escalating-to-thinkerlisted

# Capability: Escalating To Thinker **Render before asking.** Before any AskUserQuestion, render the decision context as assistant chat text. Content that exists only in a Read result, a subagent/Agent return, or the question/option strings **does not count as rendered** (the UI shows a compact card) — restate it in chat first. Dispatch a one-shot consult subagent on the project's **think tier** (`models.think` from config) when the orchestrating pipeline is stuck in a way the documented recovery paths don't cover. The consult returns a structured recommendation; the orchestrator executes it. The consult never mutates anything — it reads, reasons, and recommends. Why this exists: the orchestrating session runs a mid-tier model tuned for stage-walking and dispatch, not for hard diagnosis. When the same fix fails twice or a gate hard-stops with no covered playbook, the cheap move is to buy one round of top-tier reasoning rather than burn iterations guessing. The per-sprint cap keeps this a scalpel, not a crutch. ## When to invoke (the seven triggers — do NOT invoke outside these) 1. **Repeated fix failure** — the same task or gate has failed 2 consecutive fix iterations (`*_fix_iter` / redispatch exhausted, or two `code_review_iter` passes with an unchanged must-fix set). 2. **Integration-gate hard stop** — `shipyard-data verify-wave-integrated` exit 3 whose named branches/tasks don't match the documented remediation (rebase + ff-merge, anchor-commit) after one attempt. 3.