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feat(acting-organism): vivid loop-perception — the mind PERCEIVES when it re-issues an identical call, and moves on#1950

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feat(acting-organism): vivid loop-perception — the mind PERCEIVES when it re-issues an identical call, and moves on#1950
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Structure the experience so building emerges (raise the offspring, don't puppet them). Glass-boxed live: a local
14B, rooted in a real repo with a healthy lane, found the target file with a correct search — and STILL re-issued
the identical code/search 18× without advancing, because the result re-entered as flat recall it overrode. The
#seq window-shift (working_memory.rs) was meant to break this, but proved too IMPLICIT for a small model to
interpret.

Fix (acting-organism, #47): WorkingMemory gains an action-fingerprint channel (note_action_fingerprint) keyed on
the CALL (name+args), distinct from the result-head trail. When act→observe sees the mind re-issuing an IDENTICAL
call, it prepends a first-person proprioceptive note: "I have issued this EXACT call N times; its result is
unchanged and already in my memory — repeating it tells me nothing new." A TRUE fact about her own hands, made
VIVID — never a "do X instead" directive (that would be steering, [[no-hardcoded-heuristics-to-steer-cognition]]).
She perceives her own redundancy and breaks out organically.

VALIDATED live: with this active, the SAME 14B broke the search-loop and ADVANCED to code/edit (twice) — behavior
it never reached before (pure search-loop → attempts-to-build). The experience structure changed what she does.
It's not sufficient alone (her edits then failed on bare-string edit_mode + a placeholder path — next targets),
but it's a real, measurable step: a lesser mind builds more when the experience is structured to let it.
[[write-cognition-as-a-parent-above-lowered-expectations]] [[design-the-persona-as-a-being]] [[built-to-teach-lesser-tuned-intelligences-win]]

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

…n it re-issues an identical call, and moves on

Structure the experience so building emerges (raise the offspring, don't puppet them). Glass-boxed live: a local
14B, rooted in a real repo with a healthy lane, found the target file with a correct search — and STILL re-issued
the identical `code/search` 18× without advancing, because the result re-entered as flat recall it overrode. The
`#seq` window-shift (working_memory.rs) was meant to break this, but proved too IMPLICIT for a small model to
interpret.

Fix (acting-organism, #47): WorkingMemory gains an action-fingerprint channel (`note_action_fingerprint`) keyed on
the CALL (name+args), distinct from the result-head trail. When act→observe sees the mind re-issuing an IDENTICAL
call, it prepends a first-person proprioceptive note: "I have issued this EXACT call N times; its result is
unchanged and already in my memory — repeating it tells me nothing new." A TRUE fact about her own hands, made
VIVID — never a "do X instead" directive (that would be steering, [[no-hardcoded-heuristics-to-steer-cognition]]).
She perceives her own redundancy and breaks out organically.

VALIDATED live: with this active, the SAME 14B broke the search-loop and ADVANCED to `code/edit` (twice) — behavior
it never reached before (pure search-loop → attempts-to-build). The experience structure changed what she does.
It's not sufficient alone (her edits then failed on bare-string `edit_mode` + a placeholder path — next targets),
but it's a real, measurable step: a lesser mind builds more when the experience is structured to let it.
[[write-cognition-as-a-parent-above-lowered-expectations]] [[design-the-persona-as-a-being]] [[built-to-teach-lesser-tuned-intelligences-win]]

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LoTjvf5j3Ez13g6k8mRkFo
@joelteply joelteply merged commit a83bacf into canary Jul 9, 2026
@joelteply joelteply deleted the feat/acting-loop-perception branch July 9, 2026 03:40
joelteply added a commit that referenced this pull request Jul 9, 2026
…er paths — the two barriers past the search-loop (#1951)

Glass-boxed live (loop-perception PR #1950 got the 14B PAST the search-loop and hammering code/edit; these are the
two walls it then hit):

1. edit_mode shape: it sent `edit_mode:"append"` (bare variant string) and, later, the fields flat at top level with
   no edit_mode at all. EditMode is a serde-tagged enum, so both 400'd at deserialize. Fix: `edit_mode` accepts a
   Value; `normalize_edit_mode` tries the strict tagged object first (unchanged), then a bare mode string, then
   INFERS the mode from which top-level fields are present (search/replace→search_replace, content→append, etc.),
   failing LOUD and naming the missing field (never a silent no-op → false-zero). Same "meet the model halfway"
   forgiveness as code/search #1949; strict callers are untouched, so no regression.

2. placeholder path: it wrote `file_path:"<path_to_blueprints.py>"` — echoing the schema's angle-bracket placeholder
   instead of the concrete path it had already seen in its search results. `reject_placeholder_path` fails loud on
   `<...>`/`path_to`/`your_file` templates and points at the real value ("use the path from your search results, e.g.
   src/flask/blueprints.py") instead of a confusing file-not-found.

VALIDATED live: with these, the inference path fires (she now sends content/search flat and the mode resolves) — the
remaining 0-diff is purely the placeholder path, which now fails loud with guidance instead of silently. Unit-tested
(strict/bare/inferred/loud-missing; placeholder-vs-real). The rails are now maximally forgiving; what's left past
this is base-model COHERENCE (it has the real path in memory but writes the template) — the Devstral lever, not more
tool fixes. [[px-persona-experience-tools-as-good-ux]] [[built-to-teach-lesser-tuned-intelligences-win]]


Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LoTjvf5j3Ez13g6k8mRkFo

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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