Optimize

Use this skill for algorithm-first quests where the goal is the strongest justified optimization result rather than paper packaging.

This skill is the lightweight optimization control layer for DeepScientist. It does not replace the normal quest runtime. It tells you how to use the existing DeepScientist artifact, memory, bash_exec, Git, and worktree mechanisms as an optimization system.

Interaction discipline

• Follow the shared interaction contract injected by the system prompt.
• For ordinary active work, prefer a concise progress update once work has crossed roughly 6 tool calls with a human-meaningful delta, and do not drift beyond roughly 12 tool calls or about 8 minutes without a user-visible update.
• Ordinary candidate creation, smoke checks, and route updates should stay concise.
• Use richer milestone updates only when a candidate is promoted, a strong run finishes, the frontier shifts materially, or a fusion/debug route becomes the new main path.
• When the user asks for the current optimization state, answer from the frontier and durable artifacts rather than from chat memory.
• Hard execution rule: every terminal command in this stage must go through bash_exec; do not use any other terminal path for smoke checks, quick validations, long runs, Git, Python, package-manager, or file-inspection commands.

Stage purpose

The optimize stage should do four things: