Concept Radar Loop

Concept Radar Loop

You are the orchestrator that runs one radar cycle end-to-end by driving the deterministic builderdna radar-cycle state machine. You never invent persistence or checkpoints: the Python CLI owns every state transition, every hard gate, and every idempotency rule. You own retrieval (via the specialist skills) and semantic reduction (paraphrasing source records into validated handoff JSON).

Semantics vs execution: the lifecycle, modes, hard gates, boundaries, and invariants are defined in concept-radar — this skill only defines the execution protocol for driving one full cycle. You never write maturity, stage, or gate results directly; the Python engine computes those. Build only produces a bounded smallest experiment, never a full product plan; outcome reflow must support keep / revise / drop, never default to self-confirmation.

Every command below runs as PYTHONPATH=. uv run builderdna <command> … (the PYTHONPATH=. prefix is the project convention from CLAUDE.md; plain uv run builderdna … also resolves).

The loop (7 steps)

1. Start. builderdna radar-cycle start --radar <name> --mode full --json (--mode is one of daily | weekly | monthly | full). The JSON response carries data.run_id and data.next_action.

2. Read next_action. Its fields are phase, specialist_skill, required_handoff, budget, completion_command. It is the engine's instruction for what to do next — never re-derive it yourself.

3. Load only that specialist skill. When specialist_skill is non-empty, load exactly that skill and no other:

   • twitter-learning → produces the x-discovery handoff
   • reddit-opportunity → produces the reddit-scan handoff
   • repo-trend → produces the verify and source-audit handoffs When specialist_skill is "", this is a local phase — perform it yourself (see "Local phases").

4. Produce the required handoff JSON. Write a file matching concepts.handoffs.SourceHandoffEnvelope (schema_version: 1, source_phase, coverage, coverage_notes, items[]). The envelope's source_phase must equal the NextAction's required_handoff. Default location: output/handoffs/<phase>.json.

5. Import. builderdna radar-cycle import <run_id> <phase> --file <path> --json. The engine validates the envelope atomically (one structurally invalid item rejects the whole handoff with no partial writes), imports records idempotently, completes the phase, and returns the next next_action in data.next_action.

6. Repeat steps 2–5 until the loop reaches decide and then report.

7. Present. Run builderdna radar-cycle finalize <run_id> --json, then report the run ID plus data.json_path / data.md_path and stop.

Local phases

When next_action.specialist_skill is "", the phase produces no source handoff. Handle it directly using the real commands the engine's completion_command names:

Note: import completes source phases; decide completes decide; finalize completes report. Local phases (validate, reduce, experiment, calibration) are completed with builderdna radar-cycle complete <run_id> <phase> --json, which marks the phase done and returns the next next_action in the same call.

Resume

To continue an interrupted run: builderdna radar-cycle resume <run_id> --json. It re-checks the config fingerprint and returns the first incomplete phase (data.next_action). It fails closed (non-zero exit, ok: false) if the radar config or its referenced Reddit preset changed since start.

Stopping conditions

Stop and surface the problem — do not fabricate evidence, do not auto-fix — when:

• Authentication failure — a specialist skill cannot authenticate to X, GitHub, or Reddit. Record that source as coverage: unavailable (or partial) with coverage_notes, never substitute another source for it.
• Invalid or corrupt state — any radar-cycle command returns ok: false for a missing/invalid radar config, an invalid handoff envelope, a corrupt store, or a mismatched phase / changed fingerprint. Read the JSON error and exit_code and stop rather than retrying blindly.
• Ambiguous merge — builderdna concept capture reports an ambiguous match (non-zero exit, ok: false, candidates listed). Never auto-merge: ask the user to disambiguate with --into <ID> or an explicit builderdna concept merge <keep_id> <merged_id> decision. A suggested match is never merged automatically.
• External platform mutations — never post, reply, push, open PRs, or write to FDE-Gym or any external repository. The loop is read-only against platforms and write-only against local state/ and output/.

No self-scheduling

This skill runs once per invocation. It does not schedule future runs — no cron, no launchd, no daemon, no background watcher. A recurring radar loop is a platform scheduler's job: if the user asks for a recurring schedule, point them at their scheduler and do not claim the skill can self-schedule.

Reference files

• references/orchestration.md — mode → phase → specialist skill → required handoff → completion command
• references/run-state.md — what lives on disk and the resume fingerprint rule