craft-goal

# Craft Goal Craft or lint a goal prompt: the contract a long-running goal runtime follows over a bead graph, picking each next experiment (one build bead) until a frozen finish line is proven or a limit stops it. The number of experiments need not be known in advance. A goal is safe when success is decidable, every experiment is bounded, evidence keeps its provenance, and the authorization envelope cannot silently renew itself. **Authority boundary.** The emitted prompt and safety report are inert caller-owned text. Crafting creates no goal, starts no runtime, mutates no bead and confers no standing authorization. The prompt drives work only when a caller pastes it into their own goal runtime, under their own authority and within the non-renewing envelope they set. Craft Goal reads tracker state when present and needs no tracker installed to compile a prompt; the goal it writes runs on one. Asked to craft ("craft a goal", "turn this into a goal"), return the decision, then the filled prompt and settings when safe. Asked to lint ("lint/review this goal", "is this safe"), return the decision and findings, plus a rewrite when supplied facts permit one. ## Admission: decide first **Fuzzy route is acceptable; fuzzy success is not.** Before goal creation the caller must know the outcome, what evidence would prove it, non-goals, authority, and the tracker the goal runs on (any with status, dependencies and notes; BD is one); the exact experiment graph may still be unknown. Write each terminal criterion as a Given/When/Then with an observable result and name each domain term once; the caller can settle these with Interview first. - `USE_RPI`: one shaped change with no verdict-driven follow-on; hand it to [Plan](../plan/SKILL.md) or native execution (RPI only if the caller selects it). - `SAFE_TO_CREATE`: a terminal outcome that may need several related experiments, with those decisions and the budgets below supplied. A shaped goal with no beads may begin with 1 bounded discovery wave that creates the root and initial experiment beads. - `UNSAFE_GOAL`: no falsifiable first question or terminal evidence can be named (route that intent to idea or plan work), or the request is indefinite monitoring or event reaction, which is an automation, not a terminal goal. Goals come in different sizes: size the wave and hard envelopes to the outcome, never to one universal budget. Do not invent acceptance, authority, graph semantics, tracker or campaign size; return `UNSAFE_GOAL` with the missing decisions. The caller owns revision and goal creation. ## What a safe goal holds - **Closed outcome, adaptive route.** Freeze terminal acceptance. New facts may change hypotheses and dependencies, never silently enlarge success. - **Bead graph as memory.** The tracker is durable memory, not a parallel goal ledger: the root epic holds outer intent and each build bead one experiment, so compaction cannot erase the record. A decision bead resolves through the method Navigate names for it, not through a build. [Navigate](../navigate/SKILL.md) owns the walk each wave applies: graph contract, ratchet, discovery classes and checkpoint. - **Proof stays outside the goal.** The goal consumes each verdict unchanged: orchestration cannot author its own proof. Fresh validation is for [Validate's costly cases](../validate/SKILL.md#when-a-fresh-judgment-is-worth-it) only, since a review per bead multiplies cost across the graph. - **Two-level bounds.** Every experiment and every wave is bounded, and the whole goal has monotonic hard ceilings, so a new wave cannot mint a new campaign. The template's experiment policy and breaker carry these into the runtime. They prevent the **completion treadmill**, where discoveries keep becoming requirements and activity continues without new information, and **first-red abandonment**, where one falsified hypothesis ends a viable campaign. ## Budgets and HOLD Declare both envelopes with numbers before any work is selected, helper and validation costs included: - **Wave:** experiments, concurrency, wall time or tokens, live attempts, and a checkpoint at its end. - **Goal:** total experiments, wall time or tokens, live attempts, compactions, and any patch or surface limit for the whole campaign. Name the native control that enforces each claimed hard limit and how the remaining allowance is observed. Objective text is an instruction, not enforcement: never report an unmeasured aggregate as a remaining balance, and never claim the goal is paused from prose alone. No helper, retry, new subject, compaction or wave renews the goal allowance. The template's **Breaker and helper** section is the one list of HOLD triggers (implementation stops for causal review) and helper rules; fill its threshold and keep every line. ## Lint rubric | Dimension | Passes when the prompt | |---|---| | outcome | names one larger caller-visible result. | | evidence | gives each terminal criterion as a Given/When/Then with its authoritative proof. | | domain terms | defines each domain term once and reuses only that word. | | admission | fits a goal: several related experiments, a falsifiable first question, a terminal finish. | | bead graph | names the tracker and the root epic or its bounded bootstrap rule, and ties each experiment to an unmet criterion or named blocking uncertainty. | | experiment boundary | makes one build bead one bounded experiment (native execution, or one RPI when the caller selects it; decision beads resolve as Navigate names), takes checks and CI as an ordinary bead's result, limits fresh validation to the costly cases and consumes verdicts unchanged. | | ratchet | counts progress only as evidence tied to an unmet criterion or blocking uncertainty, never activity, counts or digests. | | discovery | keeps all three classes (necessary-now, linked-follow-up, HOLD/rescope) and never downgrades a necessary finding. | | wave budget | sets numeric experiment, concurrency, time or token and live-attempt limits per wave, with a checkpoint. | | hard budget | sets numeric campaign totals that nothing resets, naming the enforcing control or the unmeasured aggregate. | | breaker | sets the numeric no-ratchet threshold and every HOLD trigger in the template's breaker. | | helper | sends a requested acceptance change or operator-reserved decision straight to `NEEDS_OPERATOR`, allows at most one helper per other HOLD incident, maps `UNSTUCK` and `ESCALATE`, and stops implementation on `NEEDS_OPERATOR`. | | scope | states non-goals and exact read, write, external and Git authority. | | self-hosting | is n/a unless the goal repairs the factory (agent system) it runs on; then its authority repairs from an ordinary shell or worktree and runs that factory only as a declared bounded canary. | | terminal reports | defines `ACHIEVED`, `NOT_ACHIEVED` and `NEEDS_OPERATOR`. | ## Output Fill [the copy-paste-only goal prompt](references/goal-prompt.md): keep its headings and terminal semantics and replace every angle-bracket field. Return, in order: 1. A first line that starts with exactly one decision: `SAFE_TO_CREATE`, `USE_RPI` or `UNSAFE_GOAL`. `SAFE_TO_CREATE` judges prompt content; it does not certify native enforcement or create a goal. 2. For `UNSAFE_GOAL`, each missing decision; the caller can settle them with Interview. 3. When safe, the filled prompt; the settings: for each hard limit, the native control the caller sets to enforce it (such as the goal runtime's own token cap), or that it stays unmeasured; and the assumptions made. 4. Lint lines. In lint mode, one per rubric dimension: pass, n/a, or the finding. In craft mode, only the rows the draft still fails; each is a missing decision, so the decision cannot be `SAFE_TO_CREATE`. ## Stop This skill makes one pass, craft or lint, then returns. It never creates or runs a goal and never mutates beads. The goal it writes stops at its first terminal report: `ACHIEVED`, `NOT_ACHIEVED` or `NEEDS_OPERATOR`.