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Cursor Background Agent Automations — Seven Integrity Enforcement Loops

EPICON C-242: Cursor Background Agent Automations

  • Layer: SUBSTRATE > infrastructure > ci-automation
  • Author: ATLAS Agent (+Michael Judan)
  • Date: 2026-03-04
  • Status: Active

Intent Publication (EPICON-02 Compliance)

epicon_id: EPICON_C-242_INFRA_cursor-background-automations_v1
title: Cursor Background Agent Automations — Seven Integrity Enforcement Loops
cycle: C-242
scope: infrastructure
mode: normal
issued_at: 2026-03-04T10:00:00Z
expires_at: 2026-09-04T10:00:00Z

justification:
  VALUES INVOKED: integrity, efficiency, reliability
  REASONING: |
    The monorepo had grown to a scale where manual integrity enforcement
    was no longer sustainable. Seven automated loops were configured to
    catch EPICON compliance failures, link rot, schema drift, and sentinel
    configuration issues before human review.
  ANCHORS:
    - PR review bottleneck was increasing with repo scale
    - Post-C-199 reorganization introduced link rot risk
    - Sentinel personality drift had no automated detection
  BOUNDARIES:
    - Applies to CI automation layer only
    - Does not modify agent logic or core infrastructure
  COUNTERFACTUAL:
    - If automation failures create false confidence, add explicit failure reporting
    - If event-driven triggers cause missed checks, fall back to scheduled polling

Context

The Mobius-Substrate monorepo had grown to a scale where manual integrity enforcement was no longer sustainable. PR reviews required checking EPICON compliance, link validity, schema consistency, and sentinel configuration across dozens of files. Human-only review was becoming a bottleneck and a source of drift.

Changes

Seven Cursor Background Agent automations were configured:

# Automation Trigger
1 EPICON Ledger Integrity — validates frontmatter, cycle references, status fields EPICON file change
2 PR Checklist Enforcement — ensures EPICON justification, scope, counterfactuals present PR open/update
3 Broken Link Detection — scans docs for internal links pointing to moved/deleted paths docs/ change
4 Schema Drift — compares JSON schemas against actual data structures schema file change
5 Sentinel Personality Guard — validates sentinel configs maintain defined roles sentinels/ change
6 Onboarding Sync — checks START_HERE.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, README.md consistency any root doc change
7 Turborepo Pipeline Health — monitors build pipeline failures, cache misses, dependency issues CI run

Design Decision

Initial implementation used a single polling schedule for all seven automations. This was subsequently split into event-driven automations to reduce unnecessary computation and improve response time — each automation triggers only on relevant file changes.

Impact

  • Reduced PR review time by catching integrity issues before human review
  • Prevented post-C-199 reorganization link rot from accumulating
  • Established automated guardrails for the sentinel personality system
  • Created a model for how Mobius infrastructure self-monitors

Integrity Notes

  • MII impact: Positive — automated enforcement reduces human error in integrity maintenance
  • GI impact: +0.01 — infrastructure health monitoring improves system reliability
  • Risk: Medium — automation failures could create false confidence; monitoring the monitors is essential

"We heal as we walk." — Mobius Substrate