Instinct Ledger

This is a Hermes-native instinct-ledger workflow skill.

Why This Exists

instinct-ledger exists because a lesson seen once is an anecdote and one seen across runs or projects is a candidate rule: it records each as one atomic instinct with its trigger, action, scope, confidence, and evidence, and promotes one only through a reviewed store route, never by writing a host's memory or skills on its own.

Do Not Use When

• A single missed route or one run's trace; use omh-workflow-learning first.
• Writing reviewed lessons into AGENTS guidance, prompts, or skills; use omh-rules-distill.
• A run that is stuck right now; use omh-agent-debug before drawing a lesson from it.

Examples

Good example:

• Prompt: instinct-ledger turn these repeated OMH review lessons into project-scoped instincts and show which ones could be promoted globally.
• Expected behavior: Produce prepare_instinct_ledger with required context, wrapper actions, and not-evidence boundaries.
• Why: The prompt names a real workflow surface that Hermes can orchestrate without hiding execution.

Bad example:

• Prompt: instinct-ledger silently install hooks, learn from every prompt, and mutate all skills globally.
• Expected behavior: Report the missing observed evidence or authority instead of claiming the external step happened.
• Why: Prepared OMH guidance is not platform, runtime, connector, file, memory, or delivery evidence.

Completion Checklist

• Each instinct is atomic: one trigger, one action, one scope, confidence, evidence refs, and review state.
• Project-specific conventions, global practices, project/global promotion candidates, imports, and exports are separated.
• No hooks, memory writes, skill edits, global promotion, import/export, or behavior-change claims are made without observed approval and implementation evidence.
• A promoted instinct leaves as a store route, memory_candidate for memory-new or skill_update_candidate for workflow-learning, never as a parallel store of its own.
• On Hermes, the skill audit ledger (skills/.curator_ledger.jsonl under the active profile's Hermes home) is observed evidence of what the agent or its background review already wrote; an instinct that matches a ledger entry no store route accounts for is reported as unreviewed_native_write (OMH holds no record of that write, which is not to say nobody reviewed it), never counted as repeated evidence for the instinct.

Recovery Notes

• If the request is a single missed route or run trace, route to workflow-learning first.
• If the request is to mutate durable rules, prompts, skills, or AGENTS guidance, route to rules-distill or implementation after review approval.
• If evidence comes from a stuck run, use agent-debug before converting lessons into instincts.

Workflow Lane

• Current lane: Automation and status (achievements, workspace-audit, production-audit, live-incident-response, automation-blueprint, github-event-ops, github-issue-intake, buzz, +40 more) - schedules, status, health, and ops review.
• If intent belongs to another lane, hand back to oh-my-hermes or name the adjacent workflow.
• Shared product, routing, compatibility, and evidence rules: skill_view(name='omh-routing', file_path='references/skill-common-rail.md').

When to Use

Use when Hermes should review repeated observations, user corrections, workflow lessons, or failure patterns as atomic project-scoped or global instinct candidates with confidence, evidence, promotion, import, or export decisions.

Strong routing signals: `instinct-ledger`, `instinct ledger`, `project instincts`, `project-scoped instincts`, `project scoped instincts`, `global instincts`, `instinct review`, `instinct candidate`, `instinct candidates`, `instinct promotion`, `promote instinct`, `promote learning`, `confidence scored learning`, `confidence-scored learning`, `project learning patterns`, `cross-project learning`, `export instincts`, `import instincts`, `학습 본능`, `프로젝트별 학습`, `프로젝트 스코프 학습`, `전역 학습 승격`, `학습 승격`, `학습 패턴 승격`

Catalog Metadata

Category: optimization Phase: instinct-ledger Hermes role: tracker Quality tier: workflow-surface-gated Reasoning demand: heavy

Quality bar:

• Name the user-facing workflow objective, required context, next action, and stop condition.
• Separate prepared guidance from observed platform, runtime, connector, file, memory, or delivery evidence.
• Expose missing tools, credentials, targets, or observations as user-visible gaps.

Handoff policy:

Keep this as Hermes-facing orchestration guidance first. Prepare executor, connector, gateway, or host-runtime handoff only when the user accepts that next step and observed evidence can be recorded.

Required inputs:

• user request
• target context
• delivery or status expectation
• known missing evidence

Expected outputs:

• instinct_ledger_plan/v1
• instinct_candidate/v1
• project_instinct_scope_map/v1
• instinct_promotion_review/v1
• instinct_export_review/v1 when requested

Artifact expectations:

• instinct_candidate/v1 with trigger, action, confidence, domain, scope, source evidence, non-goals, and review state
• project_instinct_scope_map/v1 separating project, global, imported, and promotion-candidate instincts
• instinct_promotion_review/v1 with repeated evidence, confidence threshold, conflicts, and approval state
• instinct_export_review/v1 with redaction, destination, import/export trust gaps, and raw-observation exclusion when requested

Safety rules:

• An instinct ledger is not hook installation, automatic observation, model training, hidden memory mutation, skill mutation, prompt mutation, global rule promotion, import, export, or proof that future behavior changed. Record only reviewed candidate instincts, confidence, scope, promotion state, and evidence gaps.
• Do not claim connector, gateway, runtime, file generation, memory mutation, or host automation evidence from prepared guidance.

Runtime Evidence

Preferred harness for this skill: instinct-ledger.

omh runtime record --skill instinct-ledger --harness instinct-ledger --status started

Record observed delegation results; otherwise return not_available or not_observed. Prepared OMH routing is not execution, review, CI, merge-readiness, or merge evidence.

• Treat wrapper memory/context summaries as advisory local context, not proof of opaque Hermes memory reads or changes. Preserve workflow intent and stop conditions; verify before claiming completion. Reply in the user's own words and the host's own voice: its SOUL.md persona owns reply language, tone, speech level, and sentence endings, progress updates included (where it sets no language, use the one the user wrote in), and OMH shapes structure and content only; OMH's record terms (surface, lane, wrapper, handoff, evidence boundary, not_observed) stay in records and tool calls, never in the sentence the user reads unless they ask about one; and when a real unresolved user decision or a useful briefing discussion remains, offer one specific, content-linked question. Completed work needs no question; omit unrelated non-action footers and generic offers to continue.

Use Hermes-native subagent/delegation features when available: native subagents -> Hermes delegation when available, otherwise sequential lanes.

Shared product, compatibility, topology, memory, harness, and execution rules: skill_view(name='omh-routing', file_path='references/skill-common-rail.md'). Load it when applicable; otherwise name an unavailable capability.