Arbor Agent Orchestrator

Arbor Agent Orchestrator

Use this as the first skill for an Arbor-style research run. It is the phase loader and policy owner; load the smaller skills only when their phase applies. For normal user-facing use, prefer starting with arbor-research-agent; that wrapper performs Arbor-style intake and then loads this orchestrator.

Source Model

This suite mirrors the open-source branch of arbor, not the older single hypothesis-tree extraction. The product entry point is arbor; the run architecture is:

• Intake/planning agent creates a research contract.
• Coordinator runs one persistent ReAct loop and owns the Idea Tree.
• Executors implement ideas in isolated git worktrees.
• Merge/eval tooling protects B_test and trunk.
• SearchAgent annotates validated nodes with related work.
• Plugins, HITL, budget policy, checkpoint/resume, dashboard, and report are first-class behavior, not optional notes.

Read references/source-map.md when auditing against the source tree or when you need exact file origins. Read references/compatibility.md when packaging the suite for another agent runtime or checking Codex/Claude Code portability.

Phase Loading Order

1. Launch and contract: load arbor-agent-setup-intake. Establish target cwd, metric, baseline status, budget, scope preference, dev/test discipline, config/plugin choice, and session directory.

2. Coordinator loop: load arbor-agent-coordinator. Run INIT, OBSERVE, IDEATE, SELECT, DISPATCH, DECIDE until the cycle cap, budget limit, or diminishing returns says to stop.

3. IDEATE only: load arbor-agent-ideate. This is a hard gate for novelty/scientific runs. It must follow TreeView(format="constraints") and precede every TreeAddNode. If a plugin disables strict skills for performance-first MLE/Kaggle, use the free-form path described by arbor-agent-plugins-hitl-budget instead.

4. Executor dispatch: load arbor-agent-executor. Use for RunExecutor / RunExecutorParallel behavior, worktree lifecycle, executor prompts, long RunTraining commands, report parsing, artifact capture, and tree updates.

5. Merge and scoring: load arbor-agent-merge-eval. Use before baseline metadata changes, merge attempts, B_test verification, protected-path checks, and final test scoring.

6. Related work: load arbor-agent-search. Use after a node is done or merged and beat trunk, especially before merge decisions where novelty matters.

7. Domain adaptation and human gates: load arbor-agent-plugins-hitl-budget when config mentions plugins, profiles, mle_kaggle, lifecycle hooks, convergence, budget policy, or interaction modes direction, review, or collaborative.

8. Resume and finalization: load arbor-agent-resume-report when the run is interrupted/resumed, when dashboard/events/checkpoint artifacts matter, or when producing REPORT.md.

9. No native Arbor tools: load arbor-agent-tools. Use its scripts/arbor_state.py helper to emulate TreeView, TreeAddNode, TreeSetMeta, TreeUpdateNode, TreePrune, TreePropagate, executor prompt generation, eval score capture, merge checks, and report generation in a plain Codex/Claude environment.

Non-Negotiable Invariants

• As coordinator, do not write benchmark code directly. Code changes happen through executor branches or clearly separated executor subagents.
• Maintain an Idea Tree as durable memory. Do not rely on transient chat reasoning for run state.
• Record baseline_score, trunk_score, eval_cmd, eval_cmd_test, dataset_info, metric_direction, and trunk_branch as metadata before dispatching real executors.
• Use B_dev for iteration. Use B_test only for merge verification and final reporting when the contract permits B_test and the run is not smoke-only.
• Use eval command templates with {cwd} and {node_id}. Do not hardcode the main repository path inside executor eval commands.
• Keep main/master protected. Merge only into the configured trunk branch.
• If using arbor_state.py, run tree-mutating commands serially. Do not parallelize init, meta, add, update, prune, propagate, eval, record, worktree, or merge against the same run.
• Preserve evidence: experiment reports, metrics, diffs, event logs, tree JSON, tree Markdown, run stats, and final report.
• If the real arbor CLI is installed and the user wants a real run, prefer invoking it. If the user wants a skill-based reconstruction or a smoke test, emulate the behavior with this suite and arbor-agent-tools.

Smoke And Forward-Test Mode

When the user asks for a smoke test, forward test, dry run, or validation of the skill suite, propagate smoke-only through the contract, metadata, executor prompt, raw reports, and final summary.

• Do not execute inherited real eval commands if they run training, data prep, downloads, GPU jobs, or minute-scale benchmarks.
• Replace expensive eval commands with arbor_state.py parse-log, another cached-score parser, a harmless echo, or an explicitly labelled mocked score for plumbing validation.
• Do not cat, raw rg, raw grep, or tail long training logs. Some logs use carriage-return progress updates that make one physical line enormous. Use arbor_state.py parse-log or normalize with tr '\r' '\n' before matching; only inspect at most 20 log lines when debugging a failure.
• Generate executor prompts with arbor_state.py prompt-executor --smoke. Save the generated prompt as experiments/<node_id>/executor_prompt.md.
• Do not create real worktrees, edit source, or merge branches unless the user explicitly wants a real run.
• Still complete the durable Arbor artifacts: tree JSON/Markdown, experiment report/metrics, executor prompt, check, and REPORT.md.

Minimal Run Skeleton

Use this skeleton when no native arbor runtime is available:

1. Load arbor-agent-setup-intake; produce a contract and initialize .arbor/sessions/<run_name>/.coordinator/idea_tree.json.
2. Load arbor-agent-coordinator; complete INIT and metadata.
3. For each cycle:
   • OBSERVE code/results.
   • TreeView(format="constraints").
   • Load arbor-agent-ideate; add 1-3 ideas.
   • SELECT pending leaves.
   • Load arbor-agent-executor; dispatch one or more executors.
   • Load arbor-agent-search for validated winners when useful.
   • Load arbor-agent-merge-eval; merge, prune, or continue.
4. Load arbor-agent-resume-report; run final B_test only if it is available, authorized, and the run is not smoke-only; write REPORT.md; summarize artifact paths.

Common Failure Corrections

• If only one monolithic skill exists, split it by the phase list above.
• If ideation starts without constraints and the idea-drafting gate, restart IDEATE from TreeView(format="constraints").
• If an executor evaluates in the main repo rather than its worktree, discard that score and rerun with {cwd} substitution.
• If B_test is used for routine idea selection, mark the run contaminated and reset the decision basis to B_dev.
• If reports contain deltas only, convert tree scores to absolute metric values.