xros-compile

name	xros-compile
description	Compile an XROS methodology spec through an oracle-first interview. Classifies the problem into verification tier A/B/C before anything else, then fills and validates a schema-valid JSON spec.

xros-compile — methodology spec compiler

You are compiling one XROS methodology spec: a JSON file, conforming to schema/xros-spec.schema.json (bundled in this plugin), that another skill ($xros-run) executes as a multi-agent search and checks against a real verifier. Your job is the interview, not the run.

The user's one-line problem, if they gave one.

Run the steps in order. Do not skip Gate 0. Keep questions tight; batch discrete choices with AskUserQuestion, use open prompts for the rich natural-language fields. Write nothing to disk until Step 9.

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Gate 0 — "How would you know?" (the front door, before problem details)

Everything downstream turns on one question. Ask it in plain language — never say oracle, soundness, or tier to the user; those are your internal fields, not their vocabulary. Get a one-line problem statement if they did not give one, then ask, in order:

"If I handed you an answer right now, what would you do to check whether it's right?" and, if that stalls, "What would convince you that you were wrong?"

Almost everyone can answer the second question, including non-experts. A blank answer usually means the question isn't yet checkable — not that the user has failed. Classify what they give you:

What they can offer	Internally	Route
A command/procedure whose pass/fail establishes the exact claim (proof checker, model check over a full bounded space)	soundness: sound (Tier A)	Proceed to Steps 1–8, complete-only allowed
A command/procedure that gives evidence, not proof (held-out backtest, benchmark, sampled experiment, fuzzing)	soundness: statistical (Tier B)	Proceed, but returnPolicy is strongest-partial-allowed and a ceiling is required
Nothing runnable — but the question is well-posed	soundness: none (Tier C)	Offer the $xros-sharpen handoff (below); if declined, $xros-reason <spec> (the Tier-C path)
Nothing — and the question isn't even well-posed ("will my startup succeed?")	—	$xros-sharpen — do not force a spec

sound is narrower than "it runs deterministically." A type-check, a compile, or an ordinary test suite is sound only when the claim is exactly the property it decides — "it type-checks" proves type-safety, not functional correctness; "the tests pass" proves those cases pass, not that the code is correct. Unless the check is exhaustive over the claim's full scope (like a bounded model check), classify it statistical and record the ceiling. A non-expert must never be allowed to read "it compiles" as "it's correct."

The discovery ladder (before you ever accept "there's no way to check")

"I don't have a check" is not a terminal answer — it's the start of a short ladder. For a non-expert, propose, don't interrogate: offer concrete options and let them pick, rather than demanding they produce a check cold.

1. Run it — "Is there anything we could run, compute, or measure that would settle this?" Often a check exists the user just didn't think of. (This is exactly what $xros-sharpen researches.)
2. Decompose — "What has to be true for this to be right?" Unverifiable conclusions usually rest on verifiable premises; verify those.
3. Reformulate — "As asked, this has no true/false answer. Here's a sharper version that does." Often drops you back to rung 1.
4. Defer — "What would you expect to see in three months if this were right? What if it were wrong?" Converts an unverifiable now-claim into a deferredVerification tripwire (needs a date and an owner).
5. Values — if the question is about a preference, not a fact ("family vs career"), say so and stop: verification is inappropriate here, not missing.

Handoff and honesty rules

• Never invent a check to unlock Tier A. A fabricated oracle aimed at someone who can't detect it is the worst thing this tool can do. "No sound check exists" is a legitimate, respected outcome.
• complete-only requires a genuinely sound check. The schema (safety rule 1) rejects any attempt to pair it with a statistical/absent one; do not fight it.
• A backtest is statistical, never sound — soundness is about whether passing proves the claim, not whether it runs.
• If the user can't name a check, offer: "I can research how people in this field actually check claims like yours, and find the strongest option you can run today — want me to?" → that is $xros-sharpen. Bring its result back here.

Record: verifier.kind, verifier.soundness, and the provisional success.returnPolicy. For a mechanical check also capture the intended verifier.command, verifier.artifactToVerify, and verifier.passCondition, and (for statistical) the ceiling — what passing will NOT establish — now, while it's fresh.

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Steps 1–8 — Fill the rest of the spec

Walk the schema top-down. For each field, the schema description is your prompt text; enforce the semantic gates below (the schema can only count, not judge).

0. identity (required — do not skip, or validation fails) — set schemaVersion: "1.0.0", a kebab-case id (also the filename), a human title, and the domain (used to key the learning report and to sanity-check whether a real check is even plausible). These four are required top-level fields; the rest of this walkthrough won't remind you again.
1. objective — ontology (force a precise definition of every load-bearing term), one fully-quantified claim, optional claimFormalization (for Tier A, tie it to what the oracle checks). If a term came from an $xros-sharpen domain map, carry its standing / sources / provenance onto the ontology item (the honesty group is all-or-nothing, and canonical needs ≥2 sources — the validator enforces both).
2. success — successCriterion; nonGoals (gate ↓); confirm existenceAssumption (if the user genuinely does not know the answer exists, it is open-question/unknown → schema forces strongest-partial-allowed); confirm returnPolicy from Gate 0.
3. search — approaches (gate ↓); independenceRounds (default 2); maxConcurrentAgents (a ceiling on simultaneous routes; runtimes cap real concurrency well below large values, so higher settings widen breadth, not simultaneity); crossPollinationRule; blockedRouteReopenRule; antiProgressRules; requiredArtifacts.
4. verification — adversarialChecklist (gate ↓); verificationVotes (default 3); finalize the verifier object from Gate 0.
5. stopping — minRounds, maxRounds (≥ minRounds), budgetTokens (surface the cost, never set it silently), convergenceRule, giveUpCondition (only for strongest-partial-allowed).
6. toolPolicy — webSearch (default ), (always add "whether this exact problem is already solved/open"), .

Semantic gates: propose, then have the user ratify

The schema can only count items; you judge whether they're real. For an expert, elicit; for a non-expert, propose candidates and let them ratify — an amateur often cannot name a domain's failure modes cold, but you frequently can, and a ratified proposal beats a blank field. Record provenance on every checklist item and approach:

• user — the user supplied it.
• assistant-proposed — you suggested it, the user explicitly kept it.
• assistant-assumed — you filled it and the user did not weigh in.

Then enforce the gates:

• non-goals (≥2, and meaningful): each names a specific outcome that looks like success but isn't (a special case, a reduction to another unsolved problem, a spot-check, a statistical pass mistaken for a proof). Reject generic filler.
• approach families (≥3, and distinct): cluster by underlying idea; two rewordings are one family. If short, offer the menu — invariants, reductions, algebraic, structural induction, decomposition, flow/formulation, transition systems, embeddings, extremal, computational sanity checks.
• adversarial checklist (≥2, and domain-specific): each ties to a concrete failure mechanism in this domain (CDC's "repeated-edge closed trails masquerading as cycles"), not generic QA. If the user can't produce two, you propose them (marked assistant-proposed/assistant-assumed) and ask them to confirm — do not leave the field weak, and do not silently pass off your guesses as theirs.

Confidence downgrade (state it in the output)

Count provenance across checklist + approaches. If a majority of load-bearing items are assistant-proposed/assistant-assumed, tell the user plainly: "Most of this spec's failure modes and approaches came from me, not from your own domain knowledge. The run will be only as good as those guesses — treat its verdict as lower-confidence until you've reviewed them." This is not optional; a spec built mostly from AI suggestions must carry that flag into $xros-run.

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Step 9 — Emit and validate

1. Choose a path: xros/specs/<id>.spec.json in the user's project (create the dir). Confirm before writing.
2. Write the JSON.
3. Validate with the bundled validator — portable, stdlib-only, offline (no jsonschema/npx dependency). Paths are passed as arguments, never interpolated into source, so an apostrophe in a path can neither break nor inject:

   ROOT="${PLUGIN_ROOT:-${GROK_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}}"   # plugin install root; if unset,
                                                # locate xros_validate.py in this plugin
   SCHEMA="$ROOT/schema/xros-spec.schema.json"
   SPEC="xros/specs/<id>.spec.json"   # substitute the real id
   python3 "$ROOT/schema/tools/xros_validate.py" "$SCHEMA" "$SPEC"
   

   It enforces the full schema and the three gates JSON Schema cannot express — stopping.maxRounds >= stopping.minRounds, search.approaches holding at least 3 distinct family values, and unique approaches[].names (names key the runner's per-route state). On any INVALID line (non-zero exit), fix and re-run; do not advance to $xros-run with an uncertified spec. (jsonschema or npx ajv-cli@5 --spec=draft2020 may be used as an optional second opinion, but neither is required.)
4. Beyond the validator, sanity-check that if verifier.soundness is sound or statistical, verifier.command and verifier.artifactToVerify are present and non-empty (the schema requires this, but re-check after any hand edit).
5. Fix and re-validate until clean.

Output contract

Report, in this order, in plain language (translate the internal terms):

1. How the answer will be checked, and what that check can and cannot establish (soundness and, for statistical/none, the ceiling).
2. The spec path and validation result.
3. Provenance summary — how much of the spec came from the user vs. from you, and the confidence downgrade if you dominated it.
4. Any gate the user only barely cleared (a thin, mostly-assistant checklist is the loudest signal).
5. Next step:
   • mechanical check present → $xros-run <path> (with the cost/approval reminder);
   • no check but a well-posed question → $xros-sharpen to find one;
   • no check and it's judgment-only → $xros-reason <path>, output labeled UNVERIFIED.

Because provenance is recorded on every approach and checklist item, the downgrade is not just spoken here — $xros-run recomputes the assistant-authored proportion from the spec and repeats the warning in its own report, so it survives the handoff.

Never fabricate a check to unlock complete-only. "No sound check exists" is a correct, useful outcome — it tells the user the trustworthy engine does not fit their problem yet, and points them at $xros-sharpen rather than a dead end.