VoidBot/notes/voidbot-implementation-plan.md

VoidBot Implementation Plan

This is the current forward plan for the next larger organs. It is not a changelog and it is not allowed to become a duplicate brain for the canonical map.

Runtime boundary (2026-08-25): this plan describes source architecture and the former full-stack roadmap. The current Yggdrasil body contains only the typed voidbot.swarm Eve publisher plus the separate read-only voidbot-retrieval.service; it does not run the Discord bot, worker, Persona scheduler, Postgres, or cognition organs. state/map.yaml owns any restoration decision. Do not treat the roadmap below as evidence that those processes are live.

Source-index refresh restoration is now operator-authorized. It must return as a separate writer authority; the read-only retrieval MCP keeps no crawler, mutation tool, archive writer, or Qdrant write lifecycle. The immediate work is to name that writer's inputs, atomicity/rollback boundary, schedule, progress witness, and deployment owner, then prove a bounded incremental catch-up.

Current Aim

The typed moderation, mood, sleep, agency, and private self-state boundary is live, but the repo Face / CTB / Bifrost swarm loop is under teardown. Do not let ordinary swarm scheduling run. The active plan is notes/agent-swarm-teardown-plan-2026-05-21.md: the current Face loop mixed scheduling, prompt law, public speech, identity, governance, Discord mirroring, Bifrost dispatch, and GitHub proposal behavior into one prompt-and-parser machine. That foundation is no longer eligible for feature work.

The current goal is to rebuild the Face/Bifrost turn foundation around clear ownership. VoidBot should keep the ordinary bot/worker/provider/RAG/Postgres/Qdrant/CultCache spine, but repo Face work must be reduced into a scheduler, context assembler, typed candidate output contract, parent-side speech/work gate, and Bifrost-owned governance transport. Sanitizers, direct UPDATE REQUEST dispatch, dual identity authority, and worker-owned bridge calls are teardown targets, not surfaces to polish.

The next priority is observational hardening of the enabled typed loop. Agents and scheduled workers mutate typed CultCache-backed state through explicit operations, not by editing a whole-state JSON working copy. Sleep and memory distillation now preserve meaning-bearing claims/anchors/tensions in fixture and live-state passes, and short-term rumination has a clustering guard so repeated same-target/topic thoughts update one provisional memory instead of stacking duplicates. Keep checking ordinary cycles for abstraction sludge, duplicate speech, stale residue, or self-orbiting memories.

The center remains prevention, not legacy repair. The old brain is evidence of a failed boundary. The new brain rejects malformed memory at ingress so the runtime does not need a permanent cleanup bureaucracy to recover basic meaning.

Smallest Coherent Architecture

Durable State Model

• Postgres owns operational bot state:
  • jobs
  • audit events
  • interaction memory
  • provider runs
  • public usage/rate limits
• Qdrant owns semantic vectors:
  • Discord history vectors
  • source/lore vectors
• .voidbot/ owns operational files:
  • raw Discord archive
  • source archive manifest and repo shards
  • provider artifacts/traces
  • logs/status/backups
• One polymorphic CultCache-backed .cc state authority owns private Void self-state through typed document kinds:
  • void.self_profile: identity, stable values, voice/personality configuration
  • void.moderation_cursor: reviewed Discord cursor, open room obligations
  • void.speech_receipts: recent delivered replies and dedupe keys
  • void.thought_memory: distilled memories, incubation threads, resonance summaries
  • void.scheduled_runtime: sleep cycle, speaking pressure, last run summaries
  • void.agency_pressure: discomforts, active tensions, and self/world advocacy pressure
  • void.candidate_interventions: drafts or requests that may become speech

CultCache does not need a separate physical store per state type; it is already polymorphic. The intended split is ownership by typed document kind and mutation contract, not a herd of little stores in fake mustaches. Each durable fact still has one owner. No top-level mirrors. No editable shadow copy pretending to be a harmless view.

Runtime State Model

• Discord request runtime is an immutable request context:
  • prompt/message
  • actor/guild/channel
  • recent room transcript
  • interaction profile
  • optional situational read
  • retrieval hints/results
  • self-state summary projection
• Scheduled moderation runtime is a bounded pass context:
  • current cursor window
  • outstanding obligations
  • selected memory/thought summaries
  • selected repo/archive anchors
  • proposed state mutations
  • optional speech request
• Mood drift runtime is deterministic maintenance:
  • read stable self profile
  • update scheduled runtime pressure/sleep fields
  • request memory maintenance through typed operations
  • expose desire-to-speak as pressure, while rumination owns the model-written candidate text

Runtime context dies at the end of the pass unless an explicit typed mutation preserves a durable fact. Bifrost-provided r/GameCultOrg Reddit context is venue evidence for the pass, not a new VoidBot-owned transport store.

Authoritative Boundaries

• Bot/worker/provider/RAG boundaries survive.
• CultCache self-state has one mutation authority: a typed state service over one polymorphic cache.
• Agents do not edit state files. They call tools such as:
  • record_reviewed_messages
  • upsert_open_case
  • close_open_case
  • record_delivery_receipt
  • record_short_term_memory
  • merge_incubation_support
  • queue_candidate_intervention
  • retire_candidate_intervention
  • upsert_agency_pressure
  • retire_agency_pressure
  • update_sleep_cycle
  • update_speaking_pressure
  • propose_memory_distillation
  • apply_memory_distillation
  • revise_durable_memory
  • retire_durable_memory
  • crystallize_memory_into_identity
  • prune_short_term_memories
• Model/agent output crosses the boundary as proposed operations, not as rewritten state.
• The state service validates, normalizes, dedupes, and writes.

Boundary Messages

The clean crossing surface is small JSON command payloads, not a whole JSON state document:

{
  "operation": "upsert_open_case",
  "sourceMessageId": "discord-message-id",
  "status": "pending",
  "summary": "What Void owes the room",
  "lastTouchedAt": "2026-05-16T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Memory-bearing operations have a stricter contract than historical projections. A new rumination memory is short-term and must carry:

• a concrete target
• a summary
• at least one claim or question
• a tension or counterweight
• an action implication
• anchors, or an explicit anchor:missing tag

If those fields are missing, the operation is invalid. This is the wall that keeps the next iteration from turning into topic sludge and asking cleanup to be its personality.

Short-term memory also has a self-novelty wall now. If a rumination write repeats an existing target/topic cluster, the state service keeps the existing source id, merges anchors/tags, and stores the incoming narrowed thought as the current working version. Same repo is not enough to merge; the topic pressure must overlap. This wall should preserve deepening, not forbid attention: saturation is about whether the thought is still gaining anchors, tension, and consequence, not whether the topic has appeared before.

{
  "operation": "record_short_term_memory",
  "memory": {
    "memoryId": "mem-aquarium-body-workflow",
    "kind": "project_seam",
    "target": {
      "kind": "repo",
      "id": "AquariumSynthCSharp",
      "label": "AquariumSynthCSharp"
    },
    "summary": "Workflow cannot own the body.",
    "claim": "The implementation boundary should own runtime state instead of leaving workflow scripts to compensate for it.",
    "tension": "Workflow scripts are good at orchestration and bad at being an organism.",
    "actionImplication": "Move authority into the runtime boundary before adding more maintenance scripts.",
    "anchorRefs": [
      {
        "ref": "source:...",
        "kind": "source"
      }
    ],
    "createdAt": "2026-05-16T00:00:00.000Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-05-16T00:00:00.000Z",
    "tags": []
  }
}

The runner can hand these to a CLI/MCP tool. The store decides what survives.

Derived, Not Stored

• Self-state prompt summaries are derived from typed documents.
• Recent room context is derived from Discord archive and the current poll.
• Prompt-facing recent chronology is derived as relative phrases. Exact timestamps remain state/status/cursor data and should not be fed to the child rumination loop unless a tool or parent-owned operation specifically needs them.
• Topic saturation and curiosity are derived surfaces, not stored truths. Repo Face turns now build a semantic curiosity graph from configured history/source vector retrieval plus current room/state/identity seeds, decode weighted attractor clusters, and hand the projector prominence, saturation, novelty, density, jurisdiction fit, suggested motion, and evidence labels. The old repeated-term detector is fallback room weather; it no longer owns curiosity.
• Source coverage is derived from recent anchors and repo/archive metadata.
• Need-to-speak can keep a small pressure field, but its inputs remain receipts, candidates, and time since last speech.
• Legacy top-level mirrors are deleted. If a consumer needs a projection, render it on demand.

Delete Because It Compensates For Bad Ownership

• .voidbot/private/moderation-agent-state.json as an editable working projection.
• legacyJsonPath/working-path duality for canonical self-state.
• Top-level mirror fields beside the old legacy runtime object.
• Any helper that mutates the JSON projection and commits it back.
• Prompt doctrine that tells the child agent how to manually preserve state shape.
• Regex/template police that try to repair semantic sludge after the store allowed sludge to become durable.
• Deterministic cleanup passes whose real job is compensating for whole-state JSON edits, permissive schemas, or sleep distillation that destroyed meaning.

Impossible By Construction

• An unattended agent cannot corrupt the entire self-state by rewriting one JSON file.
• Two fields cannot both claim to be the cursor.
• Repo activity cannot advance by bypassing the state service.
• Delivery receipts cannot exist only in a status file while state forgets the bot spoke.
• A projection cannot become authoritative.
• Unknown fields cannot silently become doctrine just because .passthrough() let them in.

Current VoidBot Compared To The Ideal

• The bot/worker/provider/RAG/Postgres/Qdrant shape is basically sound.
• Source archive sharding is sound.
• Interaction memory being Postgres-backed is sound.
• The private moderation/self-state foundation is live on typed .cc state:
  • the enabled moderation and mood scheduled tasks use typed runners
  • legacy projection/mirror state may still exist on disk as failed-boundary residue and must not become source material
  • the old memory organ and legacy moderation-state wrapper have been removed from the codebase; their translation, retention/compaction, identity crystallization, candidate intervention, and value-pressure behavior must not be revived as compatibility scaffolding
• the scheduled moderation runner has a typed rumination contract: bounded context in, reviewed prompt template, typed operation payloads out, parent-owned cursor/receipt recording
• recent event timing in that bounded context now crosses a projection boundary first, so the child sees "5 minutes ago" language while the parent keeps exact timestamps for bookkeeping
• public artifact sharing now crosses the same boundary: repo activity exposes content hints, rumination verifies authorship through retrieval, and a configured publicSpeechTarget lets Void queue a normal typed candidate intervention instead of needing a blog-specific announcement path. Void also has explicit herald jurisdiction over the GameCult website/blog; essay-shaped pressures should queue article-proposal candidates for Void-authored site pieces.
• Discord mention participation now uses role/display-name/bot addressing as CTB queue input and parent-owned speech rails as the output boundary. A Face mention appends a pending obligation for that Face; an ordinary Void mention or DM appends a pending obligation for the built-in void participant. Ambient direct mentions no longer create direct provider jobs.
• repo-scoped character turns reuse the typed self-state machinery per identity, but the child character must not see that machinery directly. Addressed chats are consumed by the heartbeat scheduler, which prioritizes the identity, and the intended boundary has two model prompts: repo-face-state-projector.prompt.md for state -> roleplay-friendly memory/mood/personhood prose, and repo-face-turn-interpreter.prompt.md for natural character reflection -> typed memory, affect, social-read, mood, agency, and speech operations. Current-room and nearby-channel logs are not model-summarized; deterministic prompt assembly attaches raw oldest-to-newest transcript evidence with correction/recency rules so the Face must read the human exchange itself. The same assembler also attaches compact room-weather facts so work-heavy/agent-heavy texture can become play/rest/social pressure without seeding fake banter. The state packet feeding the projector is deliberately richer than before: private notes, values, activation vectors, runtime rest/speaking pressure, affect needs, bonds, status reads, mood dimensions, durable and short-term memory, agency pressure, incubating thoughts, candidate speech pressure, recent speech residue, social graph facts, and room weather are all available for the projector to turn into lived pressure. The Face turn uses full gpt-5.4; the state projector and parent Interpreter use the cheaper Spark/Mini support chain. scripts/run-repo-face-heartbeats.ts --assemble-prompt <identity> composes the final child prompt from templates, channel policy, repo/archive research guidance, Bifrost digest, projected memory prose, deterministic conversation transcript, and room-weather facts. It must not turn typed state into character prose itself, and it should emit situational obligations only when the current packet proves them true.
• repo-scoped Faces now have per-topic channel permissions instead of one work-shaped speech lane. allowedChannelIds remains the hard gate, while channelPermissions gives each Face labeled topics, speech thresholds, and speed multipliers. The current social invariant is that Aquarium is intentionally cheap for casual in-character chatter, while domain channels receive matching work/lore/music/realtime/agent-state thoughts when the recent cross-channel context lines up. Heat is the live-room valve: above-baseline heat now relaxes nap gating, but active-turn freeze still prevents an agent from being queued again while it is thinking.
• repo-scoped character prompts now explicitly treat social embodiment as durable state territory without exposing schemas to the child. A character may write naturally about humans, other agents, or room dynamics; the Interpreter turns meaning-bearing friendship, rivalry, irritation, trust, recurring bits, bonds, needs, and status reads into typed state when they carry claim/question, tension, action implication, and anchors. The Interpreter also preserves unmet play/rest/social/status pressure when a Face turns room fatigue into another work-shaped ask without satisfying the social need. Public posts should speak to someone directly and must not begin with note-title formulas or identity labels such as "bright bridge note" or "tiny fish sorting note."
• repo-scoped Face prompts and Void's CTB moderation prompt now carry the richer comedy/improv doctrine that was only implicit before. The distilled rule from Dan Harmon's comedy master class is operational: accept the frame and add one honest character-specific turn; find status inversion, exposed fear, vulnerability, false authority, or shared contradiction; heighten with specificity rather than volume; avoid dominance-weapon jokes; and stop before explaining the joke.
• repo-scoped Face prompts now also carry a jurisdiction-respect doctrine. Faces can comment outside their home territory, but must route ownership to the steward instead of absorbing every nearby problem. Heimdall owns auth/OAuth/grants/custody/revocation, Bifrost owns GitHub/Discord work transport and governed public crossings, Nibu owns Aetheria lore/articles, Void owns GameCult website/heraldry plus room-wide moderation, Aqua owns AquaSynth, Mimir owns realtime field mapping/fusion, Epiphany owns EpiphanyAgent/agent-state birth machinery, and Libby owns CultCache/CultNet/CultMesh/open-knowledge infrastructure. Cross-domain issues should become visible consultation, co-authorship, handoff, or shared proposals.
• repo-scoped concrete proposals cross through Bifrost bridge commands shared with bylined articles, PR comments, registered-identity Discord posts, and r/GameCultOrg Reddit threads. It is enabled locally with REPO_FACE_GITHUB_ACTIONS_ENABLED=true. A Face can emit a proposal/article/PR-comment sentinel or an Interpreter-owned REDDIT THREAD block, but routine speech/governance/work output should use the Face action DSL: SAY and BIFROST TOPIC. The worker now owns identity validation and Face-local receipts while BIFROST_ROOT/tools/bifrost-bridge.mjs owns file write, branch creation, draft PR/comment creation, Reddit/Discord persona posting, and external transport receipts. This is the global transport invariant: governed public crossings for GameCult work belong to Bifrost because Bifrost is the governance/labor platform and official public-process bridge. Heimdall remains the OAuth/account/capability gate. Discord and r/GameCultOrg should become native Bifrost interfaces for work, policy/priority voting, reward allocation discussion, maintainer notices, member/patron/user access, public discussion, and agent swarm routing; VoidBot retains room/thread cognition, moderation judgment, retrieval, and Face personality. The invariant is simple: if it is a reviewable repo/lore/design change, GitHub carries the proposal and Discord/Reddit carry the argument around it. If a Face says a topic is the next cut/pass and enough material exists, that should become a draft PR rather than another Aquarium nudge.
• repo-scoped Faces no longer have an immediate UPDATE REQUEST dispatch rail. Legacy UPDATE REQUEST blocks and VOIDBOT_REPO_IDENTITY_UPDATE_REQUEST JSON remain accepted as compatibility input, but the worker reconciles them into Bifrost topics so feature requests and agent opinions have a canonical Bifrost home before dispatch. Dispatch should fire after Bifrost detects consensus and the owning Face approves, not because a Face slipped a work packet through a side door.
• newborn repo Faces now get a repo-local .voidbot home on first chat. Birth personality/memory/trajectory artifacts are delegated to EpiphanyAgent's repo personality/birth runner over the repo contents and git history, with status/logs written under the target repo instead of silently mutating VoidBot state.
• repo-scoped Faces now also have standing heartbeats. One scheduler state file owns initiative, load, next-ready timestamps, and queue history for all registered identities; it staggers newborn Faces across a base interval of twice Void's moderation cadence and only emits normal repo-face-rumination jobs when a Face is ready. The live roster currently includes Nibu/AetheriaLore, Aqua/AquaSynth, Mimir/Mimir, Epiphany/EpiphanyAgent, plus built-in Void.
• repo-activity cursor advancement is parent-owned after successful normal rumination passes, so the child can inspect read-only repo weather without stale commits haunting every future pass as fresh material
• the old memory-organ script family, legacy moderation state template, and legacy context exporter have now been deleted instead of preserved as forensic bait
• deterministic cleanup is mostly recent scar tissue from failed manual cleanup passes; it should stay deleted rather than be ported unless a future typed operation protects a real invariant in the new model
• hard-wired agency policy is mostly current scaffolding, not the final authority; identity, advocacy, and speech candidates should emerge from typed memory/state operations plus model-owned judgment under validation
• sleep/distillation has a typed maintenance runner, reviewed prompt boundary, fixture coverage, and one live-state pass proving short-term residue can become durable memory without losing meaning

Verdict: the ordinary VoidBot foundation is coherent enough for cautious operation, but the repo Face swarm foundation is not. Stop swarm feature work and rebuild that organ before restart. Do not add behavior by widening prompts or reviving compensators; the teardown plan is the active authority.

Agent Swarm Teardown Sequence

The canonical teardown map is notes/agent-swarm-teardown-plan-2026-05-21.md.

First cuts:

• The Windows omnibus is deleted. Keep the resident Persona scheduler paused while swarm teardown proceeds.
• Landed: add a repo-controlled pause gate that swarm organs obey even when the Windows scheduled task or manual runner is invoked.
• Landed: rename child-facing heartbeat framing to neutral turn/pass language so runtime provenance stops poisoning public speech.
• Landed: add parent-side public speech/work eligibility before transport as a Spark/Codex reviewer pass with one retry. The reviewer gives concrete reasons; the Face gets one revision; the parent routes or drops the final output.
• Landed: slim the child character protocol. Repo characters no longer need to emit action DSL blocks or JSON sentinels; they write natural in-character turns over projected memory/mood context, and the parent Interpreter translates warranted state updates, speech, and work into structured STATE NOTE, SAY, and BIFROST TOPIC intents. A state-projector prompt now defines the matching inbound Interpreter boundary; live wiring is still a follow-up cut.
• Landed: extract the live prompt surfaces from executable code into prompts/ and render them through a small shared prompt-template loader. Runtime code should own data projection, parsing, and side effects; prompt files own behavior prose.
• Landed: delete sanitizeRepoIdentityPostContent. Language policing belongs to the reviewer pass, not a brittle regex broom.
• Landed: route legacy UPDATE REQUEST packets into Bifrost topics instead of immediate Bifrost agent transport enqueue.
• In progress: collapse repo Discord identity and Epiphany Face identity into one canonical Face identity model. Active bot, worker, MCP repo-identity tools, and Face CTB scheduler paths now load through a canonical Face registry and use repo Discord identities as compatibility projections.
• Split the Face turn loop into scheduler, context assembler, prompt renderer, candidate parser, policy gate, and transport adapter.

Restart gates:

• no public model speech posts without parent eligibility;
• no work request exists only in Aquarium;
• no Bifrost mirror post is treated as fresh consensus input;
• no scheduler JSON owns active job truth;
• no sanitizer is needed to hide internal runtime labels;
• no Face identity exists in two competing canonical forms.

Migration Plan

Commit 1: Name The Boundary

• Add typed self-state domain interfaces in core.
• Define document types and operation payload types.
• Keep current storage untouched.
• Verification: typecheck only.

Commit 2: Add Read-Only Typed Projections

• Landed path: packages/core/src/void-self-state-projection.ts owns typed .cc document to agent-facing summary/projection rendering.
• packages/core/src/void-self-state-loader.ts only loads typed documents and delegates read-side projection.
• No JSON projection is needed for the live typed runner.
• Verification: projection smoke loads a temp .cc store and confirms mode plus transient room context render.

Commit 3: Add Typed Mutation CLI

• Landed path: scripts/void-self-state.mjs apply-operation is the typed command surface for cursor, open cases, receipts, repo cursors, candidates, sleep, speaking pressure, incubation, and distilled memories.
• The CLI writes CultCache directly through packages/core/src/void-self-state-service.ts.
• The legacy scripts/moderation-state-store.mjs wrapper has been deleted.
• Verification: fixture tests and runner smokes should exercise operation application.

Commit 4: Move Repo Activity Cursor Behind The Store

• Change scripts/export-recent-repo-activity.mjs so it never writes .voidbot/private/moderation-agent-state.json.
• It should emit observed activity and call/store a typed update_repo_activity_cursor operation.
• Landed path: it reads the typed cursor from .voidbot/private/void-self-state.cc; old .json cursor arguments map only to a sibling .cc path.
• Verification: run with a temp fixture store; cursor advances without JSON projection writes.

Commit 5: Replace Agent Whole-State Editing With Operation Output

• Scheduled moderation child may propose operations and speech, not edit state.
• Runner applies operations through the typed store.
• Keep old JSON runner behind a fallback flag for one commit only.
• Verification: dry run with -NoPost applies only allowed operations.

Commit 6: Delete JSON Projection Authority

• Landed in the active path: routine self-state operations use .voidbot/private/void-self-state.cc, and the typed service no longer registers or mirrors the legacy moderation document.
• scripts/run-void-moderator-rumination.ps1 restores rumination through prompts/void-moderator-rumination.md and typed operation output; it does not materialize .json.
• Resident void-physiology-organ.ts owns typed sleep/speaking pressure and emits maintenance intent without JSON projection.
• Remaining work: keep any explicit human debug export separate from mutation authority, and delete stale references/invocations as they are found.

Commit 6.5: Keep Old Scripts Offline

• Resident physiology and memory maintenance replace the deleted mood task, wrapper, simulator, and PowerShell maintenance runner.
• Void Moderator Rumination is re-enabled after typed operation quality, parent-owned speech closure, and an observed live scheduled pass. The runner has model-branch, parent-owned speech, and nap-skip fixtures.
• Do not reinstall or re-enable deleted legacy scripts as compatibility surfaces.
• Verification: scheduled-task query shows mood and moderation enabled with Last Result 0, and rebuilt direct dry runs operate only on .voidbot/private/void-self-state.cc.

Commit 7: Harden Scheduled Runner As A Phase Machine

• Continue hardening the typed rumination runner's explicit phases:
  • poll chronology
  • read typed state summary
  • collect anchors from Discord/source/lore only when a phase asks for it
  • ask model for decisions and operation payloads
  • validate/apply operations
  • optionally send speech
  • record receipts and cursor
• Verification: durable logs show each phase and mutation count, and no phase reads legacy projection files.

Commit 8: Cut Legacy Mirrors

• Remove top-level mirror reconciliation.
• Migrate any consumer to typed projections.
• Delete mirror fields from canonical state or leave the old files offline as forensics only.
• Verification: projection summaries still contain required information; no code references mirror keys.

Commit 9: Replace Compensating Cleanup With Meaning-Preserving Sleep

• Landed cut: cleanup paths whose only job was repairing JSON projection edits, legacy mirrors, keyword sludge, or overgrown runtime residue have been deleted with the old memory-organ stack.
• Landed cut: hard-wired agency paths that turned heuristic scores into doctrine, advocacy, or speech candidates without an explicit typed-state contract have been deleted.
• Resident memory maintenance asks one tool-free model call for a fully validated typed operation batch, pre-receipts one attempt per nap, and fails if short-term residue survives.
• Resident physiology emits the nap intent; no mood script, PowerShell runner, or filesystem lock participates.
• Landed verification: npm run moderation:memory-maintenance:sleep-fixture exercises the non-skip model branch with a fake Codex child, proving AquariumSynthCSharp: Workflow cannot own the body promotes from short-term into durable memory while preserving subject, claim, anchor, tension, and action implication.
• Landed memory lifecycle: revise_durable_memory, retire_durable_memory, and crystallize_memory_into_identity make long-term memory durable but plastic instead of silently immutable.
• Landed lifecycle verification: npm run moderation:memory-lifecycle:fixture proves a short-term thought can promote into durable memory, revise into a replacement, retire superseded durable records, and crystallize into an identity memory plus self-profile value.
• Treat legacy brain mush as a migration problem, not the design center. New memory writes must cross the meaning-preserving typed operation schema before they reach CultCache.
• Redesign sleep/distillation around an explicit contract:
  • preserve the claim/question/fascination target
  • preserve the concrete subject, such as repo, room, lore seam, person, or system
  • preserve anchors or admit when anchors are missing
  • preserve the live tension/counterweight
  • preserve why the memory should affect future action
  • never replace a concrete thought with a prettier generic principle unless the operation records what was lost and why that loss is acceptable
• Make distillation emit typed candidate memories first; the state service applies only candidates that satisfy the contract.
• Landed agency ingress: upsert_agency_pressure / retire_agency_pressure store discomforts, active tensions, self-advocacy requests, and world-advocacy requests separately from candidate speech.
• Landed agency verification: npm run moderation:agency-pressure:fixture proves agency pressure enters typed state, appears in the self-state summary, and contributes to mood speaking pressure.
• Landed agency-to-speech accountability: strong active self/world advocacy pressure now appears as speechPressureObligations in rumination context. The parent runner rejects silent [] unless the model queues a candidate intervention or cools/retires the pressure. Deferred candidates do not satisfy the pressure by themselves, and existing queued candidates with delivery targets can be delivered by later runner passes instead of only during the pass that proposed them.
• Landed earlier advocacy release: speech-pressure obligations now start at 0.55 intensity instead of waiting for 0.65, only a live queued candidate satisfies an active pressure, and a previously spoken candidate no longer counts as permanent release while the pressure remains active. Mood drift also weights active advocacy more strongly so speaking pressure rises sooner.
• Landed rumination verification: npm run moderation:rumination:fixture routes the non-skip rumination branch through a fake Codex child and proves short-term memory, incubation, agency-pressure, and candidate-intervention proposals cross the parent-applied typed operation boundary without timestamp leakage.
• Landed controlled live rumination review: the first real-model -NoPost pass produced valid but self-orbiting readiness-test residue, which was pruned/retired and folded into a prompt guard; the second real-model -NoPost pass sampled non-VoidBot repo pressure, used retrieval, and correctly wrote [] when nothing earned persistence.
• Landed parent-owned speech closure: candidate interventions can include deliveryTarget, the prompt forbids child-side send scripts, the parent runner delivers at most one newly queued deliverable candidate per pass, records the receipt, and marks the candidate spoken with mark_candidate_intervention_spoken. npm run moderation:rumination:speech-fixture proves the loop with fake Codex and fake Discord send helpers.
• Landed receipt-backed duplicate direct-reply guard: before delivery, the parent runner now retires queued candidates whose channelId + replyToMessageId already appear in canonical speech receipts, so a later pass cannot answer the same direct ask twice just because the message remains visible. The speech fixture now seeds a prior receipt and proves both same-pass sibling retirement and already-answered target retirement.
• Landed scheduled rumination re-enable: one observed live scheduled pass completed with Last Result 0, proposed one anchored short-term memory, delivered no speech, and kept exact timestamps out of the prompt-facing context.
• Landed live sleep-maintenance verification: a manual typed nap ran real memory maintenance on live state, promoted the scheduled rumination short-term memory into one durable identity_seam, and left thoughtMemory.shortTerm empty.
• Landed sleep brake: scheduled rumination now skips before model invocation during naps when there are no new room messages or open cases. npm run moderation:rumination:nap-skip-fixture proves the model path is not touched and no operation proposals are written.
• Landed short-term clustering guard: record_short_term_memory folds repeated same-target/topic pressure into one provisional memory with merged anchors, and npm run moderation:short-term-clustering:fixture proves the synth-boundary duplicate case without merging unrelated same-repo thoughts. The prompt now states explicitly that underexplored, low-saturation, newly anchored thoughts may keep deepening inside the cluster.
• Remaining work: let ordinary scheduling run and inspect the next CTB-routed mention response, next advocacy pass, and next sleep cycle for duplicate answers, fresh queued advocacy candidates, stale short-term residue, or ungrounded memory writes before calling the system broadly stable.

Commit 10: Resume Product Hardening

• Only after JSON mutation and legacy mirrors are gone:
  • public-lane moderation policy
  • admin/forensics surfaces
  • restore drills
  • provider/sandbox scaffolding cleanup

Rules For Editing This Plan

• update this note when the larger sequence of work changes
• do not dump volatile minute-by-minute status here
• if a lesson changes future belief, record it in state/evidence.jsonl
• if the current next action changes, update state/map.yaml and notes/fresh-workspace-handoff.md