Beast Mode

Coding-agent runtime that grounds Claude Code as a machine (not a human contractor), automatically audits every response, and self-improves via a weekly evolution loop.

Architecture

Layer                          Mechanism                               When it runs
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1. Constitution                ~/.claude/instructions/                 Always in context
                                 beast-mode-constitution.md            (pointer in ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md)
2. Self-audit (on-demand)      MCP machine-grounding                   When agent calls
                                 check_framing(draft_text)             check_framing
                                 beast_index()
3. Post-response audit         Stop hook → beast-mode-stop.py          Every assistant turn
                                 → spawns auditor-worker.py            (async, never blocks)
                                 → Haiku scores 6 dims
                                 → appends to drift ledger
4. Drift ledger                ~/.claude/beast-mode/ledger/            Append-only JSONL
                                 drift.jsonl                           one entry per turn
5. Statusline                  ~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/statusline.sh  Every UI tick
                                 reads ledger, shows rolling Beast     (<100ms)
                                 Index + top leak dims
6. Evolution loop              ~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/evolution.py   Weekly
                                 Opus reads ledger, proposes           (launchd plist
                                 Constitution amendments               in bin/, not loaded
                                                                       by default)
7. Manual orientation          /beast skill                            On user invocation
                                 (~/.claude/skills/beast/SKILL.md)     ("/beast" or trigger)

Files

Path	Purpose
~/.claude/instructions/beast-mode-constitution.md	Operating doctrine, six Beast Index dimensions
~/.claude/hooks/beast-mode-stop.py	Stop hook — spawns auditor worker, never blocks
~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/auditor-worker.py	Reads transcript, calls Haiku, writes ledger
~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/evolution.py	Weekly Opus amendment proposer
~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/statusline.sh	Beast Index display
~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/com.adrian.beast-mode-evolution.plist	launchd plist (not loaded by default)
~/.claude/beast-mode/ledger/drift.jsonl	Audit history
~/.claude/beast-mode/proposals/	Weekly amendment proposals
~/machine-grounding-mcp/server.py	MCP server (check_framing, beast_index, lookup, ground_decision, ground_scope, reframe)
~/.claude/skills/beast/SKILL.md	/beast manual orientation skill

Backend

All LLM calls use claude -p --model haiku (auditor) or --model opus (evolution). Uses keychain OAuth — no API key needed. No external network beyond Anthropic.

Cost (estimated)

• Auditor: ~$0.0005/turn × 50 turns/day = ~$0.75/month
• Evolution: ~$0.05 × 4/month = ~$0.20/month
• Total: ~$1/month for self-improving beast-mode runtime

Enable weekly evolution

Not loaded by default. To enable:

cp ~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/com.adrian.beast-mode-evolution.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl bootstrap "gui/$UID" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adrian.beast-mode-evolution.plist
# Verify
launchctl list | grep beast-mode-evolution

To disable:

launchctl bootout "gui/$UID" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adrian.beast-mode-evolution.plist
rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adrian.beast-mode-evolution.plist

Default schedule: Sunday 08:57 local.

Disable beast mode

Disable Stop-hook auditor — comment out the beast-mode entry in ~/.claude/settings.json → hooks.Stop. Statusline keeps reading the ledger but the ledger stops growing.

To uninstall completely: remove the Stop hook entry, remove the statusLine block, run claude mcp remove machine-grounding, delete ~/.claude/beast-mode/.

Manual checks

# Inspect recent drift
tail -5 ~/.claude/beast-mode/ledger/drift.jsonl | jq .

# Run auditor on a transcript manually
python ~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/auditor-worker.py /path/to/transcript.jsonl session-id

# Force a weekly evolution run
python ~/.claude/beast-mode/bin/evolution.py
ls ~/.claude/beast-mode/proposals/

# MCP health
claude mcp list | grep machine-grounding