/evolve — Goal-Driven Autonomous Loop

Measure what's wrong. Fix the worst thing. Measure again. Whether the fixes compound into a durable knowledge moat is a tracked hypothesis, not a promise — DEMOTED to unproven by ADR-0004 and ADR-0011. The proven product is the per-cycle verification (no verdict = not done), not the compounding. Do not market the flywheel ahead of the ruler. Experimental tier. Autonomous long-loop; run attended or dispatched onto a substrate, never as an in-repo daemon (ADR-0009).

Cycle feedback is explicit. Each completed execution unit routes Validate -> Learn -> orchestrator; neither proof nor bookkeeping controls retry or delivery.

The loop runs as this skill. evolve selects work and invokes complete /rpi --auto cycles — that is the loop. A material Learn packet returns to the orchestrator, which changes the remaining plan through Discovery and sends only that changed plan through Premortem. no_change permits an explicit continue/retry/stop/escalate decision; terminal closes the cycle. Substrates dispatch the whole loop as one unit; the former RPI CLI wrappers are retired (ADR-0009).

Operator cadence: measure repo state → select the next highest-value item → Discovery → Premortem → Crank → Validate → Learn → orchestrator decision → repeat until a kill switch, max-cycle cap, regression breaker, or real dormancy stops it.

Constraints

Run one complete rpi --auto cycle per selected item and re-read the work ladder afterward, because partial phases and fixed backlogs break the feedback loop.
Never let Validate or Learn push, close work, mutate the plan, or choose the next cycle; those are separate adapter/orchestrator decisions.
Treat breaker trips with one bounded helper pass before escalation; only judgment, refusal, spent budgets, or a failed helper reach a human, because ordinary blockers return to the earliest invalidated loop move.

Work selection ladder

Selection is a ladder re-read from the TOP after every productive cycle — never a one-shot check. Full per-rung procedure (ao loop next-work recommendation, scope filter, generator code, --quality cascade, dormancy hard-gate): references/work-selection-ladder.md.