/craft-goal

name: craft-goal
description: 'Draft or lint a bounded persistent goal above a bead graph of RPI experiments. Use when: this goal workflow is explicitly selected; shaping a single change belongs to Plan.'
practices:
- lean-startup
- design-by-contract
skill_api_version: 1
hexagonal_role: supporting
consumes:
- caller-outcome
- goal-acceptance
produces:
- outer-goal-prompt
- goal-safety-report
context_rel:
- kind: supplier-to
  with: plan
user-invocable: true
disable-model-invocation: true
context:
  window: inherit
  intent:
    mode: task
metadata:
  tier: judgment
  dependencies: []
  capabilities: ["goal_prompt_design","goal_prompt_lint"]
  effects: []
  canonical_status: canonical
  disposition: keep_strategy
  stability: experimental
output_contract: 'human-readable SAFE_TO_CREATE, USE_RPI, or UNSAFE_GOAL decision; copy-paste outer-goal prompt when safe; exact budgets, assumptions, and lint findings'

Craft Goal

Craft the autonomy contract above AgentOps RPI. A goal is a persistent Mayor over a bead-shaped experiment graph. Each RPI is one scientific trial; the goal selects the next useful trial, preserves what was learned, and ratchets toward a larger outcome.

Goal / Mayor: observe graph → choose bounded wave → consume verdicts → ratchet
  └─ Bead: durable experiment intent, context, scratch, evidence, and links
       └─ RPI: plan → implement → fresh validate → bounded repair → verdict → report
            └─ Implementation: one RED → GREEN → refactor experiment

The number of RPIs need not be known in advance. The goal is safe when success is decidable, every experiment is bounded, evidence retains its provenance, and the authorization envelope cannot silently renew itself. Beliefs are revisable: new evidence may retract an earlier claim. More stored knowledge is neither progress nor proof that knowledge is correct.

**Insight:** bounded waves shorten the feedback loop; one hard, non-renewing campaign envelope prevents those waves from becoming infinite continuation.

**Authority boundary.** The emitted goal prompt and safety report are inert caller-owned text. Crafting one creates no goal, starts no runtime, and mutates no bead; it confers no standing authorization. The prompt drives RPI dispatch only when a caller pastes it into their own goal runtime under their own authority, and only within the non-renewing envelope the caller then sets.

Named failure mode — **completion treadmill**: discoveries recursively become requirements and activity continues without new information. Its opposite is **first-red abandonment**: one falsified hypothesis ends a viable campaign. Anti-pattern: choose endless retries or stop on the first red. Corrective: continue while experiments produce a defined ratchet and remain inside the envelope; invoke an andon on churn, judgment, or exhaustion. Stop when the goal reports `ACHIEVED`, `NOT_ACHIEVED`, or `NEEDS_OPERATOR`.

Modes

| Caller wording | Mode | Result | |---|---|---| | "craft a goal", "turn this into a goal" | craft | Compile a Mayor-style goal prompt and settings. | | "lint/review this goal", "is this safe" | lint | Return findings and a rewrite when supplied facts permit one. |

Stop after 1 compilation pass. Never create a goal or mutate beads.

Admission and sizing

**Fuzzy route is acceptable; fuzzy success is not.** Before goal creation, the caller must know the outcome, what evidence would prove it, non-goals, and authority. The exact experiment graph may still be unknown.

• Return `USE_RPI` for one shaped experiment with no verdict-driven follow-on.
• Use a goal for a terminal outcome that may need several related experiments.
• A shaped goal with no beads may begin with 1 bounded discovery wave that

creates the root and initial experiment beads.

• Return `UNSAFE_GOAL` when no falsifiable first question or terminal evidence

can be named. Route that intent to idea/plan work.

• Return `UNSAFE_GOAL` for indefinite monitoring or event reaction; that is an

automation, not a terminal goal.

Goals may be different sizes. Size the wave and hard campaign envelopes to the outcome; do not invent one universal budget.

Critical constraints

• **Closed outcome, adaptive route:** Freeze terminal acceptance. New facts may

change hypotheses and dependencies, never silently enlarge success. **Why:** discovery should steer the route, not redefine the finish line.

• **Bead knowledge graph:** Use the tracker as durable memory, not a parallel

goal ledger. Root epic = outer intent; child bead = one experiment/RPI. **Why:** compaction must not erase the scientific record.

• **RPI membrane:** One candidate gets one bounded RPI and an author-distinct

fresh validation result. The goal may request durable verdict evidence but never rewrites it. **Why:** orchestration cannot author its own proof.

• **Brownian ratchet:** Continue only when a result adds non-duplicative,

decision-relevant knowledge or advances acceptance. **Why:** activity without information is churn.

• **Two-level bounds:** Every RPI is bounded; every dispatch wave is bounded;

the full goal also has monotonic hard ceilings. **Why:** a new wave must not mint a new campaign.

• **Earned andon:** Ordinary informative red may change the route within frozen

acceptance. Repeated no-information failure, regression, recurrence, oscillation, or scope pressure enters HOLD. Exactly 1 bounded fresh helper per incident may return `UNSTUCK` or `ESCALATE` inside the remaining allowance; cancellation, an explicit refusal/judgment lane, or a spent hard budget skips the helper and stops work.

• **Operator legibility:** At each wave boundary, report the acceptance matrix,

graph frontier, verdicts, ratchets, churn, remaining budget, and next thesis.

• **Exterior self-repair:** Repair an unstable factory from an ordinary

shell/worktree and use the factory only for a declared bounded canary.

Stop when the goal reports `ACHIEVED`, `NOT_ACHI