Dos Class Cycle

dos-class-cycle — the judge-gated plan-lifecycle tick

Garden the portfolio, but never alone. A plan's class (active / done / parked / …) should track reality — a done plan should not sit "active," a long-idle one should park. /dos-class-cycle runs ONE tick of that gardening: it evaluates the declared triggers, asks a JUDGE-rung adjudicator (advisory, fail-to-abstain) to approve each candidate transition, applies only the gated ones, and logs the cycle. The class set, the legal transitions, and the failsafes are declared data ([lifecycle]) — a 2-class repo and a richly- classed one run the identical mechanism.

The shape: read the declared lifecycle → evaluate triggers → build candidates (deterministic order) → judge each → enact gated transitions → log. The cycle is domain-free mechanism; the taxonomy is [lifecycle] policy; the judge content is a host dos.judges driver.

Inputs

• --dry-run (optional) — evaluate + judge but enact nothing (a preview cycle).

Step 0 — Read the declared lifecycle + the layout

dos doctor --workspace . --json

Read lifecycle — the declared classes, transitions (each {from, to, trigger, auto}), veto_class, max_transitions_per_cycle, and per_plan_cooldown_hours — and paths (the plan + run dirs). Use these; never hardcode a class name, a trigger, or a cap. A repo that declared only active/done cycles with those two; a repo with a richer taxonomy declares more.

Step 1 — Evaluate each declared trigger → candidate transitions

For each declared transition, evaluate its trigger against the portfolio (the plan-meta classes, the run-archive history, git). A trigger that fires on a plan proposes that plan for that from→to transition. Build the candidate list in a DETERMINISTIC order (plan id ascending) so a replay is byte-stable.

Skip a plan that is:

• in the veto_class (never auto-transitioned — a human moves it by hand), or
• transitioned within per_plan_cooldown_hours (the per-plan cooldown), or
• already past max_transitions_per_cycle candidates this tick (the cap).

The trigger evaluator is the host's (an opaque trigger token like all_phases_shipped / idle_30d — the kernel never interprets it). A natural ground-truth trigger: a plan whose dos enumerate residual is empty AND every unit dos verifys SHIPPED is a real all_phases_shipped → done candidate.

Step 2 — Judge each candidate (the JUDGE rung, advisory)

A class transition is a judgment call, so it goes to the JUDGE rung — a non-deterministic adjudicator that rules on the residue the deterministic checks left. Resolve the active judge by name and ask it to approve / defer each candidate:

dos judge-eval --judge <name>   # the judge seam; built-in `abstain`, shipped `llm`, or a dos.judges plugin

The judge is hedged by the four disciplines (deterministic-first, advisory-only, fail-to-abstain — a raise/bad-return becomes ABSTAIN, never APPROVE — abstention-first). The judge content (the prompt) is a host dos.judges driver; this skill spawns it via the seam and reads its verdict. An ABSTAIN defers the transition to a human (the safe direction — the kernel never auto-applies on an abstention).

Step 3 — Enact the gated transitions (auto only where declared)

For each candidate the judge APPROVED and whose declared transition has auto = true, enact it: rewrite the plan-meta classification: to the to class, ONE commit per cycle. Read the trunk + ship grammar from dos doctor --json's stamp; do not hardcode a commit prefix. A transition with auto = false, or one the judge deferred/abstained on, is surfaced for a human — never enacted.

Step 4 — Log the cycle (even a 0-transition tick)

Write a cycle record under paths.runs: the candidates, the judge verdicts, the applied transitions, and the failsafe state (cap/cooldown/veto). A heartbeat row every cycle — even one that applied nothing — so the gardener's history is auditable.

What this skill deliberately does NOT do (no silent gap)

• No host class taxonomy. Classes/transitions/failsafes are [lifecycle] data; this skill carries none. A transition naming an unknown class is a config error the kernel raises at load, not a silent skip.
• No judge content. The adjudicator prompt is a host dos.judges driver; the skill resolves + spawns it, fail-to-abstain. Forcing the prompt generic would re-couple the kernel.
• No transition past a failsafe. The per-cycle cap, the per-plan cooldown, and the veto class are hard gates; the cycle never exceeds them.

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Applying a transition the judge ABSTAINED on — abstention defers to a human; the kernel never auto-applies on an abstention (the fail-to-abstain floor).
• ❌ Hardcoding ACTIVE/PARK/TOMB or a trigger like idle_14d — read the declared set from dos doctor --json's lifecycle.
• ❌ Exceeding max_transitions_per_cycle in one tick — a runaway judge must not churn the whole portfolio; the cap is the backstop.