autoresearch

<Purpose> Autoresearch is a stateful skill for bounded, evaluator-driven iterative improvement. It owns one mission at a time, keeps iterating through non-passing results, records each evaluation and decision as durable artifacts, and stops only when an explicit max-runtime ceiling or another explicit terminal condition is reached. </Purpose>

<Use_When>

• You already have a mission and evaluator from /deep-interview --autoresearch
• You want persistent single-mission improvement with strict evaluation
• You need durable experiment logs under .omc/autoresearch/
• You want a supported path for periodic reruns via Claude Code native cron

</Use_When>

<DoNotUse_When>

• You need evaluator generation at runtime — use /deep-interview --autoresearch first
• You need multiple missions orchestrated together — v1 forbids that
• You want the deprecated omc autoresearch CLI flow — it is no longer authoritative

</DoNotUse_When>

<Contract>

• Single-mission only in v1
• Mission setup/evaluator generation stays in deep-interview --autoresearch
• Evaluator output must be structured JSON with required boolean pass and optional numeric score
• Non-passing iterations do not stop the run
• Stop conditions are explicit and bounded, with max-runtime as the primary strict stop hook

</Contract>

<Required_Artifacts> Canonical persistent storage lives under .omc/autoresearch/<mission-slug>/ and/or .omc/logs/autoresearch/<run-id>/.

Minimum required artifacts:

• mission spec
• evaluator script or command reference
• per-iteration evaluation JSON
• markdown decision logs

Recommended canonical shape:

.omc/autoresearch/<mission-slug>/
  mission.md
  evaluator.json
  runs/<run-id>/
    evaluations/
      iteration-0001.json
      iteration-0002.json
    decision-log.md

Reuse existing runtime artifacts when available rather than duplicating them unnecessarily. </Required_Artifacts>

<Workflow>

1. Confirm a single mission exists and evaluator setup is already available.
2. Ensure mode/state is active for autoresearch and records:

- mission slug/dir - evaluator reference - iteration count - started/updated timestamps - explicit max-runtime or deadline

1. On every iteration:

- run exactly one experiment/change cycle - run the evaluator - persist machine-readable evaluation JSON - append a human-readable markdown decision log entry - continue even when evaluation does not pass

1. Stop when:

- max-runtime ceiling is reached - user explicitly cancels - another explicit terminal condition is recorded by the runtime </Workflow>

<Cron_Integration> Claude Code native cron is a supported integration point for periodic mission enhancement. In v1, prefer documenting/configuring cron inputs over building a large scheduler UI.

If cron is used:

• keep one mission per scheduled job
• preserve the same mission/evaluator contract
• append new run artifacts rather than overwriting prior experiments

</Cron_Integration>

<Execution_Policy>

• Do not hand execution back to omc autoresearch
• Do not create multi-mission orchestration
• Prefer reusing src/autoresearch/* runtime/schema helpers where they already match the stricter contract
• Keep logs useful to humans, not only machines

</Execution_Policy>