optimize

name	optimize
description	Run a metric-driven Infiquetra optimization loop — define a measurable goal, baseline current behavior, generate a hypothesis backlog, run bounded one-variable experiments, measure each against hard degenerate gates before any LLM-judge, keep the best real improvement and revert the rest, and converge on the measurably-best version. Eight metric classes (perf, cost, reliability, agent-usability, security, quality/accuracy, developer-experience, maintainability). Off-chain and saga-untouched; it finds the winner, then routes it to /work to ship — it never commits, merges, or deploys. Triggers on "optimize this", "make it faster/cheaper", "tune this", "baseline and improve", "drive this metric to a target", or a perf finding handed in from /qa or /loop.
argument-hint	[metric, workflow, or bottleneck]

Optimize

Ported from Compound-Engineering ce-optimize — the metric-driven iterative optimization loop is a single-source PORT of that engine's spine (spec -> baseline -> hypothesis backlog -> bounded one-variable experiments -> measure with hard degenerate gates BEFORE LLM-judge -> strategy digest -> crash-safe append-only experiment log -> stopping rules). agent-usability is an infiquetra-native metric class (Jeff's angle), NOT a gstack port; gstack plan-tune (a developer-psychographic question-tuning coach) supplies no engine or mechanism here and is not ported. This is NOT a balanced two-engine merge — it is a single-source port.

The default path SHEDS ce-optimize's git-worktree-per-experiment isolation, its parallel / max_concurrent fan-out, and its auto-commit / auto-merge of experiment branches. Those re-enter only by an explicit operator-choice escalation (Phase 4), recorded narratively. The loop runs serial and in working state by default; a winner becomes a real commit only when it is routed to /work.

Position in the lifecycle

/optimize is OFF-CHAIN, advisory, and saga-UNTOUCHED. It is not a LIFECYCLE_PHASE, it never advances lifecycle_phase, it writes no saga, and it never blocks /loop. It answers one question: "What is the measurably-best version of this, found by bounded experiment?" Its durable outputs are an engineering-journal LEARNINGS.md entry for a generalizable win and an optional shareable summary; the winning code change itself routes onward to ship.

Its lane, vs its neighbors:

• vs /qa — /qa GATES a shipped change: it runs acceptance checks once, severity-bands the findings, and derives a one-shot ship-or-not verdict. /optimize LOOPS toward a measurable target: baseline -> experiments -> converge. The default routing rule, stated plainly:
  • "is this change good / secure enough to ship?" -> /qa (gate, one-shot verdict).
  • "iteratively drive this metric (including security-finding count, quality score) toward a target by experiment" -> /optimize (loop, baseline-to-converge).
• vs /pulse — /optimize is a BOUNDED experiment loop with a start, stopping rules, and an end. /pulse (future) is CONTINUOUS live telemetry. They are complementary; /optimize does not block on /pulse and does not stream.
• vs /work — /optimize finds the best version, then ROUTES the winning change to /work to ship it. It never ships in-engine: no PR, no merge, no commit of the winner inside this engine.

Routes IN: /loop (the router meets a "make this measurably better" ask), a /qa performance finding, a STRATEGY.md key-metric that needs driving, or direct invocation.

Routes OUT: a confirmed win -> /handoff or /work or /code-review; a problem that is really a design question (no experiment moves the metric) -> /brainstorm; a durable, generalizable win -> the engineering-journal LEARNINGS.md.

Resolve any cross-command route through the lifecycle routing reference at loop/references/dispatch-table.md (referenced by path; do not restate the routing table here).

Core principles

1. Metric-driven, scope-bounded — no spec, no loop. Before any experiment runs there MUST be a primary metric + a direction (maximize / minimize) + an explicit mutable/immutable scope + at least one degenerate gate. A goal without a measurable metric and a bounded scope is a /brainstorm or /strategy question, not an optimization run.
2. The log on disk is the single source of truth. The conversation context is not durable storage; a results table shown to the user that was not written to disk first is a bug. Write each experiment result to the experiment log immediately after measurement, verify by re-reading the file, and re-read the log at every phase boundary before any decision. This is the autoresearch write-after-every-experiment discipline.
3. Cheap hard gates before expensive judgment. Run the hard degenerate gates first; only run the LLM-judge if the gates pass. A broken solution fails a cheap boolean check before it ever costs a judge call.
4. One variable at a time; baseline first; beat the noise. Establish the baseline before any change, change exactly one variable per experiment, and only keep a result whose improvement exceeds the measured noise threshold (hard metrics) or the minimum_improvement (judge metrics). A change that does not clear the noise floor is reverted.
5. Eight metric classes. perf, cost, reliability, agent-usability, security, quality/accuracy, developer-experience, maintainability. Each metric is measured as hard (a direct numeric, gated) or by judge (semantic quality), chosen per metric — see references/metric-taxonomy.md.
6. Default bounded & serial; escalate by CHOICE. The loop runs serial and in working state by default. For independent experiment fan-out it OFFERS verified-workflow or manual per the operator-choice contract, recorded narratively (this engine writes no saga). It never auto-spawns a backend, never auto-commits, never auto-merges, never deploys.

Interaction method

Follow ../../references/operator-choice.md for choices from a known set—spec approval, the metric class, the execution backend, and stop-vs-continue at a stopping-rule boundary. Ask one question at a time; never silently skip a question. Use free-form for substantive content (the hypothesis backlog, the strategy digest, learnings)—menu options would flatten them.

In a channel session (redis-channel active), inline the choices in your reply text instead, following the canonical channel-inline convention in ../brainstorm/SKILL.md (do not duplicate its wording here).

Use repo-relative paths in everything you write — absolute paths break portability across worktrees.

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Phase 0 — Enter, parse, route by file state

Parse the optimization goal from $ARGUMENTS (a metric, a workflow, or a named bottleneck). If the input is empty, ask: "What would you like to optimize? Name the metric or the workflow, or point me at an optimization spec."

Derive a kebab-case <slug> from the goal and read the run directory .codex/saga/optimize/<slug>/ to detect an in-flight run:

• An experiment log exists -> RESUME. Read all state from experiment-log.yaml on disk (do not trust any in-memory context from a prior session). Recover the current best, the tested hypotheses, and the remaining backlog from the log, then continue from where it left off (re-enter the loop at Phase 4). Announce: "Found an in-flight run — resuming from the experiment log."
• No run directory / no log -> FRESH start. Go to Phase 1. Announce: "No prior run — let's define the optimization."

Phase 1 — Spec + scope (HARD GATE)

Load-or-create the optimization spec. Required (see references/experiment-loop.md for the condensed schema):

• primary metric — name + direction (maximize / minimize) + optional target;
• metric class + whether it is measured hard or by judge (references/metric-taxonomy.md);
• mutable scope (files the experiments MAY change) and immutable scope (files they MUST NOT — always list the measurement harness here), each with at least one entry;
• at least one degenerate gate (a cheap boolean that rejects an obviously broken solution);
• a clean-tree check on the in-scope files — if any in-scope file has uncommitted changes, ask the user to commit or stash before proceeding.

Write the spec to .codex/saga/optimize/<slug>/spec.yaml, verify it by re-reading, and present it for approval through the native operator-choice contract. Do NOT proceed to Phase 2 without an approved spec and a defined primary metric. If the target is qualitative, recommend judge; if the user insists on hard for a qualitative target, warn that it may optimize a misleading proxy.

Phase 2 — Baseline

Measure the current code with the spec's measurement command. For a noisy signal, use the repeat-aggregate mode (run N times, aggregate by median/mean/min/max, and warn if variance exceeds the noise threshold); otherwise measure once. For a judge metric, also score the baseline output to establish the starting judge score.

Seed best from the baseline (iteration 0). Write the initial experiment-log.yaml (top-level spec / run_id / started_at / baseline / experiments: [] / best / hypothesis_backlog: []), verify by re-reading, then present the baseline metrics and the log path to the user.

Phase 3 — Hypothesis backlog

Read the mutable-scope code to understand the current approach, then generate 10-30 hypotheses, each with: a description (what to try), a class (one of the eight metric classes or a domain category), a priority (high / medium / low), and any dependencies. Include user-supplied hypotheses. Write the backlog into experiment-log.yaml, verify by re-reading. More hypotheses can be generated later from the strategy digest.

Phase 4 — Bounded experiment loop

This phase repeats in batches until a stopping rule fires. Re-read the experiment log from disk at the start of every batch.

Select a batch from the runnable backlog. Serial default = batch size 1. For independent experiment fan-out, OFFER an execution backend HERE per ../../references/operator-choice.md (§3.2 — broad, independent, low-risk fan-out leans verified-workflow; risky-and-parallel leans verified-workflow; unsafe automation leans manual); record the chosen backend narratively in the strategy digest (this engine writes no saga — §6 of operator-choice). Never auto-spawn.

Per experiment:

1. Change ONE variable within mutable scope.
2. Measure (single, or repeat-aggregate for a noisy metric).
3. Degenerate gates FIRST — if any hard gate fails, mark the outcome degenerate, skip the judge, and revert.
4. Judge only if the gates pass (judge metrics only).
5. Append the result to the experiment log IMMEDIATELY + verify by re-reading — before evaluating the next experiment.
6. Rank against the current best.
7. KEEP the best real improvement — one that clears the noise threshold (hard) or minimum_improvement (judge). The kept change is recorded as the current best IN THE LOG and held in working state; it is NOT committed or merged here. REVERT the rest — discard them from working state.

After the batch, write the strategy digest (categories tried, what worked / failed, the exploration frontier, current best vs baseline) and the updated backlog to disk; verify. Then check the stopping rules (see references/experiment-loop.md): target reached / max_iterations / max_hours / judge-budget exhausted / plateau / manual stop / empty backlog. If none fire, run the next batch; otherwise go to Phase 5. At a stopping-rule boundary, offer stop-vs-continue through the native operator-choice contract.

Phase 5 — Wrap-up + route

Re-read the log from disk and summarize baseline -> final for the primary metric, the gates, and the diagnostics, with the key kept experiments and their deltas.

Durable capture:

• Generalizable win -> the engineering-journal LEARNINGS.md — append a dated entry (Evidence / Mechanism / Generalizable rule) when the winning strategy transfers beyond this one run. A purely local, mechanical win with no transferable insight is skipped.
• Optional shareable summary -> docs/optimize/<date>-<slug>.md. Note: this summary is NOT auto-discovered by /handoff — /handoff's classifier does not key on docs/optimize/. Route a win by naming the artifact path explicitly or by summarizing the change to the routed command; never imply /handoff auto-picks-up docs/optimize/.

Route per loop/references/dispatch-table.md (read it; never restate it): a confirmed win -> /handoff / /work / /code-review; a design problem -> /brainstorm. A winner is committed or merged only when it is routed to /work to ship. There is NO saga write. Never run gh issue create — mission-control owns issue bodies.

Hard boundary

/optimize defines, baselines, experiments, measures, keeps-the-best, writes the log, and routes — then stops. It does NOT:

• commit, push, open / update / merge a PR, or deploy — winners are routed to /work to ship;
• auto-commit or auto-merge experiment branches — the default loop holds the best in working state; the SHED worktree / branch-merge machinery returns only by explicit operator-choice escalation;
• mutate GitHub — gh is read-only here, and it does NOT run gh issue create (mission-control owns issue bodies);
• write or advance the saga — it is off-chain: no saga.py invocation, no --lifecycle-phase;
• add a new script or an agents/ dir — this is a markdown-only engine;
• GATE like /qa (it loops toward a target, not a one-shot ship verdict) or stream like /pulse (it is a bounded experiment loop, not continuous telemetry).

optimize / measure / baseline / experiment / tune / keep / revert are this engine's identity verbs.

Reference files

• references/metric-taxonomy.md — the eight metric classes with example metrics, measurement method, and hard-vs-judge per class; the three-tier hard-vs-judge model; gate operators; noise_threshold vs minimum_improvement; and the note that /optimize's direct numeric metrics need no /qa-style risk-weighted scorer.
• references/experiment-loop.md — the condensed spec schema, baseline discipline, the hypothesis backlog shape, the bounded one-variable experiment procedure, the crash-safe append-only experiment-log schema (with the redefined kept / reverted semantics), the write-immediately-then-verify rule, the strategy digest, the seven stopping rules, the run-directory layout, the durable split, and the operator-choice fan-out note.

Learn more

ce-optimize is grounded in Karpathy-style autoresearch discipline: write results to disk after every single experiment so a long run survives context compaction, crashes, and restarts. The agent-usability metric class — token count, steps-to-success, retry rate, plan-readability for an AI consumer — is an infiquetra addition, not present in the source engine.