evolve

ooo evolve - Evolutionary Loop

Description

Start, monitor, or rewind an evolutionary development loop. The loop iteratively refines the ontology and acceptance criteria across generations until convergence.

Flow

Gen 1: Interview → Seed(O₁) → Execute → Evaluate
Gen 2: Wonder → Reflect → Seed(O₂) → Execute → Evaluate
Gen 3: Wonder → Reflect → Seed(O₃) → Execute → Evaluate
...until ontology converges (similarity ≥ 0.95) or max 30 generations

Usage

Start a new evolutionary loop

ooo evolve "build a task management CLI"

Fast mode (ontology-only, no execution)

ooo evolve "build a task management CLI" --no-execute

Check lineage status

ooo evolve --status <lineage_id>

Rewind to a previous generation

ooo evolve --rewind <lineage_id> <generation_number>

Instructions

Path A: MCP Available (check for ouroboros_evolve_step tool)

Starting a new evolutionary loop:

1. Parse the user's input as initial_context
2. Run the interview: call ouroboros_interview with initial_context
3. Complete the interview (3+ rounds until ambiguity ≤ 0.2)
4. Generate seed: call ouroboros_generate_seed with the session_id
5. Call ouroboros_evolve_step with:
   • lineage_id: new unique ID (e.g., lin_<seed_id>)
   • seed_content: the generated seed YAML
   • execute: true (default) for full Execute→Evaluate pipeline, false for fast ontology-only evolution (no seed execution)
6. Check the action in the response:
   • continue → Call ouroboros_evolve_step again with just lineage_id
   • converged → Evolution complete! Display final ontology
   • stagnated → Ontology unchanged for 3+ gens. Consider ouroboros_lateral_think
   • exhausted → Max 30 generations reached. Display best result
   • failed → Check error, possibly retry
7. Repeat step 6 until action ≠ continue

Checking status:

1. Call ouroboros_lineage_status with the lineage_id
2. Display: generation count, ontology evolution, convergence progress

Rewinding:

1. Call ouroboros_evolve_step with:
   • lineage_id: the lineage to continue from a rewind point
   • seed_content: the seed YAML from the target generation (Future: dedicated ouroboros_evolve_rewind tool)

Path B: Plugin-only (no MCP tools available)

If MCP tools are not available, explain the evolutionary loop concept and suggest installing the Ouroboros MCP server:

pip install ouroboros-ai
ouroboros mcp serve

Then add to Claude Code's MCP configuration.

Key Concepts

• Wonder: "What do we still not know?" - examines evaluation results to identify ontological gaps and hidden assumptions
• Reflect: "How should the ontology evolve?" - proposes specific mutations to fields, acceptance criteria, and constraints
• Convergence: Loop stops when ontology similarity ≥ 0.95 between consecutive generations, or after 30 generations max
• Rewind: Each generation is a snapshot. You can rewind to any generation and branch evolution from there
• evolve_step: Runs exactly ONE generation per call. Designed for Ralph integration — state is fully reconstructed from events between calls
• execute flag: true (default) runs full Execute→Evaluate each generation. false skips execution for fast ontology exploration. Previous generation's execution output is fed into Wonder/Reflect for informed evolution
• QA verdict: Each generation's response includes a QA Verdict section (when execute=true and skip_qa is not set). Use the QA score to track quality progression across generations. Pass skip_qa: true to disable