Harden skill-availability check: require two exact-form failures before noop (#133)

The openings sweep noop'd on its first real run on
elastic/docs-content despite the skill being available, because
the agent stochastically invoked the skill with a non-exact form
the first time:

  11:33:22  ✗ skill(docs-page-opening-optimizer)        Skill not found
  11:33:27  ● noop  "docs-page-opening-optimizer skill unavailable..."
  11:33:33  ✓ skill(skill: docs-page-opening-optimizer)        succeeded

The prompt's "abort with noop on skill failure" rule fired on the
first non-exact attempt, before the agent retried with the correct
`skill(skill: …)` form and got results. By the time the exact
invocation succeeded, the noop was already committed.

Frontmatter, applies-to, and style produced fix-issues fine in the
same orchestrator run. The difference: the frontmatter sweep
prompt explicitly tolerates partial skill failures ("if one fails,
report only the other"); applies-to and style happened to land on
the exact form first try. Openings was the unlucky one.

Lift the docs-review pattern (PRs #117/#118) where skill
availability is only declared after a confirmed exact-form
failure. Apply to the three sweeps that had the strict
abort-on-first-failure rule:

- openings (was hit by this in real run 25373751367)
- applies-to (would hit it next time the agent picks the wrong form)
- style (same)

Each now spells out the procedure: try the exact form, retry
once on failure, only noop after the second exact-form failure.
A single non-exact failure is not sufficient evidence.

The frontmatter prompt already had a softer fallback ("merge what
works, note any failure in Notes"); coherence and staleness use
different mechanisms (>50% MCP failure threshold and full-repo
deterministic respectively); typos doesn't import any skill.
None of those need this change.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Author: theletterf

.github/workflows/gh-aw-docs-applies-to-sweep.lock.yml

@@ -205,7 +205,13 @@ Invoke `skill(skill: docs-applies-to-tagging)` against `/tmp/gh-aw/sweep-data/sc
 
 **Audit mode only — do not write any files.** The skill defaults to validation when not asked to fix; reinforce that intent in the call. This sweep produces an issue, not edits.
 
-If the skill fails, abort the run by calling `noop` with `"docs-applies-to-tagging skill unavailable"` — there is no fallback heuristic worth filing as findings.
+**Only treat the skill as unavailable after a confirmed exact-form failure.** Stochastic agent retries sometimes invoke the skill with a shortened form (e.g., `skill(docs-applies-to-tagging)` without the `skill:` prefix) which fails before the exact form is tried. Procedure:
+
+1. Invoke with the exact form `skill(skill: docs-applies-to-tagging)`.
+2. If the result is "Skill not found", retry once more with the same exact form.
+3. Only after a second exact-form failure, abort the run by calling `noop` with `"docs-applies-to-tagging skill unavailable"` — there is no fallback heuristic worth filing as findings.
+
+A single first-attempt failure (especially with a non-exact form) is **not** sufficient evidence to noop.
 
 ## Step 2: Build the findings list
 

.github/workflows/gh-aw-docs-applies-to-sweep.md

@@ -213,7 +213,13 @@ Invoke `skill(skill: docs-page-opening-optimizer)` against `/tmp/gh-aw/sweep-dat
 
 **Suggest only — do not produce edits to repo originals.** This sweep emits an issue, not a PR. The skill may modify files inside the scope copy directory; that is fine — the changes are scratch. To recover the suggestion, diff each modified scope file against the original at `${{ github.workspace }}/<path>`.
 
-If the skill fails, abort by calling `noop` with `"docs-page-opening-optimizer skill unavailable"`.
+**Only treat the skill as unavailable after a confirmed exact-form failure.** Stochastic agent retries sometimes invoke the skill with a shortened form (e.g., `skill(docs-page-opening-optimizer)` without the `skill:` prefix) which fails before the exact form is tried. Procedure:
+
+1. Invoke with the exact form `skill(skill: docs-page-opening-optimizer)`.
+2. If the result is "Skill not found", retry once more with the same exact form.
+3. Only after a second exact-form failure, abort by calling `noop` with `"docs-page-opening-optimizer skill unavailable"`.
+
+A single first-attempt failure (especially with a non-exact form) is **not** sufficient evidence to noop.
 
 ## Optional: cross-check H1 specificity via the Elastic Docs MCP server