Degradation Digest — Pattern Detection for Failing Features

Purpose

Review degradation events logged by the DegradationReporter, group repeated patterns, and escalate trends that indicate a primary path is reliably failing and needs fixing.

Procedure

Read the auth token:

```
AUTH=$(python3 -c "import json; print(json.load(open('.instar/config.json')).get('authToken',''))" 2>/dev/null)
```

1. Read Events

```
cat .instar/state/degradation-events.json
```

2. Check Previous Digest

```
cat .instar/state/job-handoff-degradation-digest.md 2>/dev/null
```

Compare against the previous digest to identify new patterns vs. already-reported ones.

3. Group by Feature

Count how many times each feature has degraded since the last digest.

4. Escalate Patterns

For each feature with 3+ repeated degradations — this is a PATTERN, not a one-off. The primary path is reliably failing.

Submit feedback for each pattern:

```
curl -s -X POST http://localhost:${INSTAR_PORT:-4040}/feedback
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AUTH"
-H 'Content-Type: application/json'
-d '{"type":"bug","title":"Repeated degradation: FEATURE","description":"FEATURE has degraded N times. Primary: X. Fallback: Y. Most recent reason: Z. This pattern indicates the primary path needs fixing."}'
```

5. Write Handoff Notes

```
echo "Last digest: $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ). Events by feature: ..." > .instar/state/job-handoff-degradation-digest.md
```

6. Exit Silently if Clean

If no patterns found (all one-offs), exit with no output.