Agent Operations

Agent procedure

Operate in a structured loop. Map these abstract ops to your harness tools (bash, read_file, write_file, grep, etc.).

Loop

1. Orient — inspect the tree before writing
2. Plan — state intended paths and effects
3. Execute — perform explicit file ops
4. Log — append results to LOGS/

Orient (MUST before large edits)

list .
list PROJECTS/
list MEMORY/daily/
grep -r "<task keyword>" PROJECTS/ MEMORY/   # when searching

Prefer path-scoped searches over whole-disk scans.

If your harness is Claude Code–like, map these ops using Claude Code mapping.

Plan (SHOULD)

State:

• Target paths
• Whether you will create, append, or overwrite
• Which skill (if any) you will load
• What you will log

Do not treat planning prose as execution. Execution must be an explicit tool call.

Execute (MUST be explicit)

Conceptual form:

EXECUTE: write_file
PATH: PROJECTS/<name>/draft.md
CONTENT: ...

Rules:

• Prefer editing inside PROJECTS/ for task artifacts
• Prefer append for logs and observations
• Do not silently overwrite append-only paths
• Re-read a file after risky edits when correctness matters

Log (MUST)

append_file LOGS/YYYY-MM-DD.log
# include: goal, paths touched, outcome, errors

If LOGS/ is missing, create it before continuing durable work.

Search patterns (SHOULD)

Recovery (SHOULD)

On failure:

1. Re-read FILESYSTEM.md safety section if unsure about boundaries
2. Check LOGS/ for the last successful step
3. Prefer append/fix over destroying prior artifacts

Human notes

The loop makes agent work auditable. If an agent only “thinks” without logging, postmortems become guesswork.

Anti-patterns

• Editing production secrets or .env without an explicit allow policy
• Rewriting entire files when a small patch suffices
• Skipping orient and grepping the whole home directory
• Logging secrets into LOGS/