Findings and recommendations

Xerg surfaces ten named finding kinds today. Retry, loop, and tool-loop findings can count as confirmed waste when their required structure is present. Other workflow findings are opportunities, and Cursor findings are usage-specific waste or opportunity signals. For the conceptual view of how these categories are meant to be interpreted, see waste taxonomy.

Finding taxonomy

Kind	Terminal label	Classification	Confidence	Meaning
`retry-waste`	Retry waste	`waste`	high or medium	Explicit retry evidence showed wasted retry overhead. Failure status alone is not enough.
`loop-waste`	Loop waste	`waste`	high	A run with observed iteration numbers reached at least 7 iterations, and spend from iteration 6 onward is counted as loop waste.
`tool-loop`	Tool-loop waste	`waste`	medium	At least 4 consecutive calls repeated an identical tool sequence, which usually means the agent is stuck rather than progressing.
`context-outlier`	Context bloat	`opportunity`	medium	A workflow with at least 3 runs had one or more runs whose input token volume was far above its own baseline.
`context-growth`	Context growth	`opportunity`	medium	A session’s effective context (input plus cache reads) kept compounding per turn, ending far above its early baseline.
`cache-thrash`	Cache churn	`opportunity`	medium	A workflow wrote large volumes of cache tokens that were never read back, suggesting the prompt prefix changes between calls.
`idle-spend`	Idle waste	`opportunity`	medium	A workflow ran at least 5 times on a near-constant cadence with near-identical size, suggesting scheduled or polled activity rather than demand-driven work.
`candidate-downgrade`	Downgrade candidates	`opportunity`	low	An expensive model appears to be used on a simple operational workflow. Treat this as an A/B test candidate.
`cache-carryover`	Cache carryover	`waste`	medium	A long Cursor session is carrying too much stale cached context forward.
`max-mode-concentration`	Max mode concentration	`opportunity`	medium	Cursor is leaning too heavily on max mode rather than escalating selectively.

What counts as confirmed waste

Only confirmed waste findings count toward:

wasteSpendUsd
structuralWasteRate
--fail-above-waste-rate
--fail-above-waste-usd

Today that includes retry-waste, loop-waste, and Cursor cache-carryover when its billed pattern clears the waste threshold. Opportunity classes roll up into opportunitySpendUsd and are shown as directional savings opportunities.

Provenance fields

Local audit summaries include provenance fields on findings. These fields are intentionally not part of the pushed v2 wire payload yet.

Field	Meaning
`signalSource`	`observed`, `inferred`, or `declared`, based on the decisive signal used by the detector
`ruleId`	Stable versioned rule identifier, such as `retry_explicit_failed_attempt_v1`
`evidence`	Optional `callIds`, `runIds`, and `sourceKinds` used by the rule

signalSource and confidence are separate axes. An observed field can feed a lower-confidence heuristic, and an inferred retry proxy can still be useful while remaining visibly different from an observed failed attempt. Older stored summaries may not have signalSource. Xerg treats that provenance as unknown in local rollups and compare output.

Recommendation objects

When you run xerg audit --json, Xerg includes a ranked recommendations array derived from the findings. The same recommendation objects are part of the v2 push payload and power hosted Optimizations, policies, and MCP recommendation tools.

Field	Meaning
`id`	Stable recommendation id
`findingId`	The finding this recommendation came from
`kind`	The source finding kind
`title`	Human-readable next step
`summary`	Why this recommendation exists
`priorityBucket`	`fix_now`, `test_next`, or `watch`
`recommendedOrder`	Rank within this audit after bucket and savings sorting
`implementationSurface`	Where the fix lives, such as `retry_policy`, `model_routing`, or `user_behavior`
`category`	`structural_efficiency`, `model_fit`, `context_hygiene`, `cadence_activity`, or `other`
`severity`	`high`, `medium`, or `low`
`estimatedSavingsUsd`	Expected dollar impact
`estimatedSavingsPct`	Expected impact as a share of total spend
`confidence`	`high`, `medium`, or `low`
`effort`	`low`, `medium`, or `high`
`scope`	`workspace`, `source`, or `workflow`
`scopeId`	Stable scope identifier used for recommendation identity
`scopeLabel`	Display-ready label for the scope
`whereToChange`	Operator-facing guidance on where the change belongs
`validationPlan`	Compare-aware instructions for proving the result
`actions`	2–3 concrete action bullets

Current recommendation patterns

| Finding kind | Bucket | Typical action | | --- | --- | | retry-waste | fix_now | add retry backoff or lower retry count | | loop-waste | fix_now | cap iteration depth or add an early exit | | tool-loop | fix_now | break repeated tool-call sequences with a loop guard | | context-outlier | test_next | trim prompt or context size | | context-growth | test_next | summarize or reset context that grows every turn | | idle-spend | test_next | reduce cadence or switch to event-driven work | | candidate-downgrade | test_next | A/B test a cheaper model | | cache-thrash | test_next | stabilize prompt prefixes so cache writes get read back | | cache-carryover | test_next | reset or summarize long Cursor chats | | max-mode-concentration | test_next | reserve max mode for the hardest Cursor turns |

What not to overread

Opportunity findings are directional recommendations, not proven waste.
signalSource: observed means the decisive input field was present. It does not make an opportunity into confirmed waste.
A candidate-downgrade finding is intentionally low-confidence and should be treated as an experiment, not an automatic downgrade order.
Cost per outcome only covers runs that carry an outcome signal; audits without any signal report it as unavailable rather than guessing.

Concepts

Hosted workspace

Automate and share

Releases

Findings and recommendations

Finding taxonomy

What counts as confirmed waste

Provenance fields

Recommendation objects

Current recommendation patterns

What not to overread

​Finding taxonomy

​What counts as confirmed waste

​Provenance fields

​Recommendation objects

​Current recommendation patterns

​What not to overread

Finding taxonomy

What counts as confirmed waste

Provenance fields

Recommendation objects

Current recommendation patterns

What not to overread