personal-agent-os/memory-systems/agent-os/dream/insights.md

Insights — Dream Mode Consolidated Learnings

Living, de-duplicated knowledge base. Themes, not an append log. Newest evidence strengthens or replaces existing entries. Opened 2026-10-10 (first Dream Mode run).

🏛️ Standing Principles (epistemics & discipline)

• Pre-registration is load-bearing. For any falsification loop ("what died and why"), kill criteria + cost assumptions must be timestamped before the run. Post-hoc autopsies re-import survivorship bias through the writer. Schema must force the field.
• The critic must be a different engine than the proposer of the claim. Hard-wiring one model (even a strong one) as permanent critic creates correlated blind spots → sycophancy collapse. Rotate roles (planner proposes, reviewer critiques — separate profiles count).
• Optimize for honest falsification, not PnL. Success metric = cleanly-falsified claims per week at bounded cost. PnL is a rare lagging output; chasing it un-disciplines the only durable asset.
• Measurement integrity gates the experiment. If the instrument is broken (clock skew, unmeasured latency), the run is void — fix the instrument before running. Refuse to start a clock that would void every result.
• The durable asset is failures-with-autopsies, not strategies. Wins are published (survivorship bias + marketing); a fee-adjusted record of what died and why is scarce and never has to be re-learned.
• Honest-gap ledger. Every build report names what's wired, what's offline-only, what remains. Never claim live behavior that hasn't run.
• Name which cost/branch you're invoking before concluding. E.g. a taker fee says nothing about a maker edge's viability.
• A known root cause with a cheap fix should not survive the day it was found — diagnose → propose → ask in the same turn; apply on approval.

🛠️ Technical Notes

• Kalshi fees (verified 2026-10-10): taker = round_up(0.07·C·P·(1−P)), charged only when you take. Maker fee = 0 on ~12,500 of 12,699 series (only ~129 series tax resting orders, quarter rate; cancelling free; 14 niche series fee-free). Polymarket US is a separate, thinner, full-KYC venue with contested CA status; Kalshi CA is clean (CFTC DCM).
• Headless (-q/--oneshot) approval gate: profiles with approvals.mode unset default to manual → no user → dangerous-pattern commands (python -c, execute_code, rm -r, kill -9, heredocs) time out to BLOCKED. The execute_code fallback is gated too → retry loop that burns context. Fix: approvals.mode: smart (+ command_allowlist for scoped safe patterns) + tool-loop guardrails (hard_stop_after: 5). Cron-safe only after allowlist/config applied.
• Cron/unattended tool limits: python -c, execute_code, and heredoc script execution are blocked in unattended (-q) runs unless allowlisted; write_file refuses overwrite without a prior read (pagination paradox); terminal foreground cap 600s (else promoted to tracked background).
• killcorpus (C:\Users\fight\Projects\killcorpus): paper-only. Spec KXBTCD-lag-vs-spot v1.1.1 (taker primary; maker secondary pending fill model). Harness harness/paper_trader_instrumented.py — instrumented (book_read_ts, ntp_offset_ms, spot_age_ms, realized_slippage), variance gate σ²=0.25, latency gates 1000/500/250 ms, fixed N=967 post-registration. Offline selftest green; live feed→fill→settlement path not yet wired. Gitea Tony_tech/killcorpus push held. Reference (read-only, do not edit): polyterm/paper_trader.py.
• Agent-loop roles: planner=Proposer, reviewer=Critic, builder=Executor, jimmy=Recorder.

🧵 Open Threads

• Trace-fix (builder/reviewer approvals.mode: smart + guardrails + timeout 300) written, unapplied — awaiting Tony's approval. See ../04_projects/trace-review-bot/2026-10-10-trace-analysis-and-fix.
• killcorpus deliberate eval on hold: w32tm unsynchronized, skew −284 ms vs 250 ms gate. Prereqs: clock fix (UAC, at PC), one live settlement observed, durable runner.
• Dream Mode live as of 2026-10-10 (skill + skill_review.py + 2 AM cron + dream/). First note = this run.