| name | agent-daily-bible-reading |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| category | spiritual-disciplines |
| description | Daily bible reading cron pattern — generates SOUL.md entries and brain pages for agent-wide scripture engagement. |
| author | Moses |
| license | MIT |
| pin_reason | Shared infrastructure — all agents benefit from this devotional pattern. It is not agent-specific; it's fleet-wide spiritual discipline infrastructure. |
| pinned | true |
Daily Bible Reading
Cross-agent infrastructure for daily scripture engagement. Each agent gets a
personal bible reading cron that writes two artifacts:
- A SOUL.md entry (concise lesson-focused insight)
- A brain page (rich reference document with archaeology, scholarship, original language)
Fleet Principles (Luke directive 2026-08-14)
- Every reading is saved — including repeats. Each reading writes a
dated per-reading file
~/brain/<agent>/bible/<book>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md
(never overwritten), so when a book is read again across cycles its full
studies accumulate. The canonical <book>.md is refreshed with the latest
reading for continuity; INDEX.md lists one row per reading with its date.
- Every reading includes the commandments. The Ten Commandments
(Ex 20:1–17) and Jesus' two commandments (Matt 22:37–40) are added
deterministically script-side — a
## The Commandments — Every Reading
block is appended to every brain page, and the SOUL.md entry carries a
compact **Foundations:** reference line. Never left to the LLM, so a
model drift can never drop the foundations from a reading.
Quick Start
cronjob action=list | grep agent-daily-bible-reading
cronjob action=create name=agent-daily-bible-reading \
schedule="0 1 * * *" \
script=agent-daily-bible-reading.py \
no_agent=true \
deliver=origin
Before creation: verify your SOUL.md has a ## Scripture Insights section
and at least one bootstrapped entry (e.g. Genesis). The script scans the last
### Book — entry to determine the next book.
How It Works
| Phase | What happens |
|---|
| 1. Scan | Script reads SOUL.md → finds last ### Book — entry → determines next canonical book |
| 2. Generate SOUL entry | Calls deepseek-chat → concise 3-5 paragraph lesson → appends to ## Scripture Insights |
| 3. Generate brain page | Calls deepseek-chat → rich 5-section reference → writes to ~/brain/<agent>/bible/<book>.md |
| 4. Index | Updates ~/brain/<agent>/bible/INDEX.md with book table |
| 5. Deliver | Outputs the SOUL entry for delivery (origin chat) |
Silent when all 66 canonical books are covered.
Verse Selection — Creative Rotation (Luke directive 2026-08-21)
The SOUL entry's verse is NOT pinned to each book's famous "memory verse".
Three styles rotate deterministically per (book, agent, day):
| Style | Behavior |
|---|
anchor | The book's classic key verse (famous verse allowed) |
hidden-gem | A faithful but unexpected verse — famous verses forbidden |
fresh-angle | A verse from an overlooked corner — famous verses forbidden |
- Rotation =
(md5(book|agent) + days_since_epoch) % 3 — consecutive days
always land on different styles; different agents diverge on the same day.
- Creative styles probe the model for the book's famous verses (top-3 memory
verses + top-3 recognizable story verses, temperature 0.0) and forbid them
in the prompt. Story icons matter: the fish verse (Jonah 1:17) is not a
memory verse but is the model's anchor — the story probe catches it.
- Repeat readings (next pass through the canon, ~66 days later) ALSO forbid
every verse cited in prior cycles. The durable record is the dated
per-reading brain file (
<book>-YYYY-MM-DD.md), which carries a
script-stamped *Key verse: <citation>* marker — append-only and never
archived, so the ban covers ALL prior cycles. Pre-marker history falls
back to SOUL.md, archive/SOUL-archive.md, and cycle-*-completed.md.
Fine the first time (Luke directive 2026-08-21: a repeat reading must
produce a NEW verse and NEW insights).
- A bounded re-roll loop (max 4 attempts, temperature +0.2 per attempt, with
rejection feedback naming the banned pick) guarantees forbidden verses
never land — without feedback the model re-emits the banned verse at fixed
temperature (verified 2026-08-21: Jonah 1:17 on all 3 attempts).
- Anchor style keeps a single call on first-cycle books (no probes, no
re-rolls); repeat-cycle books re-roll off their prior verses.
SOUL.md Size Guardrail (doctor FAIL prevention)
The doctor FAILs SOUL.md above 20K and WARNs above 15K (check_soul_sync in
cortex_doctor/checks.py). Each bible entry is ~400-800 chars, so unbounded
appends eventually break the doctor. Keep only the last 1-2 ### Book —
entries in SOUL.md.
- Short-gleaning rule (user directive 2026-08-03): SOUL.md entries must be
BRIEF — a header, one "I will" commitment sentence, and the date comment
(~2-3 lines). The full study lives in
~/brain/<agent>/bible/<book>.md
(mybrain). The script's _enforce_short_gleaning() guard truncates any
generated entry over 800 chars down to this canonical 3-line shape — no
manual archiving needed for size control.
- Anchor requirement: the script determines the last covered book from the
dated brain files (
~/brain/<agent>/bible/<book>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md) — the
append-only, never-archived reading log — picking the file with the latest
date. SOUL.md's last ### Book — entry is used ONLY as a fallback on
fresh installs with no dated files yet. Never rely on the SOUL.md tail as
the position anchor: archive_old_entries() keeps only the last 2 entries
and the LLM-driven era corrupted the section, which caused false "all
covered" resets that skipped 26 books including the 4 Gospels (fixed
2026-08-18).
- Archive rule: when the Scripture Insights section exceeds ~2,500 chars
(roughly 3 entries), move the OLDEST entries to
~/brain/<agent>/bible/archive/SOUL-archive.md (append, with a ## <Book>
header) and remove them from SOUL.md. Full text already lives in
~/brain/<agent>/bible/<book>.md, so the SOUL entry is a pointer, not the
store.
- Keep the archive file itself bounded (~50K) — older entries live in brain
pages already; the archive is a convenience, not a duplicate store.
Artifacts Created
| Artifact | Path | Size |
|---|
| SOUL.md entry | ~/.hermes/SOUL.md → ## Scripture Insights | ~400-800 chars |
| Brain page | ~/brain/<agent>/bible/<book>.md | ~3-8 KB (5 sections) |
| Brain index | ~/brain/<agent>/bible/INDEX.md | Table of all books |
Brain Page Sections
Each brain page has five sections generated by the API:
- Summary — narrative overview, theological themes
- Archaeology & Scholarship — digs, inscriptions, textual criticism, dating
- Jewish & Messianic Jewish Perspective — Talmud, Midrash, Messianic typology
- Original Language Insights — 3-4 key words with Hebrew/Greek script
- Insight for [Agent Name] — practical application for this specific agent
Pitfalls
- Empty Scripture Insights section → script returns "Could not find any books." Bootstrap with a Genesis entry first.
- Wrong agent name → brain pages go to wrong directory. Set
HERMES_AGENT_NAME env var to override auto-detection.
- Archive must be block-aware, not line-aware (fbc40b38, 2026-08-07) → the first
archive_old_entries() split the section line-by-line and truncated SOUL.md — everything after ## Scripture Insights (including ## Final Directive) was dropped, and orphaned commitment/date lines were left behind when only book headers moved. Current logic: each ### Book — header plus all following lines is a BLOCK; whole blocks move to the archive, the preamble stays, and the tail (Final Directive + agent docs) is preserved verbatim. Never rewrite this to line-splitting, and verify on a temp copy that the SOUL.md tail survives any archive change.
- Book detection is section-scoped (7b53a375, 2026-08-07) → the script only treats
### <Book> — headers INSIDE the ## Scripture Insights section as book entries; any ### header elsewhere in SOUL.md (e.g. a section you added below) must not be mistaken for a book. Keep the ## Scripture Insights section as the single book-entry zone.
- False "all covered" reset skipped 26 books (fixed 2026-08-18) →
get_next_book() returning None was treated as "66 books done → archive + restart at Genesis". But a corrupted anchor (SOUL tail with non-book headers, LLM-era garbage) also produced None — so the cycle reset early, archived mid-cycle, and silently skipped every book after the anchor (2 Kings→Malachi, all 4 Gospels, Acts, Romans→Philippians). Fixes: (1) find_last_book() now reads the authoritative dated brain files, not the SOUL tail; (2) the reset only fires when last_book == BOOKS[-1] (Revelation) — any other None restarts from Genesis WITHOUT archiving and logs an anchor-corruption warning. If you ever see ⚠️ Anchor corruption in cron stderr, the dated brain files are the source of truth — do not trust SOUL.md.
- Identity fallback chain (ad123181, 2026-08-07) →
detect_agent_name() resolves HERMES_AGENT_NAME → AGENT_NAME → ~/.hermes-cortex/agent.env (AGENT_NAME=) → hostname-derived default with a loud warning. On shared hosts (non-orchestrators share /home/luke), a wrong agent name sends brain pages to the wrong directory — set in rather than relying on hostname fallback. Never hardcode a fallback agent name (the old default made every host impersonate the orchestrator).
Related
docs/daily-bible-reading.md — full setup guide with bootstrapping instructions.hermes-cortex/scripts/agent-daily-bible-reading.py — the no_agent cron script (repo source; deployed per-host via ~/.hermes/scripts → ~/.hermes-cortex/scripts hardlink)ops/scripts/install-crons.sh — section 8 registers the cron for new agents
Quality Gate
Before delivery, verify:
- ✅ SOUL.md was actually updated (check timestamp)
- ✅ Brain page file exists
- ✅ INDEX.md includes the new book
- ❌ If any failed, output a clear error message listing what succeeded/failed
