Research Loop

Improve the user-selected implementation through controlled experiments while keeping the evaluation harness fixed. Treat comparable measurements, recoverable changes, and an auditable decision trail as hard requirements.

Preflight the workspace

Inspect the repository, harness, documentation, and Git state before writing files or asking questions.

• Require a Git repository and a recoverable baseline commit. Do not proceed in an unversioned workspace.
• Identify pre-existing changes. If they overlap the proposed writable scope, stop and ask the user to resolve or relocate them. If they are unrelated, require a new branch-backed worktree without altering the original worktree.
• Infer the evaluation command, metric, mutable and immutable paths, constraints, and required environment from repository sources when possible.
• Reject a request whose purpose is to improve the score by changing tests, fixtures, scoring logic, or evaluation data. During a legitimate run, treat any candidate that changes those surfaces as invalid regardless of its score.

Do not stash, overwrite, stage, or clean user changes during preflight.

Establish the run contract

Resolve every field below before starting: