/dream - evidence-gated synthesis

/dream is the canonical writer for lessons and Dream synthesis. It never applies an improvement, promotes its own proposal, edits system instructions, or treats an agent-authored claim as verification.

Canonical ownership

• Lessons: vault/memory/runtime/LESSONS.jsonl.
• Dream synthesis: vault/memory/DREAM_LOG.md.
• The documented memory/ fallback is valid only for minimal installations.
• Any older runtime/DREAM_LOG.md copy is not an input or output.
• /close and /nightly invoke this protocol instead of carrying a competing inline writer.
• Candidate status transitions also go through this writer.

Invocation

/dream
/dream --window nightly
/dream --set-status <candidate-id> <approved|merged|rejected|blocked> \
  --operator-evidence "<direct operator reference>"

proposed -> approved always requires the operator's exact decision. Never infer approval from silence, an automated status, another agent, or prior prose.

Sources

Read, in order:

1. The newest five valid capsules by frontmatter created_at.
2. The newest five dated live Session Log blocks.
3. Open Trust Decay captures.
4. The newest three dated Honesty Ledger sessions.
5. Recent Failed Experiments and Failure Modes entries.
6. Existing Lessons JSONL for dedupe and prior evidence chains.
7. Staged NIGHTLY_CAPTURE_CANDIDATES.jsonl rows from the prior fire as discovery and pressure signals only.
8. Explicitly supplied local Git or command evidence.

Record exact source references. A capsule or Session Log entry can establish that a claim occurred; it cannot prove the claim true.

Lesson admission predicate

Append a lesson only when one is true:

• the same pattern appears in at least two independent source events;
• one explicit operator directive is paired with a separately observed outcome; or
• one mechanical red-before/green-after predicate supplies an artifact and literal exit codes.

Two retellings of one event are not independent. Discard one-off observations, unverified causal stories, and self-confirmation.

Each admitted lesson has:

• lesson_id: next max numeric lNNN suffix plus one;
• type: procedural | calibration | strategic | failure-mode | doctrine;
• confidence: 0.0..1.0, capped at 0.85 for one mechanical event;
• source_events: at least two refs unless an allowed exception applies;
• created_at: the configured local YYYY-MM-DD;
• admission: one of:
  • {kind: "two-source"};
  • {kind: "operator-outcome", operator_ref, outcome_ref};
  • {kind: "mechanical-red-green", red_exit, green_exit: 0, artifact_ref}.

Serialize UTF-8 JSON, parse the complete JSONL file after append, and confirm the new line round-trips. Historical duplicate ids do not authorize a new collision.

Improvement candidate predicate

When evidence names a repeatable system gap, append this inside the same dated Dream section:

### ni-YYYYMMDD-NN - short name
- **status:** proposed
- **evidence:** source-ref-1; source-ref-2
- **failure class:** concise class
- **proposed_change:** smallest testable change
- **mutation proof:** break condition -> named red; restore -> named green
- **operator gate:** approve / reject / revise
- **operator evidence:** pending

Generated candidates always start with the literal field status: proposed. Any generated approved, merged, or self-ratifying wording is a hard failure.

Canonical dated entry

Append one ## YYYY-MM-DD (...) section every time synthesis runs, even with zero admitted lessons. It must contain nonempty forms of all eight labels:

• Sources reviewed
• Lessons extracted
• Improvement candidates proposed
• Patterns observed
• Discarded as one-off
• Calibration miscalls
• Productive surprises
• Open trust-decay items to watch

A quiet run writes a minimal zero-lesson entry and appends no Lessons row. Never overwrite an earlier entry.

Executable postcondition

A nightly fire uses the snapshot created by nightly-pass begin. Explicit /dream creates an operating-system temp snapshot first:

node daemons/nightly-contracts.mjs snapshot --root <aigent-root> \
  --out <os-temp>/dream-contract-before.json

After writing:

node daemons/nightly-contracts.mjs dream --root <aigent-root> \
  --date <YYYY-MM-DD> --snapshot <os-temp>/dream-contract-before.json

Only DREAM_CONTRACT PASS is green. The validator proves byte-prefix preservation, parses JSONL, derives ids, validates admission, masks fenced examples, requires the eight sections and current configured date, and rejects a newly generated candidate that does not start proposed.

Return:

DREAM PASS date=<YYYY-MM-DD> sources=<N> lessons=<N> candidates=<N>