talos

Run a disciplined keep/revert experiment loop against a frozen scalar evaluator. Use when iterating on a model, algorithm, or piece of code to find improvements: propose a change, run a bounded experiment, score it, and keep the change only if it improves the metric (otherwise revert). Requires a frozen evaluator that emits a single scalar plus hard-constraint vetoes.

For an accepted improvement, attribute the gain to the specific component via ablation, and confirm it is real (not noise) with multi-seed re-runs, before trusting or shipping it. Use after ratchet-experiment keeps a change.

Handle the two situations the greedy ratchet cannot: route safety-critical or high-risk changes to human review, and switch search strategy when the loop plateaus (greedy local search -> grid / tree / evolutionary). Use from inside a ratchet-experiment loop.

Read a paper or product writeup (and its key references) and distill it into a structured, implementable spec: the core mechanism, the claimed metric, a minimal reproduction, and the constraints. Use at the start of adopting a community idea, before reproducing or grafting it.

Integrate a confirmed idea into an existing large codebase behind tests — the step generic paper-to-code tools skip. Use after repro-harness, before validating with ratchet-experiment.

Confirm a distilled idea actually works in isolation, against a frozen evaluator, before grafting it into a real codebase. Guards against fabricated or hardcoded results. Use after distill-paper and before graft-change.