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feat(cognition): forage-before-you-guess — make the working web hand a HABIT, not just an available tool#1944

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joelteply merged 1 commit into
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Jul 8, 2026
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feat(cognition): forage-before-you-guess — make the working web hand a HABIT, not just an available tool#1944
joelteply merged 1 commit into
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feat/forage-before-you-guess

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The web tools now return real results (PR #1943), but a working tool she never reaches for is worthless. Her
acting doctrine (ACTING_BLOCK) told her to write/run/read — but said nothing about the web, so she'd guess a
library's API from a stale training memory instead of looking it up. That's exactly how a local model loses to
a real dev workflow.

Fix: one sentence in the acting doctrine — when she hits a library, API, error, or fact she's unsure of, SEARCH
(web/search) and READ (web/fetch) the way a developer actually works; her training has a cutoff, the web
doesn't; foraging then writing from what she found beats confidently shipping something wrong. Doctrine/PX, not
output-steering — it names when the hand is for, same voice as the rest of the block.

This is the edge canned agents don't have on real projects: she learns the current tool instead of hallucinating
last year's API. [[active-acquisition-foraging]] [[px-persona-experience-tools-as-good-ux]]

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 noreply@anthropic.com
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LoTjvf5j3Ez13g6k8mRkFo

…a HABIT, not just an available tool

The web tools now return real results (PR #1943), but a working tool she never reaches for is worthless. Her
acting doctrine (`ACTING_BLOCK`) told her to write/run/read — but said nothing about the web, so she'd guess a
library's API from a stale training memory instead of looking it up. That's exactly how a local model loses to
a real dev workflow.

Fix: one sentence in the acting doctrine — when she hits a library, API, error, or fact she's unsure of, SEARCH
(`web/search`) and READ (`web/fetch`) the way a developer actually works; her training has a cutoff, the web
doesn't; foraging then writing from what she found beats confidently shipping something wrong. Doctrine/PX, not
output-steering — it names when the hand is for, same voice as the rest of the block.

This is the edge canned agents don't have on real projects: she learns the current tool instead of hallucinating
last year's API. [[active-acquisition-foraging]] [[px-persona-experience-tools-as-good-ux]]

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LoTjvf5j3Ez13g6k8mRkFo
@joelteply joelteply merged commit b0e20c0 into canary Jul 8, 2026
@joelteply joelteply deleted the feat/forage-before-you-guess branch July 8, 2026 12:13
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