Autoresearch — Autonomous Goal-directed Iteration

Safety Invariants (all subcommands)

• Never push, publish, or deploy without explicit user approval.
• Bounded by default. Override with Iterations: unlimited.
• All results logged to autoresearch/{subcommand}-{YYMMDD}-{HHMM}/ directory.
• Chain handoff via handoff.json. Evals reads *-results.tsv.

Dispatch (bare /autoresearch)

Parse the invocation in this order:

Condition	Mode
Metric: or Verify: present	Classic — existing metric loop, unchanged
Free-form natural-language goal, no metric/verify	Orchestrator — see Orchestrator section
Nothing	Setup wizard — interactive config builder
--classic flag	Force Classic regardless of goal text
--auto flag	Force Orchestrator regardless of goal text

Print a banner on every invocation: [autoresearch] mode: classic | orchestrator | wizard.

Subcommands

Command	Does	Default Iterations
/autoresearch	Iterate against a metric: modify → verify → keep/discard	25
/autoresearch:plan	Convert a goal into validated Scope, Metric, Verify config	N/A
/autoresearch:debug	Hunt bugs: hypothesize → test → falsify → repeat	15
/autoresearch:fix	Crush errors one-by-one until zero remain	20
/autoresearch:security	STRIDE + OWASP audit with red-team personas	15
/autoresearch:ship	Ship through 8 phases: checklist → dry-run → deploy → verify	N/A
/autoresearch:scenario	Generate edge cases across 12 dimensions	20
/autoresearch:predict	5 expert personas debate before implementation	N/A
/autoresearch:learn	Scout codebase → generate docs or wiki → validate → fix loop	10
/autoresearch:reason	Adversarial debate with blind judges until convergence	8
/autoresearch:probe	8 personas interrogate requirements until saturation	15
/autoresearch:improve	Research ICP challenges, discover improvements, generate PRDs	15
/autoresearch:evals	Analyze iteration results: trends, plateaus, regressions	N/A
/autoresearch:regression	Regression stability gate: baseline vs candidate, verdict STABLE/UNSTABLE	N/A

Universal Flags

Flag	Applies To	Purpose
Iterations: N	All looping	Set iteration count
Iterations: unlimited	All looping	Opt-in unbounded
--evals	All looping	Mid-loop checkpoints + final summary
--evals-interval N	All looping	Override checkpoint frequency
--chain <targets>	All	Sequential handoff after completion
--<subcommand>	All	Shorthand for --chain <subcommand>
--dry-run	Orchestrator	Print derived config + planned pipeline; no execution
--max-cycles N	Orchestrator	Hard ceiling on orchestration cycles (default 50)
--classic	Bare /autoresearch	Force Classic metric-loop mode
--auto	Bare /autoresearch	Force Orchestrator mode

Orchestrator

Activated when a plain-language goal is given without Metric:/Verify:. Classifies the goal into a Goal archetype — see references/orchestrator-routing.md for the archetype table and router decision table.

Resolve every scripts/... path below relative to this installed skill directory, never relative to the caller's working directory.

Two modes based on archetype:

• Orchestration loop — predicate-bearing archetypes (ship-ready, optimize-metric, fix-broken, harden, build-feature, explore). Goal has a mechanical Success predicate; the loop runs until that predicate is met.
• Single-pass dispatch — subjective/terminal archetypes (document, what-to-build, decide-design). Routes once to the fitting subcommand (learn / improve / reason), lets it self-terminate, then reports. No loop, no Plateau, no ship gate.

Orchestration Loop Steps

Backed by scripts/orchestrate.sh (deterministic seam — all routing logic lives there). Subcommands exposed: classify, next-hop, units, plateau, screen-cmd, verdict, validate-state, screen-state-predicate.

1. Classify — scripts/orchestrate.sh classify "<goal>" → archetype label + mode.
2. Derive predicate — reuse plan logic to produce a concrete Success predicate: exact shell command + expected output. For optimize-metric, run the full plan/wizard derivation internally.
3. Confirm — ONE AskUserQuestion showing: archetype, mode, concrete predicate (command + expected output), terminal choice (stop-at-verified vs proceed-to-ship). Misclassifications are caught here, not mid-run.
4. Round-0 dry-run — prove the predicate command runs and returns a value; safety-screen every derived command via screen-cmd; print projected cycle budget. Stop here if --dry-run.
5. Loop until predicate satisfied: a. Assess state via cheap signals (last handoff.json, regression verdict, error count) + affected-test verify. b. scripts/orchestrate.sh next-hop orchestrator-state.json → next subcommand. c. Run subcommand (its own bounded inner loop). d. Record per-hop outcome ∈ {progressed, no-op, failed, blocked}. e. Fold hop's handoff.json into orchestrator-state.json. f. scripts/orchestrate.sh units → recompute Units remaining.
6. Stop conditions (checked after each hop):
   • Predicate met → ship gate (only if ship is in the pipeline) else CONVERGED.
   • scripts/orchestrate.sh plateau orchestrator-state.json → true → stop + report PLATEAU.
   • Cycles > ceiling (default 50, override --max-cycles N) → stop + report CEILING.
   • Hop outcome blocked/failed with no alternative route → checkpoint + stop + report BLOCKED.

Orchestrator State

orchestrator-state.json — orchestrator-owned, additive. Tracks: goal, archetype, predicate, terminal-choice, units_remaining history, cycle count, per-hop pipeline log with outcomes, current incumbent. Each hop's handoff.json is unchanged (single-hop bridge); the orchestrator reads it and folds it in. Two clearly-owned state objects, no overlap.

Orchestrator Safety Invariants

• Never auto-approve ship/deploy/push. The orchestrator never passes --auto to ship; deploy always requires explicit user approval.
• Data-migration behind anchored DB-URL allowlist. Reuses regression's allowlist — host must be localhost/127.0.0.1/container hostname, or database name carries _test/_ci suffix. Bare substring match does not qualify. Anything else refused.
• screen-cmd on every derived command — run before the loop starts AND on every command read from a persisted state file on resume. Persisted commands are never trusted; resume re-screens the pinned predicate via screen-state-predicate and refuses on refuse.
• No un-screened commands mid-loop. The autonomous loop cannot introduce new shell commands that bypass screen-cmd.
• Predicate pinned, not re-derived. Round-0 writes the derived Success predicate verbatim into orchestrator-state.json; every cycle and every resume reuses that exact string so "done" is reproducible across runs.
• Validate the ledger before routing. validate-state gates orchestrator-state.json (required fields + coarse types); a malformed ledger is not trusted to route from.
• Independent verify before convergence. High-impact changes accepted on the working signal set pending_verify; next-hop routes to a verify hop (held-out / adversarial check) before DONE or ship. The verify hop never auto-approves ship.
• Unknown-units cycles excluded from Plateau counter. A cycle where units returns unknown (e.g. runner crash) is not counted as zero-progress; repeated unknown routes to BLOCKED.