From d75c7a5cf0135a823cded06795ab88994fbbeaec Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Levi Neely Date: Fri, 1 May 2026 12:07:58 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Relocate Trial 1 research ideas to TRIAL_1.md under Future Work --- doc/IDEAS.md | 8 -------- experiments/TRIAL_1.md | 11 ++++++++++- 2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/IDEAS.md b/doc/IDEAS.md index 32c63b6..bb60339 100644 --- a/doc/IDEAS.md +++ b/doc/IDEAS.md @@ -96,11 +96,3 @@ The script is the coordinator; agents have no knowledge of each other. Informati Since agents have access to `execute_code`, a session can write and execute a workflow script without any human involvement. Given a task and knowledge of the filesystem layout, an agent can decompose the work, spawn sessions, write the coordination script, and run it — all in a single turn. The README you are reading is essentially its system prompt. Conductor functionality, for free. -### Next Steps & Research (derived from [TRIAL_1](../experiments/TRIAL_1.md)) - -- **Status Polling Mechanism**: Implement a mandatory `status` file for all agents that the orchestrator can poll. This would prevent having to tail `chat` files to estimate if an agent is stuck or done. -- **Verification of Premises**: Require agents to perform an "Environment Check" before acting on prompts to prevent fulfillment of hallucinated requirements (e.g., CMake in a Makefile-only project). -- **Administrative Handshake**: Force a "Sync" step at the end of every subagent task where they must receive an ACK from the parent before idling, reducing the "Done State Trap." -- **Purity Reviewers**: Introduce specialized reviewer scripts that look for "extraness" (extra files, unrelated changes, or phantom technical debt) rather than just functional correctness. -- **Post-Turn Environmental Hooks**: Implement hooks for sub-agents that automatically run environmental checks (e.g., build verification or linting) after every turn, ensuring that premises and system state remain valid without manual oversight. -- **Just-in-Time (JIT) Agent Generation**: Ollie could dynamically generate specialized JSON agent configs in `a/`, tailored to the immediate task (e.g., a "Makefile Purity Expert"). These ephemeral agents could be kept if they prove reusable or deleted immediately after the subagent session concludes to prevent configuration rot. diff --git a/experiments/TRIAL_1.md b/experiments/TRIAL_1.md index b4d00bd..7b7e615 100644 --- a/experiments/TRIAL_1.md +++ b/experiments/TRIAL_1.md @@ -107,4 +107,13 @@ The following transitions required manual user intervention (the user prompting - **Information Decay in Parallelism**: In a parallel spawn, context must be perfectly mirrored. Any discrepancy in the roster or instructions between concurrent agents can lead to deadlocks where one agent waits for a signal that another agent doesn't know it was supposed to send. ## Conclusion -The model is effective for multi-stage engineering tasks. However, notification protocols rely on agent autonomy which sometimes fails. Manual inspection of session files remains a critical fallback for the orchestrator. Future trials should experiment with a dedicated "Status File" per session that agents are required to update, allowing the orchestrator to poll health without reading full chat transcripts. \ No newline at end of file +The model is effective for multi-stage engineering tasks. However, notification protocols rely on agent autonomy which sometimes fails. Manual inspection of session files remains a critical fallback for the orchestrator. + +## Future Work + +- **Status Polling Mechanism**: Implement a mandatory `status` file for all agents that the orchestrator can poll. This would prevent having to tail `chat` files to estimate if an agent is stuck or done. +- **Verification of Premises**: Require agents to perform an "Environment Check" before acting on prompts to prevent fulfillment of hallucinated requirements (e.g., CMake in a Makefile-only project). +- **Administrative Handshake**: Force a "Sync" step at the end of every subagent task where they must receive an ACK from the parent before idling, reducing the "Done State Trap." +- **Purity Reviewers**: Introduce specialized reviewer scripts that look for "extraness" (extra files, unrelated changes, or phantom technical debt) rather than just functional correctness. +- **Post-Turn Environmental Hooks**: Implement hooks for sub-agents that automatically run environmental checks (e.g., build verification or linting) after every turn, ensuring that premises and system state remain valid without manual oversight. +- **Just-in-Time (JIT) Agent Generation**: Ollie could dynamically generate specialized JSON agent configs in `a/`, tailored to the immediate task (e.g., a "Makefile Purity Expert"). These ephemeral agents could be kept if they prove reusable or deleted immediately after the subagent session concludes to prevent configuration rot. \ No newline at end of file