# Harvest > Turn proven session behavior into a skill, rule, profile, AGENTS.md diff, or team learning; artifacts seed /autoresearch evals. Triggers "harvest this workflow", "turn this session into a skill", "preserve this behavior". - Skill: `darkroomengineering/harvest` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add darkroomengineering/harvest` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/darkroomengineering/harvest/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Productivity - Author: darkroomengineering (https://skillmd.com/u/darkroomengineering) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/darkroomengineering/harvest --- # harvest Extract the repeatable procedure behind an unusually good result and land it as a reviewed cc-settings artifact — with the *evidence measured*, not asserted. The output is a concrete file (skill, rule, profile section, AGENTS.md diff, or team-knowledge note) plus a filled [harvest contract](./CONTRACT.md) whose verdict (PASS / FAIL / INCONCLUSIVE) decides whether it may be promoted, and to what scope. This is a **ratchet**: it only tightens shared standards on behavior it can show repeated or survived a trap. Behavior it cannot measure is marked INCONCLUSIVE and held back, not written up as fact. ## Standalone Codex source boundary Claude frontmatter does not create an isolated fork in standalone Codex. Keep evidence inspection read-only in the current context or use a fresh native reader. Audit native rules under `${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/rules`, the installed `AGENTS.md`, and managed artifacts in the real cc-settings git checkout named by the Codex sentinel's `repo_path`. Installed plugin/cache files and `darkroom/source` may be inspected for drift, but never edited as the source repo. ## Phase 1 — Witnessed behavior census Before deciding *what* to harvest, inventory *what was actually seen*. For each candidate behavior, record — from evidence, not memory: - **Witness count**: how many independent sessions / transcripts / runs showed it, and therefore **multi-witness** (≥2) or **single-witness** (1). - **What repeated**: the steps that were identical every time — the deterministic core. - **What varied**: what differed across witnesses. Decide per difference: noise to drop, or part of the signal to preserve. - **Evidence inspected**: the transcripts, PRs, diffs, or outputs you actually read. - **Not proven**: what you are *inferring* rather than observing. Name the gaps. Evidence comes two ways — use whichever the user has: 1. **Interview** — 3–5 questions, one at a time: trigger? ordered steps? where the default would have gone wrong? how you knew the output was good? what it refused? 2. **Transcript / diff analysis** — the user points at a session, PR, or outputs. Read them, reconstruct the same answers yourself, then confirm with the user. An unknown witness count is `null`, never an optimistic guess. Single-witness is a valid census result — it just caps how far the artifact can travel (Phase 5). ## Phase 2 — Filter to the harvestable The bar is **a repeatable procedure, not raw intelligence**. Test each candidate: - What did the session do *differently* from the default path? ("ran the failing test before reading any source", not "it was smarter"). - Would the same steps help a weaker model or a fresh session? If the value was depth of reasoning alone, **stop and say so** — that can't be harvested, and prose about it is context bloat, not capability. - Is it already covered? In Claude check the "All Skills" table in `MANUAL.md` and `~/.claude/rules/`; in standalone Codex use the source boundary above. If an existing artifact covers 80% of it, the deliverable is a *diff to that artifact*, not a new one. ## Phase 3 — Fill the harvest contract Distill the census into the [harvest contract](./CONTRACT.md) — copy its template and fill every field: trigger, observed evidence, procedure, known failure modes, quality bar, trap prompts, required tools, verification result, promotion decision. If you can't fill a row with something concrete, it is `null` / INCONCLUSIVE — that is data, not a blank to paper over. A missing failure mode usually means the behavior wasn't actually different from the default; go back to Phase 1. ## Phase 4 — Route to the smallest artifact, then write it | The behavior is… | Artifact | How | |---|---|---| | A multi-step workflow a user would invoke | **Skill** | `bun run new-skill` + `docs/skill-authoring.md` | | An always-on constraint tied to file types | **Rule** | New/edited file in `rules/` with `paths:` frontmatter | | A workflow bundle for one project type | **Profile** | Section in the matching `profiles/*.md` | | A universal standard every tool should follow | **AGENTS.md** | Targeted diff to the relevant section | | A single gotcha, decision, or convention | **Team learning** | Hand off to `/share-learning` | Bias toward the smallest artifact that carries the procedure — folding into an existing skill beats adding a new one (see the skill cap in CLAUDE-FULL.md). Author it in the target's own conventions, carrying the contract's fields into the file: procedure as steps, failure modes as a DON'T / red-flags section, quality bar as explicit checks. For skills, complete registration: `ACTIVE_SKILLS` in `src/lib/managed-skills.ts`, the human contract in `docs/skills.md`, then `bun run lint:skills`. ## Phase 5 — Verify: traps, then verdict Write **2–3 trap prompts** — realistic requests where an agent *without* the artifact takes the documented bad path. For each: 1. Run it against a fresh subagent **with** the artifact loaded. The subagent must not see the trap's expected answer or this checklist (blind-run rule — same as `/autoresearch`). 2. Judge the transcript against the contract's quality bar: did it avoid the specific failure mode? Then set the **verification result** per the contract's rubric: - **PASS** — multi-witness, or single-witness with all traps passing. - **FAIL** — a trap reproduced the bad path with the artifact loaded. Do not promote; revise and re-run, or stop. - **INCONCLUSIVE** — evidence missing, single-witness with no passing trap, or any required field still `null`. Personal draft only; never a shared standard. The **promotion scope gate** ([CONTRACT.md](./CONTRACT.md)) binds the verdict to how far the artifact travels: single-witness never reaches `AGENTS.md`, `rules/`, `profiles/`, or team-knowledge on its own. ## Phase 6 — Seed autoresearch (skills only) When the routed artifact is a **skill**, hand its evidence forward: write or update `skills//RESEARCH.md` so `/autoresearch` can later optimize it. - `## Test Inputs` ← the trap prompts (one `### Test N:` per trap). - `## Checklist` ← the quality-bar checks (observable, binary — 3–7 items). - `## Settings` ← defaults (`samples: 3`, `min_improvement: 0.05`, `max_rounds: 50`). **Preserve the blind-run rule**: the seed carries only the raw prompt and the binary criteria — never the expected answer, the scoring rationale, or this conversation's context. Leaking any of those teaches to the test. Validate the shape before finishing: `bun run lint:research skills//RESEARCH.md` (required sections present, ≥2 test inputs, 3–7 checklist items, numeric settings). ## Deopt / fallback - **Evidence missing** → mark INCONCLUSIVE. Do not promote; do not invent a PASS. - **Trap prompts fail** → FAIL. Fix the artifact and re-run, or stop. - **Unknown numbers** → `null` / INCONCLUSIVE, never aspirational. - **Unknown territory** — behavior you can't reconstruct, a judgment you can't verify from evidence on disk — → fall back to `/verify`, `/oracle`, human approval, or normal reasoning rather than forcing a verdict. ## Approval gate **Stop. Present the artifact and the filled contract (with its verdict). Wait for approval before:** - Editing `AGENTS.md`, `rules/`, or `profiles/` (shared standards — every teammate inherits these; require multi-witness **and** PASS) - Posting to the team-knowledge repo via `/share-learning` - Committing anything Personal-scope drafts (a new unregistered skill file, a RESEARCH.md seed) may be written freely; the gate is on anything shared. ## Pairs with - `/autoresearch` — the optimization loop on a harvested skill; Phase 6 hands it a ready RESEARCH.md seeded from the traps and quality bar - `/share-learning` — the routing target for single-note learnings - `/verify` or `/oracle` — the fallback when a behavior is real but can't be measured into a verdict ## What this skill does NOT do - **Clone model reasoning.** It captures procedures — steps, checks, gates. If the magic was the model itself, the honest output is "not harvestable". - **Call model APIs** to sample or distill behavior. Evidence comes from the user, transcripts, and artifacts already on disk. - **Assert what it didn't witness.** Unknown counts are `null`; unproven behavior is INCONCLUSIVE. Every promotion carries a verdict, or it isn't done.