examples/README.md

# Schema-Checked Loop Contracts

Twenty JSON examples turn the operational patterns into reviewable machine-readable contracts. Every file validates against [`schemas/loop-contract.schema.json`](../schemas/loop-contract.schema.json) in CI.

A pattern explains **how a class of loop should operate**. Its contract pins down **what one implementation may read, change, verify, spend, and escalate**. A [runtime starter](runnable/README.md) then wires that contract to a session, schedule, CI job, or durable worker.

## What A Contract Fixes

A **Loop Contract** is a reviewable operating specification for one recurring agent job. It is not a prompt or a runtime. In a supervised session, a person can correct scope, request evidence, remember a failed attempt, and decide when to stop. A recurring agent needs those decisions written down before a trigger starts the next run.

| Decision | Contract fields | What becomes explicit |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Authorize** | Objective, trigger, intake, workspace | Which outcome matters, what starts a run, which work qualifies, and where action is allowed. |
| **Operate** | Context, agents, verification, state | What must be loaded, who acts and checks, what proves progress, and which receipts survive. |
| **Govern** | Budget, escalation, exit | How autonomy is capped, who owns exceptions, and what success or a blocked stop means. |

Without these boundaries, a recurring agent can select the wrong work, expand its own permissions, approve itself, repeat failed attempts, or spend indefinitely. The JSON schema makes the same policy readable by people and enforceable by tooling.

## Contract Catalog

### Build And Maintain

| Pattern and contract | Use when | Trigger | Deterministic gate | Durable receipt |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [PR babysitter](../patterns/pr-babysitter.md) · [`JSON`](pr-babysitter-loop.json) | A PR stalls on comments, CI, or conflicts | PR event + schedule | Required checks pass and review threads are resolved | Last SHA, check URLs, thread status, blockers |
| [CI repair](../patterns/ci-repair-loop.md) · [`JSON`](ci-repair-loop.json) | A required check fails | CI failure event | Original failing command passes | Failure excerpt, patch, commands, passing output |
| [Docs drift](../patterns/docs-drift-collector.md) · [`JSON`](docs-drift-loop.json) | Docs may disagree with code | Weekly schedule | Examples and links pass against current behavior | Verified drift items and false positives |
| [Dependency triage](../patterns/dependency-triage-loop.md) · [`JSON`](dependency-triage-loop.json) | Update PRs accumulate | Weekly + bot PR events | Tests, build, typecheck, and audit pass | Update group, risk class, commands, deferral reason |
| [Bug hunting](../patterns/bug-hunting-loop.md) · [`JSON`](bug-hunting-loop.json) | A team needs recurring bug discovery | Weekly schedule | Reproducible steps or a failing test | Checked surface, trace, minimal reproduction |
| [Release notes](../patterns/release-note-loop.md) · [`JSON`](release-note-loop.json) | A release needs evidence-backed notes | Tag or release branch | Every entry links to a merged source | Processed PRs/issues and draft changelog |

### Operate And Observe

| Pattern and contract | Use when | Trigger | Deterministic gate | Durable receipt |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Deploy verifier](../patterns/deploy-verifier.md) · [`JSON`](deploy-verifier-loop.json) | A rollout needs monitoring | Deployment event + polling | Synthetic checks and thresholds hold | Rollout phase, anomalies, metric links, decision |
| [Incident response](../patterns/incident-response-loop.md) · [`JSON`](incident-response-loop.json) | An alert needs evidence and ownership | Pager or SLO event | Severity and cause cite concrete impact signals | Timeline, hypotheses, owner, handoff |
| [Data quality](../patterns/data-quality-loop.md) · [`JSON`](data-quality-loop.json) | A dataset refresh may drift | Refresh event or nightly | Hard schema and quality rules pass | Profile metrics, exceptions, quarantine decision |
| [Cost control](../patterns/cost-control-loop.md) · [`JSON`](cost-control-loop.json) | Agent spend rises | Schedule + spend threshold | Quality holds on a comparable sample | Baseline spend, traces, proposed savings |
| [Model routing](../patterns/model-routing-loop.md) · [`JSON`](model-routing-loop.json) | Model selection is inconsistent | Schedule + model/price change | Replay quality stays within tolerance | Task-class metrics and routing decision |
| [Performance regression](../patterns/performance-regression-loop.md) · [`JSON`](performance-regression-loop.json) | Latency, throughput, or memory worsens | Metric or benchmark regression | Correctness passes and repeated measurements recover | Environment, profile, samples, candidate decision |

### Learn And Optimize

| Pattern and contract | Use when | Trigger | Deterministic gate | Durable receipt |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Feedback clusterer](../patterns/feedback-clusterer.md) · [`JSON`](feedback-clusterer-loop.json) | Feedback is noisy | Daily or weekly schedule | Themes cite sources and preserve frequency/severity | Processed IDs, clusters, outliers |
| [Evaluation regression](../patterns/evaluation-regression-loop.md) · [`JSON`](evaluation-regression-loop.json) | Agent evals fall below baseline | Nightly + score drop | Targeted tasks recover without scorer changes | Run IDs, traces, hypotheses, rerun scores |
| [Benchmark optimization](../patterns/benchmark-optimization-loop.md) · [`JSON`](benchmark-optimization-loop.json) | A stable system should improve | Bounded experiment window | Repeated gain with correctness and protected metrics intact | Hypothesis, diff, raw scores, cost, decision |
| [Knowledge freshness](../patterns/knowledge-freshness-loop.md) · [`JSON`](knowledge-freshness-loop.json) | An agent retrieval corpus is stale | Daily refresh + source change | Provenance, freshness, retrieval, and leakage gates pass | Manifest diff, checksums, evals, promotion pointer |

### Govern And Protect

| Pattern and contract | Use when | Trigger | Deterministic gate | Durable receipt |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Security review](../patterns/security-review-loop.md) · [`JSON`](security-review-loop.json) | A sensitive diff needs review | Sensitive change + weekly sweep | Findings cite reproducible evidence | Reviewed SHA, findings, false positives |
| [Enterprise approval](../patterns/enterprise-approval-loop.md) · [`JSON`](enterprise-approval-loop.json) | A change needs formal sign-off | Gate or approver event | Every required gate has a human decision | Approval ledger, status, SLA, owner |
| [Accessibility regression](../patterns/accessibility-regression-loop.md) · [`JSON`](accessibility-regression-loop.json) | A UI accessibility check fails | PR or preview failure | Exact rule plus required human criteria pass | Before/after scan, interaction trace, reviewer decision |
| [Adversarial red team](../patterns/adversarial-red-team-loop.md) · [`JSON`](adversarial-red-team-loop.json) | An agent needs active security testing | Pre-release campaign | Independent reproduction and policy citation | Seed, full/minimized trace, severity, disclosure status |

## Read And Validate A Contract

Preview a contract as a compact human-readable checklist:

```bash
python3 scripts/preview_loop_contract.py examples/ci-repair-loop.json
```

Validate the complete contract library with the dependency-free CI validator:

```bash
python3 scripts/check_loop_contract_examples.py
```

## Four Worked Paths

### 1. Repair A Failing Check

**Symptom:** a pull request's `pytest -x` job is red.

1. Choose the [CI repair pattern](../patterns/ci-repair-loop.md).
1. Adapt [`ci-repair-loop.json`](ci-repair-loop.json): set the event trigger, protected files, three-retry budget, and escalation owner.
1. Run the [test-repair starter](runnable/test-repair-loop.sh) in an isolated worktree:

```bash
CHECK_CMD="pytest -x" AGENT_CMD="codex exec" ./examples/runnable/test-repair-loop.sh
```

**Done means:** the original command passes. The agent's claim is not the gate.

### 2. Refresh A Support Knowledge Base

**Symptom:** answers cite policies and release notes that may be stale.

1. Choose the [knowledge freshness pattern](../patterns/knowledge-freshness-loop.md).
1. Adapt [`knowledge-freshness-loop.json`](knowledge-freshness-loop.json): name approved sources, freshness windows, retrieval evals, leakage checks, and atomic promotion.
1. Schedule it with the [Codex automation](runnable/codex-automation.md), [desktop task](runnable/claude-desktop-scheduled-task.md), or your durable worker.

**Done means:** a versioned candidate passes provenance, freshness, retrieval, and sensitive-data gates before promotion. A successful fetch alone is not enough.

### 3. Process A Bounded Work Queue

**Symptom:** a set of narrow, independently verifiable tasks needs unattended handling.

Create `tasks.jsonl`:

```json
{"id":"docs-101","objective":"Update the CLI install example","context":["README.md","src/cli.ts"],"allowed_paths":["README.md"],"verification":"python3 scripts/check_docs.py"}
{"id":"schema-204","objective":"Add the missing status enum test","context":["schemas/status.json","tests/test_status.py"],"allowed_paths":["tests/test_status.py"],"verification":"pytest tests/test_status.py -q"}
```

Validate the queue first, then run a bounded batch:

```bash
python3 examples/runnable/queue-worker-loop.py --queue tasks.jsonl --dry-run
python3 examples/runnable/queue-worker-loop.py \
  --queue tasks.jsonl \
  --agent-command "codex exec" \
  --verify-command "python3 verify_item.py {id}" \
  --max-items 2 \
  --max-retries 2 \
  --command-timeout 900
```

**Done means:** the external verifier exits successfully and the item ID is persisted in `QUEUE_PROGRESS.jsonl`; reruns skip completed work.

### 4. Watch A Threshold Without Auto-Remediation

**Symptom:** a rollout, latency metric, pass rate, or spend metric needs bounded monitoring and evidence-backed escalation.

```bash
PROBE_CMD="./scripts/p95_latency_ms.sh" \
THRESHOLD=250 \
DIRECTION=max \
MAX_SAMPLES=12 \
INTERVAL_SECONDS=300 \
AGENT_CMD="codex exec" \
./examples/runnable/threshold-monitor-loop.sh
```

**Done means:** all samples stay within policy, or the first breach produces a durable receipt and read-only diagnosis. The starter never changes production.

## Adaptation Checklist

Before running any contract unattended:

- replace every generic source, command, file, and destination with a real one;
- keep the acting agent away from tests, scorers, policies, or thresholds that judge its work;
- narrow allowed paths, tools, credentials, and network access;
- make receipts reviewable and safe to retain;
- set time, retry, token, cost, and concurrency budgets;
- test the escalation path before trusting the success path;
- run first in a branch, worktree, sandbox, synthetic target, or read-only mode.