| name | run-cycle |
| description | Orchestrate a full engine cycle — pre-flight, pre-mortem, engine run, engine review, world summary. |
| version | 1.1 |
| updated | "2026-05-24T00:00:00.000Z" |
| tags | ["engine-sheet","active"] |
| effort | high |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
| argument-hint | [cycle-number] |
/run-cycle — Engine Cycle Orchestrator
Purpose
Runs the full engine cycle pipeline by calling individual skills in order. Each step produces output on disk that the next step reads.
The Chain
Step 1: /pre-flight
Verify manual inputs are ready — sports feed entries, initiative tracker structure, coverage ratings from last edition. Citizen/business/storyline intake not wired yet (placeholder).
Gate: READY → proceed. NOT READY → stop and fix.
Step 2: /pre-mortem
Scan engine code for determinism violations, dependency chain breaks, sheet header misalignment, cascade risks.
Gate: CLEAN → proceed. CRITICAL → stop and fix.
Step 3: Run Cycle
Tell Mike to run runWorldCycle() in Google Apps Script. The engine runs in Google's cloud — cannot be triggered from here. Wait for confirmation it finished.
Gate: Mike confirms engine completed.
Step 4: /engine-review
Read world state from sheets. Identify ailments, improvements, incoherence. Produce 7-field briefs per finding. Output: output/engine_review_c{XX}.md
Gate: File exists on disk.
Step 5: /build-world-summary
Read Riley_Digest (3 cycles), Sports Feed (3 cycles), civic production log (if exists), and engine review output. Produce factual world summary. Output: output/world_summary_c{XX}.md. Ingest to world-data Supermemory. The writer also emits output/desk_signal_c{XX}.json (engine.76 W5 half 1) — per-desk signal partition, pointers only, consumed by /desk-slice and the headless writer-wakes.
Gate: File exists on disk + ingest confirmed.
Step 5.5: Neighborhood texture (citizen perception — research.19 T2)
Translate the cycle's per-hood engine signal into the lived particulars a resident would notice — the shared, frozen perception artifact the citizen-wake loop reads. Wake-input only — never published, never canon.
node scripts/buildNeighborhoodTexture.js {XX}
Reads the same Riley_Digest + Neighborhood_Map sources as Step 5 (structured, not the world_summary markdown), runs ONE batched DeepSeek generation (~21 short blocks), deterministic real-name blocklist sweep (fail-loud). Output: output/neighborhood_texture_c{XX}.md, frozen for the cycle. Hoods with no engine signal get a quiet-week line (no invented drama). The cron citizen-wake.js reads each citizen's hood block via loadNeighborhoodTexture and injects it as Around your neighborhood:. Adds one cheap LLM gen/cycle; degrades gracefully (wake omits the line) if absent.
Gate: File exists on disk.
Step 5.55: Voice disposition cache refresh (engine.43 T2)
Refresh the live disposition cache the citizen-voice agents boot from — one file per voiced citizen, derived from post-cycle DialState via the same citizenDials.disposition() call the wake loop uses. Wake/interview/Discord-input only — never supersedes IDENTITY.md ESTABLISHED CANON.
node scripts/refreshVoiceDispositionCache.js --live {XX}
Output: output/voice-disposition-cache/<POPID>.md (phrase + Refreshed: c{XX} stamp). Agent-count-agnostic — picks up any .claude/agents/citizen-voice-*/IDENTITY.md. Voice agents fail open to their authored IDENTITY.md disposition if a cache file is missing.
Gate: All cache files' Refreshed: stamp shows c{XX}.
Step 5.56: Ledger snapshot refresh (S329)
Refresh the disk snapshot that backs every search channel's "most authoritative" shelf (lib/mags.searchDisk rank-0 + MCP search_everything). Moved here from city-hall-prep Step 1.5 (S329): the refresh must ride the cycle path, not a downstream pipeline — the C101 run logged "refreshed" while the file sat 10 days stale, which is how Discord personas stopped seeing the Richards trade.
node scripts/dumpLedger.js {XX} --quiet
Gate: output/simulation_ledger_snapshot.meta.json read back shows "cycle": {XX} and current generatedAt. Never report this step done from the command exit alone.
Step 5.57: World-state fold (engine.76 W3)
Fold the cycle's cron-consumer inputs into the single artifact the 24/7 loops read — output/world_state.json. Deterministic assembler, no LLM: live Riley_Digest orientation + base_context canon (staleness-flagged) + Step 5.5 hood blocks + Step 5.55 dispositions + pointers to the deep artifacts. Consumers: mags-discord-bot / discord-reflection (lib/mags.loadWorldState), citizen-wake + citizen-exchange (lib/wakePerception.loadNeighborhoodTexture), cron-desk-writer fallback path. All consumers fail back to the pre-W3 per-file reads if the fold is absent or cycle-mismatched.
node scripts/buildWorldState.js {XX}
Gate: Script prints wrote .../world_state.json with cycle {XX} + hood/disposition counts.
Step 5.6: Content-ledger drafter (engine.49 T4)
Draft condition-gated Event_Content_Ledger rows from what this cycle actually produced (Story_Seed_Deck seeds, Neighborhood_Map pressures, Cycle_Seeds weather/holiday). Cheap-helper LLM (OpenRouter deepseek default), never premium tokens.
node scripts/draftContentRows.js --cycle {XX} --apply
Validation is parity-by-execution — every candidate runs through the real loadEventContentLedger_, so a row the loader would skip is never written. Caps 10/3/2 + dedup + auth:auto provenance; rows land Active=yes (T4 auto-active — the fail-closed loader is the standing guard, Active=no in-sheet is Mike's kill switch). Script prints a draft report (written / invalid / dup / capped) and readback-verifies the append. If OpenRouter is unreachable it exits 1 with ERR — treat as non-blocking for the rest of the chain (the cycle already ran; pools just don't grow this cycle). Don't retry-loop; note the miss in the Step 6 gap log.
Plan: docs/plans/2026-07-06-content-ledger-auto-authoring.md (engine.49).
Gate: Draft report printed; on --apply, script exits 0 with rows verified (0 written is a valid outcome on a quiet cycle).
Step 5.7: Initiative packets refresh (G-PREP1)
Refresh the derived initiative JSON from the live sheet so downstream skills never read stale phases (C100: initiative_tracker.json carried past-cycle nextActionCycle values while the live sheet had moved on).
node scripts/buildInitiativePackets.js {XX}
Gate: output/initiative_tracker.json regenerated this run (mtime is this session).
Step 5.8: Desk packets + base_context refresh (S311)
Rebuild output/desk-packets/base_context.json + the 9 desk packets at cycle time. Before S311 this only fired at post-publish Step 5b, so every cycle-run left base_context stale (Discord bot's lib/mags.js loadWorldState() reported the prior cycle, and /write-edition desks read prior-cycle packets) until the next edition published. Same gap-shape G-PREP1 closed for initiative packets at Step 5.7.
node scripts/buildDeskPackets.js {XX}
Gate: jq '.baseContext.cycle' output/desk-packets/base_context.json matches {XX} — the field is nested; top-level .cycle returns null and false-alarms (G-P-C99-1). Post-publish Step 5b stays — it re-refreshes after publication so edition-coverage data lands; the script is idempotent.
Step 6: Gap Log Close (engine-sheet)
Run the mechanical baseline audit and append judgment-layer entries.
node scripts/engineCycleAudit.js {XX} --write
Run-order dependency (G-EC1): this step reads engine_audit_c{XX}.json from Step 4 — the script now aborts with a clear message (no gap log written) if the file is missing, instead of filing a false-HIGH audit-input finding. If it aborts, run Step 4 first.
Writes output/production_log_c{XX}_run_cycle_gaps.md with [mechanical]-tagged entries across 5 detector classes (writeback-drift, math-anomaly, cross-cycle-debt, determinism-break, header-drift). 4 V2-runtime classes (phase-skip, cohort-collision, phase-ordering, silent-fail) appended as stubs — they need an engine-run-log ingest path that doesn't exist yet.
header-drift (S202 build) is a structural class — runs against repo state vs schemas/SCHEMA_HEADERS.md, flags writers whose field-name lookups or setValues() ranges don't match live headers. Self-test: node scripts/engineCycleAuditTest.js (synthetic fixture validating the detector would have caught the S201 Story_Seed_Deck/Story_Hook_Deck drift). Plan: docs/plans/2026-05-05-writer-header-alignment-detector.md.
After the script runs, engine-sheet appends [judgment] entries below the <!-- end mechanical pass --> footer marker. The script preserves anything below that marker on re-run, so judgment entries survive a re-audit pass.
Coder-persona voice for judgment entries: terse, mechanical, commit-message style (no narrative prose). G-EC{N+} numbering continues from the mechanical pass.
If 0 mechanical entries observed: file states "0 mechanical gaps observed" with cycle headline metrics for context (vs being absent, which would be ambiguous). Engine-sheet judgment review still recommended.
Gate: File exists on disk. ROLLOUT pointer added under Edition Post-Publish for any HIGH-severity findings: RUN-CYCLE C{XX} GAP LOG — S{N} (engine-sheet), N entries, severity.
Plan: docs/archive/plans/2026-05-03-run-cycle-gap-log-surface.md (Phase 2 done S199; Phase 3 validation runs at next /run-cycle invocation).
What Happens After
These run as separate skills (may be same or different sessions):
/city-hall-prep — reads world summary + engine review + sheets → writes pending decisions per voice/city-hall — reads pending decisions → launches voice agents → applies tracker updates → production log/sift (planned) — reads world summary + engine review + city-hall log → story picks + angle briefs/write-edition — reads sift output → launches reporters → compile → publish
Handoff: run-cycle produces output/world_summary_c{XX}.md and output/engine_review_c{XX}.md. City-hall-prep verifies both exist before starting.
Legacy Reference
The following scripts were part of the old inline pipeline. Not called by this skill but preserved for future use:
scripts/buildDeskFolders.js — per-desk workspace foldersscripts/buildInitiativeWorkspaces.js — per-initiative workspace foldersscripts/buildVoiceWorkspaces.js — per-voice-agent workspace foldersscripts/buildDecisionQueue.js — pending decisions for voice agentsscripts/checkSupplementalTriggers.js — supplemental edition candidates
Sheet Access
Service account via lib/sheets.js. Spreadsheet ID from .env.
