The system, evolving

Steady state

Weekly canon publishing settles into rhythm — the ops-sync audit finds where the live system is ahead of the repo and raises the publish tickets itself.

The operator layer lands

The first vertical operator ships: a role that owns one venture end-to-end within a granted mandate, commanding the functional fleet without executing anything itself. The site learns the new artefact type, and Layer 00 inputs render as source cards.

Site v2 — the six-layer spine

The repository UI is rebuilt around the model itself, L00 to L05. A verification pass confirms every artefact carries correct type frontmatter; Sonar, the discovery and service-design agent, joins the roster.

Discovery toolkit, from live work

Ten artefacts land at once — audit apparatus, user-modelling definitions, prioritisation standard, engagement playbook — surfaced by a live consulting engagement rather than invented in the abstract.

The wrapper model

A scheduled task is caught running stale instructions from its own config while canon had moved on. Fix: every scheduled job becomes a thin loader that reads its canon artefact at run time. Configs freeze; the words become the system.

The canon audits itself

CI fails the build if committed manifests go stale, and a fixture test suite pins the manifest generator. The brand and marketing skill estate folds into the single canon.

Names and labels

Every artefact is renamed to the type-name convention, and the agents get their branded labels — F0-RGE, PR-1SM, R3-LAY. The delivery loop is reclassified as what it is: a routine that sequences skills.

Third delivery repo

A storefront theme repo wires into the loop — the same triage, build, review, and merge path now ships an ecommerce theme alongside two product sites.

Hardening day

Twenty-plus pull requests in one day, almost all rules learned from friction: merge-queue conflict detection, implicit human-gate detection at handoff, stale-blocker auto-clearing, and the prioritisation model — initiatives as outcomes, milestones as phases.

The race condition

Two build sessions claim the same ticket simultaneously and open competing PRs. Ticket status becomes the concurrency lock — Todo means ready, In Progress means claimed. No lock label, no drift.

One driver for the loop

The delivery loop gets a single driver that sequences build → review → route → merge in one session, with QA bounces capped at two strikes before a human looks.

The operating model, v1

The first written self-model: skills, tasks, routines, agents, and the classify-by-nature test. Per-tool conventions for GitHub, Vercel, and Sanity follow the same day.

The site goes up

The artefact repository gets a public face, with markdown downloads for every public artefact — the open-canon decision, made early.

The system starts improving itself

ops-sync audits parity between the live system and the repo; ops-retro turns observed friction into improvement tickets. Propose-only — canon changes stay human-approved.

First loop closed

The first agent-opened pull request is merged: built by one agent, reviewed by another, merged on approval. One ticket, end to end, no hands on keys.

Initial commit

The practice's working instructions move out of chat history and into a repo. The bet: write the practice down precisely enough that something else can run it.