Skill System Evolution

Version-controlled evolution engine that uses insight results to evolve soul profiles and workflow recipes.

This skill is the ACT half of the system: it reads accumulated observation data, decides changes that are justified by evidence, applies them conservatively, and records a versioned snapshot for every change.

Key Concepts

Insight = OBSERVE
- Extract facets from sessions and accumulate buffers.
- This is handled by skill-system-insight.
Evolution = ACT
- Read accumulated data and decide changes.
- Apply changes with strong evidence only.
- Always version and store an audit snapshot.
Every evolution creates a versioned snapshot
- No mutation without a recorded snapshot.
- Snapshots are stored in Postgres (agent_memories) and can be listed/rolled back.
Users can list, compare, rollback, and pin versions
- list-versions provides the history.
- rollback restores a prior snapshot (and records the rollback as its own snapshot).
- Pinning is represented as an additional tag on the snapshot (e.g., pin:true) or as a separate memory record (implementation choice for the operator).

Architecture

Reads

Insight facets:
- agent_memories.category = 'insight-facet' (general log)
- Typed table: insight_facets → use get_recent_facets('{user}', 50)
- Tags include user:<user>
Soul state (dual matrix):
- agent_memories.category = 'soul-state' (general log)
- Typed table: soul_states → use get_soul_state('{user}')
- Tags include user:<user> and matrix

Writes

Evolution snapshots:
- agent_memories.category = 'evolution-snapshot' (general log)
- Typed table: evolution_snapshots → use insert_evolution_snapshot()
- Each snapshot stores the full artifact YAML/markdown in snapshot_data
Soul profiles (filesystem):
- ../skill-system-soul/profiles/<user>.md
Workflow recipes (filesystem):
- ../skill-system-workflow/recipes/*.yaml (or .yml)

Version tags

Version tag format:

v{N}_{target}_{timestamp}

Example: v3_soul_20260211

Recommended versioning algorithm per user+target:

Let N = 1 + max(existing N) for snapshots with tags user:<user> and target:<target>.
If none exist, start at N = 1.
Timestamp uses local date (YYYYMMDD) unless you need time disambiguation; if you do, append _HHMM.

Operational Constraints

Max 1 evolution pass per day per user.
- Applies across targets (soul/recipe/both). Use the most recent evolution-snapshot date as the limiter.
Transparency: always explain what changed and why.
- Every proposed change must include evidence strings from facets or state context.
Safety: cannot remove core safety constraints from soul profiles.
- The evolved profile must retain baseline safety expectations: honest uncertainty, no hallucinated authority, and refusal of harmful/illegal instructions.
User approval: major changes require confirmation.
- If any proposed personality dimension change has abs(proposed_value - current_value) > 0.5, do not apply automatically.
- Instead, produce an evolution plan and ask for explicit approval.

Relationship to `skill-system-insight`

For new installations, skill-system-evolution supersedes the insight skill's synthesis operation:

skill-system-insight remains the source of facets and matrix updates.
Layer 3 profile generation (synthesis) is performed and versioned here, so changes are auditable and reversible.

Storage Pattern (agent_memories + typed tables)

Evolution snapshots are stored as episodic memories in agent_memories AND in the typed evolution_snapshots table (dual-write via insert_evolution_snapshot()):

memory_type = 'episodic'
category = 'evolution-snapshot'
tags include:
- user:<user>
- target:<target> where target is soul, recipe, or both
- version:<version_tag>

Example SQL templates (typed table preferred):

-- Rate limit check (typed table)
SELECT id, created_at, trigger_reason
FROM evolution_snapshots
WHERE user_id = '<user>'
  AND created_at >= (NOW() - INTERVAL '24 hours')
ORDER BY created_at DESC
LIMIT 1;

-- Store an evolution snapshot (typed — dual-writes to agent_memories)
SELECT insert_evolution_snapshot(
  '<user>', '<version_tag>', '<target>', '<trigger>',
  '<changes JSONB>', '<snapshot_data>', '<full YAML>',
  NULL, 'evolution-agent'
);

-- List recent snapshots (typed table)
SELECT * FROM get_evolution_history('<user>', 50);

Legacy agent_memories-only queries still work (backward compatible):

-- Rate limit check (max 1/day): any snapshot in last 24h?
SELECT id, created_at, title
FROM agent_memories
WHERE category = 'evolution-snapshot'
  AND 'user:<user>' = ANY(tags)
  AND created_at >= (NOW() - INTERVAL '24 hours')
ORDER BY created_at DESC
LIMIT 1;

-- Store an evolution snapshot
SELECT store_memory(
  'episodic',
  'evolution-snapshot',
  ARRAY['user:<user>', 'target:<target>', 'version:<version_tag>'],
  'Evolution Snapshot: <version_tag>',
  '<full evolution-snapshot YAML as text>',
  '{"version_tag": "<version_tag>", "target": "<target>", "timestamp": "<iso>"}',
  'evolution-agent',
  NULL,
  8.0
);

-- List recent snapshots for a user (most recent first)
SELECT id, created_at, title
FROM agent_memories
WHERE category = 'evolution-snapshot'
  AND 'user:<user>' = ANY(tags)
ORDER BY created_at DESC
LIMIT 50;

Operations

evolve-soul
- Check if matrix has enough data (buffer threshold) and/or synthesis is pending.
- Apply pending matrix updates.
- Synthesize new Layer 3 profile using evidence (last 50 facets), then version it.
evolve-recipes
- Analyze workflow facets to detect friction/outcomes.
- Propose conservative recipe modifications and version them.
list-versions
- List evolution history for a user, optionally filtered by target.
rollback
- Restore a previous version of soul or recipes.
- Records the rollback as a new snapshot.

{
  "schema_version": "2.0",
  "id": "skill-system-evolution",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "capabilities": ["evolution-soul", "evolution-recipes", "evolution-list", "evolution-rollback"],
  "effects": ["db.read", "db.write", "fs.read", "fs.write"],
  "operations": {
    "evolve-soul": {
      "description": "Evolve soul profile from accumulated insight data. Creates versioned snapshot.",
      "input": {
        "user": {"type": "string", "required": true, "description": "User handle"}
      },
      "output": {
        "description": "Evolution result with version tag",
        "fields": {"version_tag": "string", "changes": "array", "profile_path": "string"}
      },
      "entrypoints": {
        "agent": "Follow scripts/evolve-soul.md procedure"
      }
    },
    "evolve-recipes": {
      "description": "Evolve workflow recipes based on effectiveness data from insight facets.",
      "input": {
        "user": {"type": "string", "required": true, "description": "User handle"}
      },
      "output": {
        "description": "Recipe evolution result with version tag",
        "fields": {"version_tag": "string", "recipes_changed": "array"}
      },
      "entrypoints": {
        "agent": "Follow scripts/evolve-recipes.md procedure"
      }
    },
    "list-versions": {
      "description": "List all evolution snapshots for a user.",
      "input": {
        "user": {"type": "string", "required": true},
        "target": {"type": "string", "required": false, "description": "Filter: soul | recipe | all"}
      },
      "output": {
        "description": "Array of version snapshots",
        "fields": {"versions": "array of {tag, target, timestamp, summary}"}
      },
      "entrypoints": {
        "agent": "Follow scripts/list-versions.md procedure"
      }
    },
    "rollback": {
      "description": "Restore a previous evolution version.",
      "input": {
        "user": {"type": "string", "required": true},
        "version_tag": {"type": "string", "required": true, "description": "Version tag to restore"}
      },
      "output": {
        "description": "Rollback result",
        "fields": {"status": "ok | error", "restored_from": "string"}
      },
      "entrypoints": {
        "agent": "Follow scripts/rollback.md procedure"
      }
    }
  },
  "stdout_contract": {
    "last_line_json": false,
    "note": "Agent-executed procedures; versioned snapshots stored in agent_memories."
  }
}