self-improve

IDEATOR — Self-improve

The refinement half of the marketplace's self-improving loop. A package that passed its exit gate yet still produced a downstream ambiguity is the signal: the fix is a better-articulated challenge axis or package field, fixed once, upstream — not a louder rule. (Covenant: ../../knowledge/covenant.md.)

Feedback intake (cross-project learning)

IDEATOR gets sharper from ideation-feedback — emitted by FOUNDRY's LEARN station / FOUNDER when a builder hits an ambiguity the IDEA package should have resolved. Each entry is symptom → which IDEA-doc field was unclear → what would have prevented it (e.g. "ACTORS said 'users' → step-1 couldn't write EARS; the actor axis needed to force a named role").

The loop

1. Reflect on the target element (a challenge axis, a package-contract field, the exit gate, a skill) against the covenant + pillars: is an axis missing a forcing question? does a package field allow a vague value? does a skill do more than one thing (→ cleave it)?
2. Decide: sharpen a challenge axis (../../knowledge/ideation/challenge-protocol.md) / tighten a package field or exit-gate criterion (../../knowledge/ideation/idea-package.md) / cleave / reference-not-restate. If the element is already tight, say so and stop.
3. Apply on a branch (surgical, one concern). When the change adds, renames, or cleaves a skill, update all four mirrors in the same branch — plugin.json (keywords + metadata.note), the marketplace.json entry (description + keywords + version), the README.md, and skills/check/requirements.tsv (any new tool, tiered to who actually needs it). A capability that lives in only one of these is drift the inspector will flag; bump the version so the marketplace re-syncs.
4. Adversarial gate: run /foundry:pr-review if foundry is installed; otherwise self-review against the covenant and state the gate ran in reduced form.
5. Open a PR for the human to merge (never self-merge), following the user's merge governance (FOUNDRY's pr-approval default), so the improvement reaches every user.

Each pass must leave IDEATOR measurably better at reaching knowledge-parity before hand-off — at least halving the remaining distance. Record the recurring ambiguity class so the next like idea is disambiguated by default.