feat(elicitation): halt with clear error on missing/malformed registry

[devilliersdutoit]

What

Add a registry load guard to bmad-advanced-elicitation Step 1: HALT with a clear error if methods.csv is missing, empty, or malformed.

Why

Step 1 loaded methods.csv with no failure path, so a missing/corrupted registry made the agent silently invent methods from memory. This fails fast with an explicit message instead.
Fixes #2516

How

• Insert a natural-language HALT after the load step: unreadable / empty / wrong header / no rows → stop and report.
• Forbid inventing methods or proceeding from memory.
• Natural-language only; no code, no new control surface.

Testing

• npm run validate:refs, npm run validate:skills, and markdownlint on the file: no new findings vs main (verified by diffing counts with/without the change).
• Confirmed the guard text matches the actual CSV header.

[augmentcode]

🤖 Augment PR Summary

Summary: Adds a Step 1 registry guard to bmad-advanced-elicitation so it HALTs with a clear error when methods.csv is missing, empty, or malformed.

Why: Prevents the agent from silently inventing elicitation methods when the method registry can’t be loaded.

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[augmentcode]

Review completed. 1 suggestion posted.

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[augmentcode]

This instructs the agent to report an exact quoted (English) message, which may conflict with the earlier requirement to always speak output in {communication_language} and lead to inconsistent behavior in non-English runs.

Severity: medium

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[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 6b8a3882-8e0f-4c13-bb8c-187ecece688e

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 35b19db and 2e4551f.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• src/core-skills/bmad-advanced-elicitation/SKILL.md

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Step 1 now requires methods.csv to be readable, non-empty, and structurally valid before continuing; otherwise the skill halts with a fixed error message.

Changes

Advanced Elicitation Registry Guard

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Step 1 registry validation src/core-skills/bmad-advanced-elicitation/SKILL.md	Step 1 now requires methods.csv to load successfully, include the required header, and contain at least one method row, or it stops with the specified error message.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~2 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: halting on a missing or malformed registry.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly related to the change and accurately explains the fail-fast registry guard.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The PR adds the requested Step 1 HALT guard for missing, empty, malformed, or header-mismatched methods.csv.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	The change stays scoped to a small SKILL.md-only natural-language guard with no unrelated additions.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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