wind-the-clock

name	wind-the-clock
description	Make the growth circle self-running — schedule its recurring checks (loop cadence, keystone sunset, first-light freshness, AEO probes, trust-ledger review) using whatever scheduling primitive the current harness offers, and record every schedule in GROWTH.md so it survives harness changes. Use when the circle's gates are open but nothing recurs, when a keystone sunset or instrumentation check exists only as a date nobody watches, after run-the-loop establishes a cadence, or when growth work keeps happening "whenever someone remembers".
metadata	{"pack":"2026-07-growth-circle","forged-by":"claude-fable-5","forged-from":"session-2026-07-02-growth-circle — the Growth Circle protocol (github.com/zakelfassi/growth-circle)","forged-reason":"The circle's engine is monotony, and monotony dies without a clock. Dates written in a ledger that nothing watches are wishes; this skill converts them into schedules in whatever scheduler actually exists, and writes the schedule down so it outlives the session that created it.","usage-count":"0"}

Wind the Clock

Every date in GROWTH.md that matters should have something watching it. Find the harness's scheduling primitive, wire the circle's recurring checks into it, and ledger the schedules.

Gate

Requires gate: aha = open (there must be a circle to keep running). Schedules for closed-gate work are allowed in one form only: a reminder to re-attempt opening the gate.

Inputs

• GROWTH.md (all sections — this skill reads dates and cadences out of the others' work), and the host environment's scheduling surface.

Steps

1. Discover the scheduler. In order of preference, use what exists: the agent harness's native scheduling (cron tools, scheduled/recurring agents, loop commands), the repo's CI scheduler (e.g., a workflow on a cron trigger), the team's existing job runner, or — the floor — a ## Cadence table a human wires into their own calendar. Never install new infrastructure just to have a clock; the humblest working scheduler wins.

2. Inventory what recurs. From the ledgers, collect the standing checks:

   • Loop cadence — run run-the-loop weekly/biweekly.
   • Keystone sunset — alert ahead of the review date; fire find-the-keystone re-derivation at it.
   • Gaming tripwires — periodic check of the keystone's listed gaming vectors against fresh data (keystone up, downstream flat → alarm).
   • First-light freshness — gate: instrumented silently closes when verification is stale (spec: 90 days); re-verify before it does.
   • Probe suites — AEO/agent-channel probes on their cadence.
   • Trust-ledger review — periodic human read; alarm on net-negative streaks.
   • VALUE.md expiries — claims nearing expiry need re-attestation or retraction.

3. Schedule with a report path. Each job states: what it checks, when, and where its result lands — an alert a human sees, or a ledger entry an agent appends. A check that reports nowhere is decoration. Scale frequency to what actually changes; a weekly product does not need hourly alarms.

4. Ledger the clock. Write every schedule to GROWTH.md ## Cadence: check, frequency, scheduler used, report path, owner. This is the portability layer — when the harness changes, the next agent rewires from this table instead of rediscovering the checks.

5. Set the dead-man's switch. One meta-check: does the cadence itself run? (Simplest form: the loop's own ledger entries are timestamped — an alert when the gap exceeds 2× cadence.) A clock nobody notices has stopped is worse than no clock.

Conventions

• Alerts go to humans; bookkeeping goes to agents. An alarm that only an agent hears, for a judgment only a human can make (alienation, consent, keystone succession), is misrouted.
• Scheduled agent runs operate under the same gates and attribution rules as interactive ones — the clock grants punctuality, not autonomy.
• One schedule per check. A monolithic "do all growth things" cron produces unattributable failures.

Edge Cases

• No scheduler at all (plain repo, no CI, harness without crons). Ship the ## Cadence table with explicit next-due dates and a note at the top of GROWTH.md; a human calendar is a valid scheduler.
• The harness changes (new agent tool, CI migration). Rewire from ## Cadence; the table is source of truth, the scheduler is an implementation detail.
• Alert fatigue. If a check alarms twice without action taken, the check is miscalibrated or the owner is wrong — fix the check or the owner in the table; never mute silently.
• Scheduled run finds a closed gate. It reports the closure and stops; it never bulldozes through gates just because it was scheduled.