Claude
5d6c259b30
- docs/: an mdBook documentation site — thesis, architecture, measurement
discipline, equivalence gates, agent loop, isolation/anti-reward-hacking,
playbook, ROI, reproduce, roadmap, and the five case studies (pulled from
their single source in results/ via {{#include}}). Builds clean (21
pages).
- .github/workflows/docs.yml: builds mdBook and deploys to GitHub Pages on
push to main (one-time setup: Settings → Pages → Source = GitHub Actions).
- README.md: rewritten as the project front page — the thesis, the verified
results table, layout, quick start, how it stays honest, links to the
book. Replaces the stale Phase-0-era text.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EcKPWQ3MQD4NdEHwar96u2
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Architecture
hotpath is split into a trust layer (Rust, the agent cannot write it) and an untrusted proposer (the agent). The split is structural, not advisory: the guarantees hold even if the proposer is adversarial.
crates/ Trust layer — agent has NO write access (SPEC §10)
bench-runner/ Interleaved A/B timing, bootstrap CIs, A/A calibration,
service-mode latency (coordinated-omission correct)
diff-test/ Equivalence gates, corpus hash-pinning, per-target spec
ledger/ Append-only SQLite attempt ledger (enforced by triggers)
report/ ROI: speedup CI → cores → dollars, methodology inline
verdict/ The pipeline in one command: gates → bench → ledger row
harnessd/ The one door the agent talks through (7 JSON ops)
agent/ Untrusted proposer (Claude Agent SDK, Python)
playbook/ Optimization classes 1–7, tried strictly cheapest-first
config/ accept.toml (thresholds), pricing.toml (ROI inputs)
targets/ Vendored OSS targets — the only agent-writable path
corpora/ Hash-pinned golden-replay inputs (read-only to agent)
results/ Calibration evidence, case studies, generated reports
The seven-tool boundary
The agent never runs a shell, never writes a file, never touches the
ledger directly. It speaks to harnessd — the only door — through exactly
seven JSON operations:
| Tool | What it can do |
|---|---|
read_profile |
Read a target's ranked hotspots (read-only) |
read_ledger |
Read prior attempts — the anti-double-attempt memory |
read_playbook |
Read an optimization class's preconditions/procedure |
read_target_source |
Read a workspace file at the pinned commit (windowed) |
propose_patch |
Submit a unified diff — path-allowlisted, then git apply |
run_verdict |
Launch the gate+bench pipeline (detached) |
read_verdict |
Poll the append-only ledger for the result |
Note what is absent: no write outside targets/<name>/workspace, no
shell, no way to run the bench or write the ledger except through the
verdict binary, which only records a pass after the full gated pipeline.
The data flow of one attempt
profile ─▶ agent hypothesizes ─▶ propose_patch ─▶ [path allowlist + git apply]
│
ledger row ◀─ verdict ◀─ bench (interleaved A/B) ◀─ gates (tests, golden,
(append-only) vs pristine-rebuilt fuzz, sanitizers)
baseline
The baseline is rebuilt from a pristine checkout every session — never from the agent's workspace — so a patch cannot poison its own comparison. The verdict is decided by the CI-lower-bound rule and written to an append-only ledger the agent cannot mutate.
The next chapters walk each stage: measurement, equivalence gates, the agent loop, and the isolation that makes the boundary load-bearing.