crucible-navigator — Research campaign orientation

Self-Evolving Skill: This skill improves through use. If the routing guidance is wrong (wrong skill invoked for a user intent), fix the description's TRIGGERS list and the routing table below. Append reason to references/evolution-log.md. Don't defer.

What this skill does

You are orienting an agent to research methodology. Route the agent to the right sub-skill based on what kind of research task is at hand. The four sub-skills cover epistemics (A), execution (B), decisions (C), and archive (D).

Routing table — map user intent to skill

User intent signal	Route to
"Is this finding real?", "check significance", "shuffled null", "causal feature", "label leakage"	a-research-foundations
"Test a hypothesis", "sweep parameters", "multi-agent analysis", "gate validation", "per-trade analysis"	b-investigation-methodology
"Should we pivot?", "ship this?", "kill or refine?", "too much context", "supersede a finding"	c-meta-governance
"Check dormant ideas", "what's archived?", "resurrect this", "conditions have changed"	d-emergent-resurrection

If unsure, start with A (foundations). Epistemic discipline is the hardest prerequisite.

The core genetic-evolutionary framing

Research in this plugin is treated as a population under selection:

Population ───────────> (multi-lens agents propose candidates)
    │
    ▼
Fitness ──────────────> (z-score vs shuffled null, OOS replication, kill-selectivity)
    │
    ▼
Selection ────────────> (serial adversarial gates A→B→C→D→E)
    │
    ▼
Surviving individuals ─> (champion stacked as supersedes chain in evolution.jsonl)
    │
    ▼
Mutation/Crossover ───> (agent proposes perturbations of winner; orthogonal components recombined)
    │
    ▼
Archive failures ─────> (d-emergent-resurrection preserves with resurrect_if conditions)
    │
    └──────── NEXT GENERATION ───────┐
                                     ▼
                                 (new audit folder)

A "hypothesis" is a triple: (trigger, filter_cascade, management_rule). Each component mutates independently. Crossover combines validated components from different campaigns. Failed individuals go to archive, not trash.

Reading order for a new campaign

1. Read this file. Understand the genetic framing.
2. Read a-research-foundations/SKILL.md. 6 epistemic disciplines.
3. Read b-investigation-methodology/SKILL.md. 6 execution patterns. This is the workhorse.
4. Reference c-meta-governance/SKILL.md as needed during pivots/decisions.
5. Check d-emergent-resurrection/SKILL.md first if the hypothesis resembles an archived dead one — you might be resurrecting.

Anti-patterns

1. Treating principles as universal from N=1 evidence. Each principle has a confirmation_count; defer to re-confirmed ones.
2. Skipping A. Experienced agents skip epistemics — don't. The label-leakage trap, wrong-null trap, and agent-z overstatement trap all live in A.
3. Running a new campaign without checking D. Ideas recur. Check archive before re-exploring.
4. Writing conclusions without ledger entries. See A5 (record-keeping-discipline).

Repository landmarks

In opendeviationbar-patterns/:

• findings/methodology/ — original 10 principle files (pre-plugin)
• findings/evolution/evolution.jsonl — ledger of findings (append-only)
• findings/evolution/audits/ — dated audit folders (one per campaign)
• findings/evolution/audits/CLAUDE.md — audit index

When you're done in a session

Update references/evolution-log.md if you noticed that:

• The routing table missed a user intent (add the row)
• A TRIGGER keyword didn't fire on a relevant prompt (extend the description)
• A sub-skill was weaker than expected (flag it for refinement)

---

Post-Execution Reflection

After invoking this skill, if the routing produced a wrong-skill-selected outcome, or if a new user-intent pattern emerged that isn't covered:

1. Identify the gap. What did the user ask for that wasn't routed?
2. Determine the fix. Add a new row to the routing table? Add keywords to TRIGGERS? New sub-skill needed?
3. Apply the fix. Edit this file in-place. Append to references/evolution-log.md with: date, trigger text, what was changed, and link to the session where this came up.
4. Never silently defer. A quiet gap is worse than a noisy one.