quest: Haiku writes XS, Opus drops a rung, and the watcher writes flaky quests

quest/m0/model-routing/README.md

@@ -83,6 +83,12 @@ are mostly judgment.
   write at (XS medium, S high, M xhigh, L and XL xhigh); and coordinators
   size each `/quest-iterate` by its remaining work. The tables and the
   iterate decisions are in [Route by size](/quest/m0/model-routing/models.md).
+- Revised again 2026-11-05 evening (user, /quest-plan): xhigh is XL's
+  alone. Haiku high writes XS; Opus writes S low, M medium, L high, XL
+  xhigh; Sol falls back one rung lower, now through L; Sol reviews follow
+  [Single-pass review](/quest/m0/token-waste/review-single-pass.md)'s
+  table. The tables and the benchmark evidence are in
+  [Route by size](/quest/m0/model-routing/models.md).
 - Which milestone? ✅ m0 (rejected: m1). It ranks first among m0's work
   after Kix, by the 2026-11-01 order: land work, then Kix, then the rest.
 

quest/m0/model-routing/models.md

@@ -27,9 +27,10 @@ Decided 2026-11-04 (user, /quest-plan); the evidence is in
 - One model per size, or a ranked list?
   - ✅ A ranked list, so a usage limit falls through to the next entry
     (user, replacing "skip the quest and report the outage")
-- Which models? ✅ Opus writes the code at every size, with Sol as the
-  fallback through M; L and XL have no fallback and wait for Opus (user,
-  2026-11-05, replacing the 2026-11-04 lists that gave XS to Grok).
+- Which models? ✅ Haiku writes XS and Opus writes S and up, with Sol as
+  the fallback through L; XL has no fallback and waits for Opus (user,
+  2026-11-05, revised below; replacing the 2026-11-04 lists that gave XS to
+  Grok).
 - Grok? ✅ Removed from routing and from every review (user, 2026-11-05:
   its weekly usage is close to zero and its results were weak), so
   `quest agent` gains no Grok harness; the "quest agent starts Grok" quest is
@@ -38,20 +39,59 @@ Decided 2026-11-04 (user, /quest-plan); the evidence is in
   a `Maintainer:` item under its `## Waiting`. An XL stays XL.
 
 The lists, pinned in `src/cli/models.ts` beside the review lists
-`quest review` reads (user, 2026-11-05):
+`quest review` reads (user, 2026-11-05, revised the same evening below):
 
 | Size | Writes (spawn and iterate) | Reviews (`quest review`) |
 |---|---|---|
-| XS | claude `claude-opus-5-5` low → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` medium | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` medium → claude `claude-opus-5-5` low |
-| S | claude `claude-opus-5-5` medium → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` high | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` high → claude `claude-opus-5-5` medium |
-| M | claude `claude-opus-5-5` high → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` xhigh | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` xhigh → claude `claude-opus-5-5` high |
-| L, XL | claude `claude-opus-5-5` xhigh | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` xhigh → claude `claude-opus-5-5` xhigh |
+| XS | claude `claude-haiku-5-5` high → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` low | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` low → claude `claude-opus-5-5` low |
+| S | claude `claude-opus-5-5` low → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` medium | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` medium → claude `claude-opus-5-5` low |
+| M | claude `claude-opus-5-5` medium → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` high | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` medium → claude `claude-opus-5-5` medium |
+| L | claude `claude-opus-5-5` high → codex `gpt-6.1-sol` xhigh | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` high → claude `claude-opus-5-5` high |
+| XL | claude `claude-opus-5-5` xhigh | codex `gpt-6.1-sol` xhigh → claude `claude-opus-5-5` xhigh |
 
-The review list is the write list flipped: Sol reviews at the effort Sol
-would write at, and Opus takes the review only when Sol wrote the code. This
-raises every Sol review one step from
-[moq-dev/quest#493](https://github.com/moq-dev/quest/pull/493)'s (XS low,
-S medium, M high).
+Opus takes a review only when Sol wrote the code, and never reviews XL in
+practice, since Sol writes no XL.
+
+Revised 2026-11-05 evening (user, /quest-plan, while spawning the
+[token waste](/quest/m0/token-waste/README.md) quests), replacing writes of
+XS Opus low, S Opus medium, M Opus high, L and XL Opus xhigh, and Sol
+fallbacks of medium, high, and xhigh for XS to M. Agents already running
+keep the efforts they started with. Decision prompts, chosen options
+marked ✅:
+
+- Goal: ✅ every size gets a cheaper writer, so xhigh is XL's alone.
+- Opus writes: ✅ one rung lower, S low, M medium, L high, XL xhigh (the
+  user's proposal).
+- XS writer: ✅ Haiku high, then Sol low (rejected: Haiku medium, Opus low,
+  Sol medium, DeepSeek through opencode). The user asked whether Haiku high
+  beats Opus low. No published benchmark measures Opus 5.5 at low effort.
+  [Bito's coding benchmark](https://bito.ai/blog/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-sonnet-5-5-vs-opus-5-5/)
+  (October 2026, judged by Opus) scored Haiku 5.5 high 87% on one-shot asks
+  and 82% on long builds against Opus 5.5 medium's 90% and 87%, at 1/4 to
+  1/23 of the cost; Haiku medium scored 76-79% with about three times the
+  variance between sessions. Anthropic warns that low effort on long agent
+  prompts skips checks and follow-through. models.dev prices Haiku 5.5 at
+  $0.10/$0.50 per million input/output tokens, five times that for a
+  request over 100k tokens, against Opus 5.5's $4/$20. DeepSeek would need
+  an opencode harness and its sandbox in `quest agent`, which left on
+  2026-11-04. The [model check](/quest/m1/model-check.md) moves XS back to
+  Opus if Haiku's review scores lag.
+- Sol fallbacks: ✅ one rung lower, XS low, S medium, M high, and a new L
+  fallback at xhigh; XL keeps none (the user's pick; rejected: unchanged).
+- Review efforts: ✅ [Single-pass review](/quest/m0/token-waste/review-single-pass.md)'s
+  Sol column (XS low, S medium, M medium, L high, XL xhigh) replaces the
+  rule that a review runs at the effort Sol would write at, since that
+  decision ([moq-dev/quest#509](https://github.com/moq-dev/quest/pull/509))
+  is newer than this quest's
+  ([moq-dev/quest#507](https://github.com/moq-dev/quest/pull/507)) and
+  carries the cost data. That quest's PR changes `REVIEWERS`; this one adds
+  the write lists. Opus's review efforts follow its write efforts
+  (rejected: the write list mirrors the reviews).
+
+Agent's choice, for the implementer to revisit: an iterate whose writer is
+missing from its size's list runs at that writer's effort for the nearest
+size that lists it, so an XS iterate on an Opus PR runs Opus low and an L
+iterate on a Haiku PR runs Haiku high.
 
 Iterates, decided 2026-11-05 (user, /quest-plan, after a `/quest-complete`
 run in moq-dev/moq sent many merge-and-record iterates):
@@ -66,7 +106,7 @@ run in moq-dev/moq sent many merge-and-record iterates):
   `Implementer: Claude Code, claude-opus-5-5, low effort (iterate, XS)`, so
   the [model check](/quest/m1/model-check.md) can audit it. Not chosen:
   `quest` estimating it from those signals.
-- What if both models have written a PR? ✅ They never do: one writer per
+- What if two models have written a PR? ✅ They never do: one writer per
   PR (user, 2026-11-05, from a CodeRabbit finding on
   [moq-dev/quest#507](https://github.com/moq-dev/quest/pull/507)). Each
   review list holds only Sol and Opus, and `quest review` excludes every

quest/m0/queue-watcher/README.md

@@ -138,6 +138,7 @@ Shared shape, for the children to follow:
 - [The other repositories follow](/quest/m0/queue-watcher/follow.md) - quest, rind and rust2 are cut over and landing; waits for a fork PR to land through one of their queues
 - [Harden the queue runners](/quest/m0/queue-watcher/runners.md) - each queue runner runs only its repository's queue workflow, and every outside fork PR needs approval
 - [Tests fit their timeout on the queue runner](/quest/m0/queue-watcher/queue-test-timeouts.md) - the root and Worker suites stop timing out or stalling in merge-group runs, so the queue stops ejecting PRs for them
+- [The watcher writes flaky quests](/quest/m0/queue-watcher/flaky-quest.md) - a disable's follow-up quest comes from a template in `quest land watch`, so the headless land fixer writes no quest
 - [Daemons prune their logs](/quest/m0/queue-watcher/log-retention.md) - the watcher and gate delete their finished logs after a window, so state stays bounded (4.1 GiB on nixos on 2026-11-04)
 - [Retire the batching gate](/quest/m0/queue-watcher/retire.md) - once no repository lands through `quest land serve`, its batching code and host units go
 

quest/m0/queue-watcher/flaky-quest.md

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+# [S] The watcher writes flaky quests
+
+## Goal
+
+When the queue watcher disables a test seen flaking twice, the follow-up
+quest (`quest/m0/flaky/<name>.md`, with its epic created when missing)
+comes from a fixed template in `quest land watch`, not from the land fixer.
+The fixer's `disable` commit holds only the skip, whose reason names the
+quest path the watcher chose. No headless agent writes quest prose.
+
+## Plan
+
+Decided 2026-11-05 (user, /quest-plan). The user's rule: quests are written
+only by a coordinator (`/quest-complete`, `/quest-spawn`) on Opus, never by a
+sub-agent. The skills already follow it: only `/quest-merge` and
+`/quest-complete` plan follow-ups, and `/quest-plan` refuses to run in an
+agent that cannot prompt. The land fixer, a headless Codex agent, is the one
+exception: `assets/land-fix.md` has it write the flaky quest and its
+`quest/m0/flaky/README.md` link in the disable commit, and
+`src/cli/land-watch-flaky.ts` requires exactly one added quest file.
+
+Decision prompts, chosen options marked ✅:
+
+- Who writes it: ✅ the watcher, from a template (rejected: the fixer
+  reports the test and a coordinator runs `/quest-plan` on it later, which
+  leaves the skipped test untracked until then; keep the exception).
+- Milestone: ✅ m0, in the queue watcher epic, whose end-to-end run
+  disables a flaky test (rejected: m1).
+
+Recommendations for the implementer:
+
+- The watcher already knows the test (the `failure` the fixer names, from
+  its known-flaky input) and the `merge_group` jobs that showed it, so it
+  picks `<name>` and passes the quest path in the fixer's input for the skip
+  reason, then adds the quest file to the disable commit itself, or as a
+  second commit on the disable branch.
+- The template's Goal says to fix the test or delete it and links each job.
+  Its size is a fixed guess, such as `[S]`, for the next coordinator to
+  correct.
+- [Epics list no children](/quest/m0/token-waste/child-lists.md) is in
+  flight and drops the epic README links; follow whichever format the base
+  has when this lands.
+- `validateFix` then rejects a disable commit that touches `quest/` at all.