Instinct Lifecycle Skill

Overview

Instincts in clarc accumulate over time via /learn-eval. Without lifecycle management, stale and noisy instincts dilute the signal from useful ones.

This skill covers the complete lifecycle:

Capture → Score → Validate → Decay (if stale) → Promote (if high-confidence)

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Lifecycle Step Sequence

Follow this sequence to actively manage instincts — don't just let them accumulate passively:

Phase 1: Capture (automatic)

• Sessions run → /learn-eval observes patterns → instincts created at confidence: 0.60
• No action needed. Instincts appear in ~/.claude/homunculus/projects/<hash>/instincts/

Phase 2: Score (manual, weekly)

1. Run /instinct-report to see the ranked list with trend indicators (↑↓→)
2. For each instinct that influenced your work this week, record an outcome:
   • /instinct-outcome <id> good — it helped
   • /instinct-outcome <id> bad — it caused problems
   • /instinct-outcome <id> neutral — it was applied but had no clear effect

Phase 3: Validate (on conflict or confusion)

1. Run /instinct-status to check for conflicts
2. If conflicts shown: run /evolve to cluster and resolve them
3. Contradictory instincts surface as pairs — pick one or merge them

Phase 4: Promote (when confidence ≥ 0.80 and usage ≥ 5)

1. Run /instinct-report — top-confidence instincts are promotion candidates
2. If an instinct appears in 2+ projects: run /instinct-promote to make it global
3. Optional: run /instinct-promote --auto --dry-run to review all candidates at once
4. Optional: run /evolve to cluster related high-confidence instincts into a skill or command

Phase 5: Retire (automatic + manual)

• Automatic: unused 180+ days at < 0.50 confidence → auto-archived
• Manual: run /instinct-report → look for LOW CONFIDENCE section → archive via /instinct-outcome <id> bad (speeds up decay) or delete YAML file directly

Cadence recommendation:

• Weekly: run /instinct-report + record outcomes for work done that week
• Monthly: run /evolve to cluster and /instinct-promote to promote global patterns
• Quarterly: review archived instincts, delete permanently if no longer relevant

---

Instinct Schema (v2)

Every instinct YAML file has these fields:

---
id: test-first-workflow
trigger: "when writing new features"
confidence: 0.75
domain: testing
scope: project
created: 2026-01-15
last_used: 2026-03-08
usage_count: 12
positive_outcomes: 9
negative_outcomes: 1
neutral_outcomes: 2
decay_rate: standard
conflicts_with: ""
---

## Action
Always write a failing test before writing implementation code.

## Evidence
TDD catches integration issues early and improves design.

Schema Migration

Existing instincts without the v2 fields can be migrated:

node scripts/instinct-schema-migrate.js            # preview
node scripts/instinct-schema-migrate.js --apply    # apply

---

Confidence Model

Initial State

created:          confidence = 0.60 (default from /learn-eval quality gate)

Outcome Signals

Signal	Confidence change	When to use
good	+0.05 (max 0.95)	Instinct led to better outcome
bad	-0.10 (min 0.10)	Instinct caused problems or was wrong
neutral	no change	Instinct was applied but outcome neutral

Record via /instinct-outcome <id> good|bad|neutral.

Decay (Automatic, Weekly)

Condition	Effect
Unused 30–89 days	confidence -= 0.02/week
Unused 90–179 days	Flagged in /instinct-report
Unused 180+ days AND confidence < 0.50	Auto-archived

Decay runs automatically at session end (SessionEnd hook, weekly gate).

Promotion Threshold

An instinct qualifies for global promotion when:

• confidence >= 0.80 AND usage_count >= 5
• Appears in 2+ projects (via /instinct-promote --auto)

Run /instinct-promote or /instinct-promote --auto --dry-run to review candidates.

Deletion / Archiving

Instincts are never automatically deleted — they are archived:

• Archive path: ~/.claude/homunculus/.../archived/
• Review archived instincts with ls ~/.claude/homunculus/*/archived/
• Permanently remove only after manual review

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Commands Reference

Command	Description
/instinct-status	Show all instincts with confidence bars
/instinct-report	Ranked list with trend indicators (↑↓→)
/instinct-outcome <id> <good|bad|neutral>	Record outcome for an instinct
/evolve	Cluster instincts into skills/commands/agents
/instinct-export	Export instincts for team sharing
/instinct-import	Import team instincts

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Conflict Detection

Conflicts are detected when two instincts in the same domain contain antonymous keywords (e.g., "prefer functional" vs "prefer class-based").

Conflicts are detected automatically during /evolve and /instinct-status. Conflict report is stored in ~/.claude/homunculus/conflicts.json.

Resolution options:

1. /evolve — review and choose which to keep
2. /instinct-outcome <losing-id> bad — reduce confidence of wrong instinct
3. conflict-detector.py --fix — auto-remove lower-confidence instinct

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Flywheel: Full Weekly Workflow

Monday (automatic on session end):
  1. instinct-decay.js — decay stale instincts
  2. weekly-evolve digest — suggest /evolve run

During the week:
  3. /instinct-outcome <id> good|bad — record outcomes after noticing instinct impact
  4. /instinct-report — review confidence ranking

Monthly:
  5. /evolve — cluster high-confidence instincts into skills/commands
  6. /instinct-promote --auto --dry-run — review global promotion candidates
  7. Remove archived instincts that are no longer relevant

---

Troubleshooting

Instinct confidence not updating:

• Ensure the instinct file has the v2 schema fields (node scripts/instinct-schema-migrate.js --stats)
• Run node scripts/instinct-outcome-tracker.js --list to verify instinct IDs

Decay not running:

• Check ~/.claude/homunculus/last-decay.json for last run date
• Force decay: node scripts/instinct-decay.js --force --dry-run

Conflicts not detected:

• Run python3 skills/continuous-learning-v2/scripts/conflict-detector.py directly
• Check ~/.claude/homunculus/conflicts.json

Archived instinct recovery:

• Copy from ~/.claude/homunculus/.../archived/ back to personal/