rethink

name	rethink
description	Synthesize accumulated observations into system evolution proposals. Fires when observation count reaches threshold. 5-phase process: triage, methodology updates, pattern detection, proposal generation, and human approval. Never auto-implements — always proposes changes for review. Triggers on: "rethink", "synthesize learnings", "evolve system", "improve process"

/rethink

Synthesize observations into system evolution — always with human approval.

Purpose

The synthesis side of the learning loop. When enough observations accumulate in a category (tracked by /remember), rethink analyzes them for patterns, generates concrete improvement proposals, and presents them for human approval. This is how the system evolves: not through ad-hoc fixes, but through deliberate synthesis of accumulated evidence. Critical rule: rethink NEVER auto-implements changes. Every proposal requires explicit human approval.

Usage

# Rethink a specific category
/rethink "process"

# Rethink with confidence override
/rethink "people" --force

# Rethink all categories that are ready
/rethink --all

# Dry run — show what would be proposed
/rethink "technical" --dry-run

# View past rethink proposals
/rethink --history

# Set custom threshold
/rethink "tool-use" --threshold 3

Arguments

Flag	Type	Default	Description
<category>	positional	—	Category to synthesize (from /remember categories)
--all	flag	false	Process all categories that meet threshold
--force	flag	false	Override confidence threshold
--threshold	int	5	Minimum observations required
--dry-run	flag	false	Show proposals without creating approval requests
--history	flag	false	View past rethink proposals and their status
--depth	enum	standard	quick (pattern summary), standard (proposals), deep (proposals + impact analysis)

Workflow

5-Phase Process

1. Triage — Load all observations in the target category. Filter by confidence (>= 0.3). Sort by severity and frequency. Discard noise (low confidence + single occurrence).
2. Pattern detection — Cluster related observations. Identify:
   • Recurring themes (same mistake, different contexts)
   • Escalating severity (problem getting worse)
   • Root causes (multiple symptoms, one cause)
   • Contradictions (observations that conflict — flag for human resolution)
3. Methodology update — For each detected pattern, determine what system artifact should change:
   • CLAUDE.md rules
   • Agent system prompts
   • Workflow definitions
   • Skill parameters
   • Routing tables
   • Quality thresholds
4. Proposal generation — For each proposed change:
   • Write a specific, actionable proposal
   • Include: what changes, why (evidence from observations), expected impact, risk level
   • Show the exact diff (before/after) when possible
   • Estimate effort: trivial (config change), moderate (workflow change), significant (architecture change)
5. Human approval — Submit proposals via /approve as strategy_proposal type. Block until resolved. On approval, provide implementation instructions (but do not auto-implement).

Output

## Rethink Report — Category: process

**Observations analyzed:** 7
**Patterns detected:** 3
**Proposals generated:** 2

### Pattern 1: Duplicate Content Creation
**Evidence:** 4 observations (confidence: 0.72)
- obs-a1b2: "Always check for duplicates before inserting"
- obs-c3d4: "Created duplicate signal file for Ed's call"
- obs-e5f6: "Knowledge base has 3 versions of pricing decision"
- obs-g7h8: "Ingestion created duplicate when slightly different wording"

**Root cause:** No deduplication check in the ingestion pipeline.

**Proposal 1:** Add dedup check to /seed skill
- **Change:** Add content hash comparison in seed workflow step 5
- **Diff:**

Before: 5. Write — Create inbox item After: 5. Dedup — Hash content, check against existing seeds. If >85% similarity, warn and link instead of creating new. 6. Write — Create inbox item

- **Impact:** Prevents ~60% of duplicate content (based on observation frequency)
- **Risk:** Low — additive change, no existing behavior modified
- **Effort:** Moderate — requires hash index

→ Submitted as approval req-x1y2. Awaiting human decision.

### Pattern 2: Missing Cross-References
**Evidence:** 3 observations (confidence: 0.58)
...

### Archived Observations
The following observations were consumed by this rethink and archived:
- obs-a1b2, obs-c3d4, obs-e5f6, obs-g7h8 → archived to ops/observations/process/archived/

Dependencies

• /remember — Source of observations
• /approve — Proposal approval gate
• Observation store (ops/observations/)
• System configuration files (for generating diffs)
• /health — For impact analysis at deep depth