Finch

OCAS self-improvement orchestrator (Darwin's finch - adaptive evolution).

Skill name: ocas-finch
Version: 2.15.3
Type:
Layer: software-development
Author: Indigo Karasu

Capabilities

• tool_search ≠ tool_call availability - probe a suspect MCP tool alone before batching; MCP load state is intermittent between runs
• read_file view of a JSON file is NOT validation - it can display trailing-comma corruption as valid and misreport size; only json.load() catches it. Validate-after-edit with terminal python3 -c "import json; json.load(open(...))" (execute_code is blocked in indigo cron).
• jobs.json for cron health when cronjob tool unavailable; hermes cron list hides disabled jobs. NEVER report "cron health clean" without enumerating ALL jobs from jobs.json and surfacing every last_status=error job - including paused/disabled ones a summary view hides. Classification procedure (see references/cron-health-validation.md for the reusable parse script): (a) TRANSIENT/recovered if consecutive_failures=0 AND a later run produced success output (check cron/output/<jobid>/ for a subsequent ok file) - not a task; (b) PAUSED-BY-DESIGN if state=paused and last_error names a missing credential/OAuth the agent can't complete interactively (e.g. taste:sync-spotify needs Jared's interactive Spotify OAuth) - note as standing limitation, not a task; (c) REAL if consecutive_failures>0 or the error recurs across ticks - create/escalate a task. Anti-pattern (2026-07-17): a prior scan reported "cron health clean" and missed monitor:journals (transient, recovered next tick) and taste:sync-spotify (paused) because it relied on a summary-style view instead of full jobs.json error enumeration. Re-verify against jobs.json directly every scan.
• finch - profile-root MEMORY.md compaction (runs memory_guard.py on the DEFAULT profile's MEMORY.md - NOT the indigo profile's; guard the --file override or it compacts the wrong memory).
• finch:floor - no_agent script safety floor (memory guard). Normally enabled: false but self-triggers; do NOT treat its disabled state as broken.
• finch:scan - every 2h, pure LLM.
• ocas-finch:daily - daily 6am PT, pure LLM.
• ocas-finch:weekly - Sunday 8am PT, pure LLM.
• finch.run - Full daily pipeline
• finch.mine - Mine sessions for signals only
• finch.compact - Compact MEMORY.md only
• finch.route - Route mined findings
• finch.dry-run - Full pipeline without applying changes
• finch.status - Show recent stats
• finch.scan - Run scan manually
• finch.work - Run work manually
• memory tool may be unavailable in cron - fall back to direct file edit at the canonical profile memory path; re-read before write on sibling-warning
• memory_guard.py - deterministic MEMORY.md safety floor; mandatory post-guard Step 7.5 verification (Methodologies must outrank Course Changes in eviction)
• self_update.py / self_update.sh - real Python wrapper resolving skill dir from Path(__file__).resolve().parents[1]; self_update.sh is the GitHub fetch/install path
• memory_state.py - persisted reinforcement-state store (Ebbinghaus forgetting curve); reinforce / check / route / decay-report subcommands

Outputs

See SKILL.md for outputs, journals, and persistence rules.

Files

Documentation

Read SKILL.md for operational details, schemas, and validation rules.

Read references/ for detailed specifications and examples.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.