agent synced candidate notes to the ATS and overwrote the recruiter's manual edits - last-write-wins with no conflict...

TL;DR

Read the current notes first, then append the agent's new content as a timestamped section instead of replacing the whole field. The agent was doing a blind full-field update, so any recruiter edit made between the agent's read and write got wiped. Confine the agent to its own notes section and add a write-if-unchanged check to catch conflicts.

The error

Recruiter's manual edits to candidate notes are gone - the agent's sync replaced the full notes body with only its own generated text

Steps

1. Pause the note sync so no more edits are clobbered.

Expected: recruiter edits made from now on survive.

1. For each affected candidate, recover the overwritten text from the ATS activity or audit log and restore it.

Expected: recruiter edits are visible again on the candidate record.

1. Change the sync to read-then-append: fetch current notes, add the agent's entry as a new timestamped section, write back the combined text.

Expected: a test sync leaves existing manual notes untouched and adds the new section.

1. Give the agent its own dedicated note field or a namespaced section header, and forbid it from touching anything outside that section.

Expected: the agent can never overwrite recruiter-authored sections again.

1. Add optimistic concurrency: carry the record version or last-modified timestamp from the read, and abort the write if the record changed in between.

Expected: a conflicting edit makes the sync retry with fresh data instead of silently overwriting.

Use this when

• An agent writes notes, feedback, summaries, or comments to ATS candidate records
• Manual edits disappear after an automated sync runs
• Two writers (human plus agent, or two agents) touch the same record

Not for this skill when

• Notes are missing because of an ATS permissions issue (the recruiter cannot see the agent's notes at all)
• The whole candidate record was deleted rather than edited
• You actually want the agent to own the field (then lock humans out of it explicitly instead of letting silent overwrites happen)

Variant phrasings

• agent overwrote recruiter notes in the ATS
• candidate notes lost after automated sync
• last-write-wins wiped manual edits on candidate record
• sync clobbered interview feedback the recruiter typed

Why it happens

The sync treated the notes field as write-only: it generated new text and replaced the entire field without reading what was there. Any human edit that landed between the agent's data pull and its write was discarded. Last-write-wins is fine for fields one writer owns; it destroys data on shared fields.

Edge cases

• Long notes hitting field size limits: truncate the agent's section, never the human sections.
• Rich text vs plain text: appending must match the field's format or the ATS renders garbage.
• Audit requirements: keep the agent's entries timestamped and attributed so the history stays legible.
• High-frequency syncs: a short read-to-write window plus the concurrency check keeps races rare.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_-OpWxWAF3MBz6O3169hSFw