Distill

/strictlybetter:distill — DISTILL

The engine computes; the distiller writes for a reader with no context; every claim points at ledger ids.

# Resolve the engine. RUN THIS BLOCK VERBATIM — do not substitute a path you guessed.
# Order: ZCode's plugin root (ZCode also exports the legacy CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT, so its own
# var is checked first), Claude Code, Codex, an explicit checkout (SB_ROOT), the Claude Code
# plugin cache (newest version), and LAST the working tree's git toplevel (a contributor
# running inside the strictlybetter checkout). First one that holds scripts/sb.py wins.
SB_PY=""
SB_CACHE="$(find "$HOME/.claude/plugins/cache" -maxdepth 5 -path '*/strictlybetter/*/scripts/sb.py' 2>/dev/null | sort | tail -n 1)"
for d in "${ZCODE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-}" "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-}" "${CODEX_PLUGIN_ROOT:-}" "${SB_ROOT:-}" \
         "${SB_CACHE%/scripts/sb.py}" "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null)"; do
  [ -n "$d" ] && [ -f "$d/scripts/sb.py" ] && SB_PY="$d/scripts/sb.py" && break
done
if [ -z "$SB_PY" ]; then
  echo "strictlybetter: engine not found — set SB_ROOT to your strictlybetter checkout" >&2
  return 2 2>/dev/null || exit 2   # FAIL CLOSED: proceeding would run `python3 ""`
fi
SB_ROOT="${SB_PY%/scripts/sb.py}"
SB_REPO="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || pwd)"
sb() { python3 "$SB_PY" --repo "$SB_REPO" "$@"; }   # a FUNCTION, not a string: zsh does not
SB=sb                                                 # word-split "$SB"; both shells run `sb`
$SB --version | grep -q '^sb 1\.' || { echo "strictlybetter: engine did not answer (expected sb 1.x)" >&2; return 2 2>/dev/null || exit 2; }   # major version only; exact patch level is not asserted

0 · Re-anchor (never trust conversational memory)

$SB status --json                                             # the truth on disk
$SB status --json | grep -q '"campaign": null' || $SB next    # the cold-start brief, when a campaign exists

1 · Statistics (engine)

$SB distill-stats --json | tee "$SB_REPO/.strictlybetter/inbox/stats.json"

Quote decision, experiments, accepted, discard_reasons, false_promotion_rate_window, screen_untrusted, by_operator, wall_s_per_accept, dollars_per_accept, holdout_gap_mean_last5, budget_left. distill-stats needs a campaign (running, halted, or ended); with none, say so and stop.

2 · Distiller (agent, once)

Spawn sb-distiller (strictlybetter:sb-distiller) with:

Distill the strictlybetter ledger at <SB_REPO>/.strictlybetter/ledger.jsonl into an inheritance body. Current body: <SB_REPO>/.strictlybetter/inheritance.md (may be missing). Stats: <SB_REPO>/.strictlybetter/inbox/stats.json. Template: <SB_ROOT>/templates/inheritance.md.tmpl. Write the new body to <SB_REPO>/.strictlybetter/inbox/inheritance.md. Return DONE <path>.

3 · Store and show

$SB inheritance write --file "$SB_REPO/.strictlybetter/inbox/inheritance.md"
$SB inheritance show | head -n 40

Then print the decision line: continue (keep cycling), explore:levelN (plateau; bigger diffs allowed next), stop:converged (the engine ended the campaign), stop:budget:<dim> (halted on a budget), stop:halted (needs a human). For any stop:* also run $SB report and print the report path.