scaffold promises .github/ starter templates and cites a file that has never contained them #19

What's wrong

github_only_profile.md's Stage 2 provisioning step promises five starter .github/ files (a bug-report issue template, a feature-request issue template, a PR template, a CODEOWNERS file, and a CI workflow stub) and cites references/scaffold_output_template.md as where their bodies live. That file is the template for the docs/cbk/scaffold.md conventions doc scaffold writes about the project — it contains zero issue-template, PR-template, CODEOWNERS, or CI-stub content. The citation is dangling, and the promised bodies exist nowhere else in the kit either.

This is a distinct defect from the four cascade-specific issue templates (cascade-workstream.md, cascade-framing.md, cascade-rough-in.md, cascade-meta.md), which do have real bundled content under references/issue-templates/ and are provisioned correctly by Stage 2.5 (SKILL.md:150). Don't conflate the two systems when reading the fix — that system is fine.

Evidence

github_only_profile.md step 2, verbatim:

Push starter .github/ files. Commit via the file-creation tool: an issue template for bug reports, an issue template for features, a PR template, a CODEOWNERS file (single owner = the user, for solo; ask for team), and one CI workflow stub (.github/workflows/ci.yml) that runs an empty job — real CI gets configured in blueprint. Templates live in references/scaffold_output_template.md.

(.claude/skills/scaffold/references/github_only_profile.md:19)

The cited file holds none of it. grep -ni "ISSUE_TEMPLATE\|pull_request\|CODEOWNERS\|ci\.yml\|workflows" .claude/skills/scaffold/references/scaffold_output_template.md → zero hits. Its bug / feature occurrences are the label taxonomy (lines 64, 150, 194) plus one unrelated prose use of "major feature" (line 162) — never a template body:

Label taxonomy:

• Type labels (one per issue): bug, feature, improvement, tech-debt,
  documentation

(.claude/skills/scaffold/references/scaffold_output_template.md:63-65)

Repo-wide greps confirming the promised content doesn't exist anywhere else in the kit (all run from the repo root, all re-run for this issue):

• grep -rn "PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE\|pull_request_template" . → one hit, and it's the same unfulfilled promise: bootstrap_checklist_template.md:22 ("**PR template**: added at \.github/pull_request_template.md`"`), not a template body.
• grep -rn "CODEOWNERS" . → two hits, both promises, no body: github_only_profile.md:19 (quoted above) and manual_steps.md:29 ("**CODEOWNERS enforcement**: scaffold can create the file, but enforcement requires branch protection...").
• grep -rn "name: Bug Report\|name: Feature Request\|bug_report.yml\|feature_request.yml" . → no hits (exit 1).
• grep -rn "^\* @\|CODEOWNERS file" . → no hits (exit 1).

Three other surfaces assume the promise was kept, which makes the gap load-bearing rather than cosmetic:

• github_only_profile.md's own verification matrix: "| Issue templates work | Click \"New issue\" in the repo | Templates appear in a dropdown |" (line 65).
• bootstrap_checklist_template.md's worked "Completed" example and verification row: "- **Issue templates**: bug report and feature request templates added under \.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/`"(line 21) and"| Issue templates work | Click "New issue" in the repo | Bug and feature templates appear in dropdown | ☐ |"` (line 64).
• linear_planning.md:24 shows the same dangling promise reaches the Linear planning axis too: "- **GitHub**: same as the \github_only_profile.md` flow minus the GitHub Projects board (planning lives in Linear instead). Repo, labels, starter `.github/` files."`

A real run's evidence (echosphere — Linear planning axis, 34 commits on main). Its .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ has real bug_report.yml / feature_request.yml content, titled "[bug] " and "[idea] " with project-specific labels. That content cannot have come from a shared kit template, because the kit has none — so it was improvised for that repo. Meanwhile find . -iname CODEOWNERS in echosphere returns nothing at all: that part of the promise was dropped rather than improvised. (Its pull_request_template.md does exist, likewise with no upstream source.)

For status context, the kit's own root README records: "'GitHub Issues' planning has the kit's deepest documentation and is designed first-class, but no real cascade run has exercised it yet" (README.md:119, § "Exercised vs designed"). Echosphere ran on Linear, so the github-issues code path specifically is still unexercised end-to-end — but per linear_planning.md:24 the Linear axis hits this same step, which is why echosphere is evidence at all.

Why it matters

Any scaffold session on the github-issues planning axis — or the linear axis, per linear_planning.md:24 — that reaches this step has nothing to copy: the cited file is the wrong artifact. The session either fabricates issue-template / PR-template / CODEOWNERS / CI-stub content from scratch each time, with no consistency across projects, or silently skips a promised deliverable, as echosphere did with CODEOWNERS. Either way the bootstrap checklist and verification matrix that scaffold hands the user ("Templates appear in a dropdown", "Bug and feature templates appear in dropdown") describe a state the skill never produced from a canonical source, so the user has no way to tell "scaffold did this right" from "the agent made something up this time."

Proposed change

1. Add .claude/skills/scaffold/references/github-starter-templates.md, holding the literal bodies for .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/bug_report.yml, .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/feature_request.yml, .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/config.yml, .github/pull_request_template.md, and .github/CODEOWNERS, plus the .github/workflows/ci.yml empty-job stub github_only_profile.md already describes.

   A worked version exists downstream at you-are-hear/.claude/skills/scaffold/references/github-starter-templates.md and is a reasonable starting point — its provenance note reaches the same empty-grep conclusion independently. Two caveats when importing it:

   • Don't import its ## Review gate section verbatim. That heading and its "§ The floor" backing section are a you-are-hear-local extension of pr-review.md that does not exist upstream — grep -n "The floor" .claude/rules/pr-review.md in this kit returns nothing (exit 1), and grep -rn "Review gate" .claude/ README.md returns nothing at all. Upstream's actual, already-established PR-body contract is the ## Triage block .claude/commands/finish.md Step 10 defines ("A \## Triage` block listing every finding under its class"…"Apply (N) / Apply with care (N)"…"Surface (N)"…"Defer (N)"…"Reject (N)", finish.md:182-186). Shape the PR-template stub to that contract instead. Adopting the you-are-hear convention upstream would be a separate, larger change to pr-review.mdandfinish.md` — not something this fix should smuggle in.
   • That worked copy is not cited from its own SKILL.md § Reference files, so a straight import would inherit the omission item 3 exists to prevent.

2. Fix the dangling citation at .claude/skills/scaffold/references/github_only_profile.md:19 — replace "Templates live in \references/scaffold_output_template.md`."` with a citation to the new file.

3. Add a row for the new file to .claude/skills/scaffold/SKILL.md § Reference files (lines 302–313). Per this repo's own CLAUDE.md discipline — "Skills don't auto-discover references; the entrypoint must cite them" (CLAUDE.md:78) — a new reference needs an entrypoint pointer. Note that list is already incomplete: references/backends.md is used at SKILL.md:178 and :188 but has no row. Worth adding both while the section is open.

No change needed to bootstrap_checklist_template.md or manual_steps.md — their promises become true once (1) exists; they're evidence of the gap, not part of the fix.

_{Filed from an adversarially-verified harvest against j4th/echosphere (31 merged PRs, 29 ADRs) and the first github-issues-axis run at j4th/you-are-hear. Every quote in this issue was grep-verified against the repo it is attributed to, and every absence claim independently re-run, across three audit rounds.}