ts.

Key Insights & Lessons Learned

• Adversarial Review is Critical: The code review workflow successfully identified architectural drift that automated linters missed. We must continue this rigorous manual review.
• Service Layer as Orchestrator: The "Logic Sandwich" proves essential for features that touch multiple domains (e.g., Database + Clipboard + UI State). The Service layer is the only place where these should mix.
• Component Granularity: Be vigilant about "inline" components growing too large. Creating dedicated files (like CopyButton.tsx) keeps the codebase navigable.

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2. Metrics & KPI Check-in

Metric	Status	Notes
Story Completion	4 / 4	All stories (2.1 - 2.4) completed and verified.
Test Coverage	High	Critical paths (Draft Service, Chat Store, LLM Service) covered.
NFR Compliance	Pass	Local-first boundary respected; UX performance is smooth.
Bug Count	0	No open bugs.

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3. Action Items

Item	Priority	Owner	Status
Review Epic 3 Architecture	High	Architect	Pending
Ensure 'Sessions' Table Indexing	Medium	Dev	Pending (for Epic 3)
Refactor Test Mocks to Helper	Low	Dev	Open (Consider for Epic 3)

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4. Next Epic Preview

Epic 3: "The Memory Palace" - History & Persistence Goal: Enable users to browse, search, and manage their past chat sessions and drafts.

Critical Considerations:

• IndexedDB Performance: We will be loading lists of sessions. We need to ensure correct indexing in schema.ts.
• Search-on-Type: Implementing performant local search (Dexie startsWith or AnyOf) for the history sidebar.
• Virtualization: The history list might grow long; consider react-window if performance degrades.
• Data Migration: Ensure backward compatibility if we change the schema for Epic 3.

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Important

Architectural Reminder for Epic 3: As we build the History UI, ensure strict separation between the HistoryService (data fetching) and the HistorySidebar (UI). Do not leak Dexie queries into React components.