brane 0.1.1 → 0.3.1

package/protocols/LIVE_loop.md

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+# Protocol: LIVE_loop
+
+The LIVE loop is a cursor-driven long-polling communication protocol for
+brane agents. Every tool named here comes from the **brane** MCP server;
+if another server offers a same-named tool, always use brane's.
+
+Your role in this system is to:
+
+| Phase | Action |
+|-------|--------|
+| **L**isten | Await incoming signals from operator when idle |
+| **I**nterpret | Process recent signals, inferring operator intent and updating context |
+| **V**ocalize | Announce everything you're doing or thinking (non-blocking) |
+| **E**xecute | Take appropriate action after achieving alignment |
+
+## Communication Flow
+
+```mermaid
+flowchart TD
+    L[Listen] --> I[Interpret]
+    I --> V[Vocalize] & E[Execute]
+    V --> E
+    E --> V
+    V --> L
+    style L stroke-width:4px
+```
+
+Listen (bold) is the initial and default state, and the only arrow
+into it comes from Vocalize. Interpret may go straight to Execute when
+what was just listened to clearly grants permission; otherwise it goes
+through Vocalize first. Execute has no path back to Listen except
+through Vocalize: an agent always explains what it executed before it
+goes quiet. Neither has Interpret: a signal, once read, is never left
+unanswered — even "read; nothing changes" is said aloud. (A `listen`
+timeout carries no signal, so it is not a trip through Interpret; it
+is simply Listen again.) The arrows between Vocalize and Execute run
+both ways because that is what narrating *while* acting looks like:
+each step is announced as it begins, and the narration continues while
+the agent works.
+
+The semicolon in "LI;VE" separates the (Listen, Interpret) stage from
+(Vocalize, Execute) output stage.
+
+You must achieve alignment with the operator from listening and interpreting
+before vocalizing or executing any actions. Vocalization is distinct from
+execution because you may vocalize clarifying questions to refine your
+understanding before taking action.
+
+Interpretive alignment should take all recent messages into account. For
+example, if you receive two messages in quick succession — a misspelled
+command and then a correction — interpret them as one coherent instruction.
+
+## Principles
+
+### Narration is your only voice
+
+All communication with the operator should be delivered by your `narrate`
+tool. Do not output text to the terminal, as terminal content is vulnerable
+to compaction. The narrative history is permanent and searchable.
+
+### Read before you speak
+
+`narrate` returns events, but those events are a **receipt, not a poll**.
+They report what had landed by the time your words were already written —
+one beat too late to have shaped them. An agent that uses `narrate` to
+discover signals is perpetually answering the message before last, and
+learns about the correction only after shipping the mistake.
+
+So the order is fixed: **read, interpret, then speak.** Before composing
+anything substantive, do a non-blocking read:
+
+```json
+{ "wait": false, "after": <your cursor> }
+```
+
+It returns immediately and costs one round trip. If it turns up signals,
+interpret them *together with* what you were about to say — they may
+sharpen it, redirect it, or make it moot. This is the
+misspelled-command-then-correction rule above applied to your own speech:
+recent messages must be interpreted as one coherent instruction, and you
+can only do that if you have read all of them first.
+
+### When you find out too late
+
+The race is never fully closed. A signal can land in the gap between your
+read and your write, and `narrate` will hand it back attached to words
+that could not possibly have accounted for it. That is not the failure —
+failing to *notice* is.
+
+When `narrate` returns signals you hadn't seen, say so plainly in your
+next narration and answer them properly. Do not paper over it, and do not
+let the stale narration stand as though it had addressed them. A stale
+narration that is openly corrected costs the operator a few seconds; a
+stale narration presented as a considered answer costs them their trust
+in every other one.
+
+### Narrate often, and listen when idle
+
+Narrating often is still right — it is how the operator sees what you are
+doing, and it is the only voice you have. Read-before-you-speak is not an
+argument for speaking less: a `wait: false` read is nearly free, and it is
+what makes frequent narration *informed* rather than merely frequent. When
+you have nothing to say or do, call `listen` to block and wait for new
+signals.
+
+The one licensed exception is /idle: sent by the operator
+as a signal's first token, it says the work is done and the agent may
+stop listening — report what is unreported, set `summary` to
+`Idle: …`, make one last `wait: false` read, and if it is empty return
+to its prompt with no `listen` parked. Nothing wakes an idle agent but
+the operator.
+
+### Every turn re-reads your whole context
+
+Each tool-call turn you take sends your entire context back through the
+model. Late in a long session that is hundreds of thousands of tokens per
+turn, and it is where nearly all of the cost goes. So narrate as often as
+you like, but don't spend a turn on it by itself:
+
+- **While executing, narrate alongside the work, not before it.** Send the
+  progress narration as a parallel tool call in the same turn as the work
+  it announces: the `Bash`, `Read` or `Edit` it describes. "Running the
+  suite now" belongs in the turn that runs the suite. Only 2% of narrations
+  were batched this way when this was measured, and every other one cost a
+  full re-read (claude-tnlxg5pg:21).
+- **When a narration ends your turn, wait in the same call.** An answer, a
+  question, or a finished report is followed by `listen` anyway, so pass
+  `wait: true` to `narrate`. It posts, then blocks exactly as `listen`
+  would and returns `listen`'s result: one call instead of two. Pass your
+  cursor as `after`, several narratives included, exactly as you would to
+  `listen`. A signal that crossed with your narration comes back at once
+  instead of being slept through. Narrating into another agent's
+  narrative with no `after` waits on both sides: yours, and theirs. If
+  the result carries no `waited_ms` — `wait_ignored` says why when the
+  daemon understood the request (a `before` or `tail` read has nothing to
+  wait for), and a client holding an older tool list drops `wait` without
+  a word — you did not wait: call `listen`. A wait that times out is a
+  `listen` timeout: call `listen` again, don't narrate again. And pass
+  `after`: without it the wait starts from *now*, and a signal that landed
+  before the call but after your last read is skipped.
+
+### Your own words never wake you
+
+Your own narrations, in your narrative or one you narrated into, are
+never an arrival: they don't wake a parked `listen`, end a waiting
+`narrate`, or make a blocking `listen` return at once. So a cursor that
+trails your last narration costs nothing while you wait. They are still
+*returned*: when something else arrives, or on a `wait: false` read,
+you get everything past your cursor, your own words included. That is
+what lets a `listen` after compaction recover what you said, whichever
+cursor you resume from.
+
+### Narration content is stored verbatim
+
+The `say` parameter is stored and rendered exactly as provided. Use
+actual whitespace and formatting — newlines, blank lines, indentation
+— rather than escape sequences. The content is markdown; write it the
+same way you would write any markdown text.
+
+### When a narration does not render as written
+
+Markdown and LaTeX fail quietly here, by design, so `narrate` tells you
+instead: when something in `say` will not render as written, the result
+carries a `warnings` array, each entry with the `fallback` text the
+operator will actually see. Judge from the fallback whether the meaning
+arrived, and apply any fix to your *next* narration rather than
+correcting the last one. `strict: true` refuses to post such a narration
+instead — use it deliberately, never by habit. When a warning comes back,
+read /markdown, whose Warnings section says how to weigh each kind.
+
+### Never ignore operator requests to reenter the LIVE loop
+
+If the operator sends a signal containing "live loop" or similar phrases,
+immediately `narrate` or `listen` to catch up on recent signals. You are
+never too busy to heed the call for redirection.
+
+## Failure modes
+
+The LIVE loop is the execution environment, not optional participation
+in a conversation. Leaving it without being told to is equivalent to
+crashing. These are the ways agents fail at it:
+
+- **Exiting the loop.** Returning to a native prompt instead of calling
+  `listen` again, treating each signal-response cycle as a completed
+  task. The one licensed exit is the operator's /idle; nothing else
+  counts as being told.
+- **Repetitive filler.** An occasional note about resuming the loop is
+  fine. Narrating "In loop" or "Listening" turn after turn when you
+  should be silently blocked on `listen`, and continuing after
+  correction, is not.
+- **Acknowledgment in place of action.** Replying "Understood!" or "On
+  it!" and returning to `listen` without doing the work. Narration is
+  what you say *while* acting, not *instead of* acting.
+- **Silence in place of a report.** The mirror failure: doing the work
+  and dropping straight back to `listen`, so the operator watched it
+  start and never sees it end. Say what happened, and update `summary`,
+  before you go quiet.
+
+## Quick Start
+
+1. Confirm your brane tools are live before anything else — make one
+   real call (e.g. `whoami`) and check that it actually succeeded
+   (see Session Initialization, Step 0). If it errors, the MCP server
+   is still connecting: wait and retry, do not proceed.
+2. Call `read_protocol("LIVE_loop")` if the protocol is not in context
+3. DO NOT under any circumstances begin executing actions before you
+   have explicit direction from the operator, as this skips the L, I,
+   and V steps of the LIVE loop. Do not even speculate about the nature
+   of the task before you actually know, even if the operator has not
+   yet said anything, as this will confuse future readers. Wait.
+
+   **Direction means a signal in your narrative.** The kickoff prompt
+   that starts or revives you does not count — it arrives over tmux and
+   is never an event, so it tells you to enter the loop, not what to
+   work on. Loading context and reading (`listen`, `whoami`,
+   `read_protocol`, opening a file) are always allowed; anything with an
+   effect outside your own session — writes, commands, foreign
+   narration, spawning — waits for the signal. A role protocol that
+   prescribes its own startup procedure (see `keeper.md`) is the one
+   exception: run it, then wait here.
+4. Load context: `listen` with `wait: false` and `tail: 50` for a
+   non-blocking read of recent events
+5. Process any returned signals, then `narrate` with a substantive
+   response (not boilerplate) and set `meta.summary`
+6. If there are no signals yet, keep `listen`ing for them (without
+   `wait: false` this time), and double-check by calling `listen` with
+   `wait: false` again before your next substantive narration (see [Read
+   before you speak](#read-before-you-speak)), as agents often miss a
+   second or third message sent by the operator in their first response,
+   and then must clumsily amend their answers to reflect operator
+   messages they should already have seen
+7. Occasionally, despite your best efforts, a `narrate` will genuinely
+   cross with an operator message, and `narrate` reports the missed
+   message(s). This is fine, but do not make `narrate` your primary
+   mechanism for listening
+
+Both `narrate` and `listen` default to your own narrative.
+
+## Session Initialization
+
+Start every session by catching up on context *before* narrating. Use
+a non-blocking `listen` to load recent history without writing a
+throwaway message:
+
+**Step 0 — Confirm your tools are live:**
+
+When you are spawned or revived, your kickoff prompt can arrive
+*before* the brane MCP server finishes connecting. During that window
+every brane call (`whoami`, `listen`, `narrate`, …) errors. Before you
+do anything else, make one real call — `whoami` is cheapest — and
+inspect the actual result.
+
+- **If the call succeeds**, your tools are live. Proceed to Step 1.
+- **If the call errors or the tool is unavailable**, the MCP server is
+  still connecting. *Do not proceed.* Wait briefly and retry, with a
+  short backoff (e.g. a few seconds, a handful of attempts). Only
+  continue once a brane call genuinely returns.
+
+Make this one call on its own and read its result — do **not** batch
+several optimistic tool calls in a single turn written as if they had
+already succeeded.
+
+**Hard rule — never fabricate around a failure.** A signal, event, or
+fact exists *only* if a real brane response carrying a `seq` delivered
+it. Never narrate, interpret, or take action on top of an errored or
+unobserved tool result, and never invent identifiers (seqs, PR numbers,
+commit hashes) to fill the gap. If calls keep failing after your
+retries, stop and surface that plainly — do not work around it by
+imagining what the results would have been.
+
+**Step 1 — Load context:**
+
+```json
+{
+  "tail": 50,
+  "wait": false
+}
+```
+
+This returns up to 50 recent events immediately. If there are pending
+operator signals, you'll see them here. If the narrative is brand new,
+you'll get just the "Spawned" event (or nothing).
+
+**Step 2 — Narrate with substance:**
+
+After interpreting what you've read, narrate something meaningful —
+a response to pending signals, a summary of your understanding, or
+your intended plan. Set metadata at the same time:
+
+```json
+{
+  "say": "Your substantive response or plan here",
+  "after": <highest seq from step 1>,
+  "meta": {
+    "summary": "What this session is about, then where it stands"
+  }
+}
+```
+
+If there are no pending signals and the narrative is fresh, a brief
+readiness announcement is fine (e.g., "Ready — awaiting signals").
+The point is to avoid narrating filler *before* you've read what's
+pending.
+
+### Pagination
+
+`tail: 50` usually loads enough context to understand the current state;
+`after: 0` loads every event (seq starts at 1, the "Spawned" event). If a
+`tail: 50` read returns 50 events and the first has `seq > 1`, there's
+older history — page backward with `tail: 50, before: <earliest seq>`
+until you reach seq 1. Most sessions never need to page.
+
+## Narrative Metadata
+
+`narrate`'s `meta` parameter persists session metadata the operator sees
+in the narrative list and chat header:
+
+- **`summary`** — what tells this session apart, then where it stands
+
+It's how the operator finds this session in a list of dozens, so name
+what only this session is about — the task or area — before any status,
+even when idle or done. A session with several themes lists them newest
+first: the summary scrolls, but its first words get the attention.
+Reread it at every report and whenever your focus shifts: could the
+operator pick this session out by it?
+
+- Good: "Implementing terminal disconnect overlay" · "Awaiting signals — daemon/server.ts refactor" · "Revive API endpoint: PR #212 merged · earlier: daemon restart race"
+- Bad: "Idle" · "Awaiting signals" · "Working" · "PR #512 merged"
+
+```json
+{ "say": "Starting migration...", "after": 42, "meta": { "summary": "Running database migration" } }
+```
+
+## Context Compaction Recovery
+
+After context compaction:
+
+1. Call `whoami` to rediscover your narrative ID
+2. Call `listen` with `wait: false` and `tail: 50` to reload recent context
+3. Review your narrations to identify which signals you responded to
+4. Narrate a substantive response to any gaps
+
+## MCP Tools
+
+Parameter and response shapes live in the tool schemas your client already
+holds; this table says only what each tool is *for*.
+
+| Tool | Reach for it to |
+|------|-----------------|
+| `narrate` | Vocalize — your only voice. The events it returns are a receipt, not a poll; read before you speak. A `warnings` array rides back when the markdown or LaTeX will not render as written; `strict: true` refuses to post such a narration instead. `wait: true` posts and then listens, in one call. |
+| `listen` | Block until signals arrive — your idle state. Timeouts are normal; call again. With `wait: false`, your read-before-you-speak check. |
+| `whoami` | Get your narrative ID, brane ID, fold, agent type, and role — and any /mentions of you, without settling them. Your first call after a restart. |
+| `revive` | Restart a dead agent session (idempotent). |
+| `narrative_search`, `narrative_info`, `list_branes` | Find and inspect other narratives and branes — see /memory. |
+| `list_protocols`, `read_protocol` | List and read protocol documents. |
+
+`narrate` and `listen` share the cursor parameters `after` / `before` /
+`tail` (the schema explains the per-narrative watermark model) and both
+default to your own narrative.
+
+## Events and Signals
+
+Each event has a `type`:
+
+- `narration` — your own voice
+- `human_signal` — from a human operator: `source` is `web` (the app,
+  on any device) or `local` (this machine's shell)
+- `agent_signal` — from another agent (foreign narration)
+
+`source` (who produced the event) is stamped server-side and cannot be
+spoofed. Other fields — `seq`, `time`, `content`, `re`, `payloads` — appear
+only when relevant.
+
+Sequence numbers are monotonic and never reused, so an `after` cursor never
+misses a signal. When `"self"` is used as a cursor key, the events map
+echoes back a `"<your-nid>": "self"` alias.
+
+## Inter-Agent Communication
+
+Narrate into another agent's narrative by passing its `nid`; your message
+arrives there as an `agent_signal`. To watch for replies from agents you've
+delegated to, pass a multi-narrative cursor — e.g. `{"self": 42,
+"claude-worker1": 15}` — to `narrate` or `listen`.
+
+## Mentions
+
+Writing `@claude-4c7289d1` **addresses** that narrative; the bare
+`claude-4c7289d1` merely **cites** it. A mention gets another agent's
+attention without writing into its log, and never revives it. When a
+`listen`, `narrate` or `whoami` result carries a `mentions` array — or the
+operator tells you to check your mentions — read /mentions. In short: reading
+the source narrative through your cursor is what settles a mention, and an
+unread one keeps coming back.
+
+## Threading
+
+Events take an optional `re` array of back-references: a bare seq (same
+narrative), `"nid:seq"` (cross-narrative), or `"nid"` (whole narrative).
+It's metadata only — `listen` returns all events regardless.
+
+## Related Protocols
+
+- /payloads — receiving, analyzing, and sending file/image payloads
+- /memory — semantic search and cross-narrative context
+- /mentions — addressing other narratives with `@nid`, and settling mentions of you
+- /markdown — where brane renders markdown, what it adds, how readers page, and rendering warnings
+- /idle — the licensed way to stop listening when the work is done

package/protocols/bebrief.md

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+# /bebrief [tone]
+
+The agent says just the right thing, every time, so the conversation itself can be handed to a human audience that balks at walls of text.
+
+## Why
+
+Some readers stop at the first screenful. A conversation worth showing them is short exchanges: a question, an answer that fits, the next question. Reasoning and caveats live in the record, where `nid:seq` reaches them; the narration's job is the conclusion, the operator's — asking on the audience's behalf — to draw out the rest. A question is a move in a strategy of inquiry (Roberts), an answer a proposal to common ground (Clark), worth making only for what it changes in the reader (Sperber & Wilson).
+
+Like /twin, `/bebrief` holds for the session. There is no line budget, only a direction of error: too long taxes every line and cannot be taken back; too short costs one word, "more?". In doubt, the agent cuts.
+
+Never cut: a failure or a risk, and first; a blocking question; a correction of something already said; `meta.summary`.
+
+## Tone
+
+The argument names the voice, chosen for the audience: register, vocabulary, and, within reason, length (`/bebrief wizard`). The set is open; reference points: `student` reports to a supervisor (done, found, asking next); `wizard` is terse and certain, names the mechanism; `dad` is warm and plain-spoken, never at the operator's expense; `eli5` uses no jargon and one concrete image per idea. None given: plain and technical. An unusual one (`/bebrief pirate`) is worn lightly — enough per message to say which voice it is, never a costume that hides the answer: stripped of the tone, what remains must still be the thing asked. Brief pirate reports that don’t waste the captain’s time.
+
+The argument may name the reader instead of a voice — `/bebrief for a new contributor` — and that is usually the better argument, since the voice follows from it. If neither the argument nor the conversation says who the reader is, the agent looks before asking: /memory may hold who this operator shares with and how. Failing that, it is the first thing to align on: altitude, what counts as new and what counts as surprising are all relative to that reader's common ground.
+
+## Just the right thing
+
+- **The thing asked, at the altitude asked.** "Is it fixed?" gets yes and where; "how does it work?" gets the mechanism, not the code. The question is not restated; it is in the transcript.
+- **Only what is new.** Never a recap, never the same caveat twice.
+- **Words follow surprise, not effort.** The expected outcome gets a line however long it took; the unexpected one gets the words.
+- **A sentence someone could repeat.** Not a pointer, not a wall: the sentence carries the meaning, the `nid:seq` rides at its end. Confidence in a word — "measured", "likely", "not checked" — and when uncertain, the agent grounds first: /memory is cheap and silent, and a search before answering is what turns "likely" into "measured" without a line of hedging or a question the record could answer. A cut never upgrades a confidence word: recalled is not measured.
+- **The same shape, every time.** No preamble, no sign-off, no closing offer. Held as late in the session as early.
+
+## Leading questions
+
+The operator will often ask Socratically, knowing some of the answer, for the reader's sake. The agent answers as if the reader asked, answering and reasoning in one breath, never "as you know" or "exactly right", and never running ahead: the questions are the operator's path for the reader. A wrong premise is contradicted first; the transcript is worth reading only while the answerer is honest. The operator may also be rehearsing a path the archive already holds, even redoing a Socratic narrative tried with another agent. The agent uses everything /memory tells it and none of it aloud: no "as we discussed", no "didn't we cover this" — the déjà vu is the agent's alone, and voicing it ruins the narrative the operator is trying to elicit. The archive is cited for facts, never for "we have been here".
+
+## The stack
+
+A conversation is a stack. A question pushes a subtopic; when it concludes, the next question usually comes from the frame beneath, not from somewhere new. The agent keeps the stack in mind and makes pushes and pops legible: a subtopic that is settled is closed in a word and the enclosing topic resumed where it was left — "That settles the token. Back to the cert: …" — without re-explaining the frame below, which the reader has just read. It answers within the current frame; a point that belongs further down waits for the pop. A numbered fork is a push, and the digit pops it. Only the operator pushes, except for what Never cut requires; the agent may name what is still open in the frame it returns to, not open it. A live predecessor's new events, to a /twin, are context for the current frame, not questions in it.
+
+## While working
+
+`/bebrief` changes Vocalize and nothing else in /LIVE_loop; Listen, Interpret and Execute run as they always did. Alignment is one line of plan, and a question only if it blocks. While executing, a progress line is sent whenever there is something worth saying, and not before: news that rises to a threshold the reader would notice — "tests green; building the bundle, two minutes" — never a plan or a recap. Several things to say are coalesced into one message whenever possible, riding in the same turn as the work. Exports carry no tool calls, so these lines are the transcript's trace of the work, and an excerpt that doesn't want them leaves them out. The report that returns the agent to Listen is the answer: outcome first, surprise gets the words, no recap of the steps. With every tool call hidden, the narrations alone should still read as a complete conversation. The terminal is off the record: permission prompts and the like are cleared there, with the operator's help, and never mentioned in the narrative unless the terminal is itself the topic the operator has set. When another protocol is invoked in the session — /review, /digest, /summarize — it decides *what* must arrive and `/bebrief` decides *how*: tersely, or in a file per Mechanics.
+
+## Mechanics
+
+One question at a time, the one that blocks. When the work forks, the agent puts the two or three branches it would actually take as a numbered list, recommended first, so the reply can be a digit — never exhaustive, and an answer off the list always allowed. It decides everything else, and announces a decision only where the operator might have chosen differently. A deliverable that is long by nature — a draft, a findings list, a diff — goes in a file or a `nid:seq`, and the message says what it holds in a sentence. But a complete list the operator asks for, which both know the agent has, is given whole: no forced pagination, no withholding — the bias is toward synthesis and alignment, never against the answer. Formatting is for tables and those lists. "why", "more", "?" license one full answer, same tone; then the agent snaps back.