gbrain/docs/guides/skillopt.md

# `gbrain skillopt` — Self-evolving skills

Treat your `SKILL.md` files as the trainable parameters of an agent that
itself never changes. Write a benchmark of realistic tasks; SkillOpt watches
the agent run them, proposes specific edits, re-tests, and only keeps changes
that measurably improve the score.

Based on [SkillOpt](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23904) (Microsoft Research,
May 2026).

> **New to this?** Start with the hands-on tutorial:
> [Auto-improve a skill with `gbrain skillopt`](../tutorials/improving-skills-with-skillopt.md).
> It walks you from "I have a skill" to "I accepted a measurably better version"
> in ~20 minutes, including how to write your first benchmark. This page is the
> reference — flags, exit codes, cost model, safety guards.

## The 30-second pitch

```bash
# 1. Generate a starter benchmark from the skill itself (no routing-eval needed)
gbrain skillopt my-skill --bootstrap-from-skill

# 2. Review the benchmark — STRENGTHEN the generated judges (they're weak drafts),
#    then delete the trailing `# BOOTSTRAP_PENDING_REVIEW` line

# 3. Run the optimizer (--split 1:1:1 is required for a ~15-task starter)
gbrain skillopt my-skill --bootstrap-reviewed --split 1:1:1
```

That's the entire workflow. (Already have a `routing-eval.jsonl`? Swap step 1 for
`--bootstrap-from-routing` — but routing tasks test dispatch, not output quality.)

## What's in the box

```
skills/my-skill/
  SKILL.md                          ← what gets optimized (body only; D5)
  skillopt-benchmark.jsonl          ← what success looks like
  skillopt/
    best.md                         ← current best version
    versions/
      v0001_e1_s1.md                ← per-step snapshots
      v0002_e1_s2.md
      ...
    history.json                    ← append-only run record (D8)
    rejected.json                   ← bounded LRU of rejected edits
```

The audit trail lives at `~/.gbrain/audit/skillopt-YYYY-Www.jsonl`
(ISO-week rotated; honors `GBRAIN_AUDIT_DIR`).

## How the loop works

For each step:

1. **Forward pass.** Run the candidate skill against a batch from `D_train`.
2. **Backward pass.** Two reflect calls (failures + successes per D7) propose
   edits to address what worked / didn't work.
3. **Rank + clip.** Top-N edits within the LR budget (cosine schedule by
   default; D10 has the ASCII curve in `orchestrator.ts`).
4. **Apply.** D9 tagged-result patches the body (frontmatter forbidden per
   D5; ambiguous anchors rejected to the rejected-buffer).
5. **Validation gate.** D12 median-of-3 + epsilon=0.05: every sel-task runs
   the judge 3 times, takes the median; only accepts if median > best by
   more than 0.05.
6. **Commit.** D8 history-intent-first 5-step atomic write — crash-safe.

After each epoch with no improvement: D6 slow-update fires one meta-edit
proposal (this lives in v0.42 follow-up; v1 emits the audit event).

## Flags

| Flag | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| `--benchmark <path>` | `skills/<n>/skillopt-benchmark.jsonl` | Path to benchmark JSONL |
| `--bootstrap-from-skill` | off | Generate a starter benchmark from SKILL.md (recommended; no routing-eval needed) |
| `--bootstrap-tasks N` | 15 | How many starter tasks `--bootstrap-from-skill` generates (max 50) |
| `--bootstrap-from-routing` | off | Auto-build benchmark from routing-eval.jsonl |
| `--bootstrap-reviewed` | off | Required after human-reviewing bootstrap output |
| `--epochs N` | 4 | Outer-loop iterations |
| `--batch-size N` | 8 | Tasks per inner step |
| `--lr N` | 4 | Max edits per step |
| `--lr-schedule cosine\|linear\|constant` | cosine | Edit-budget decay |
| `--split TRAIN:SEL:TEST` | 4:1:5 | Ratio; refuses if D_sel < 5 |
| `--optimizer-model MODEL` | tier.deep | Reflects + proposes |
| `--target-model MODEL` | tier.subagent | Executes the skill |
| `--judge-model MODEL` | tier.reasoning | Scores rollouts |
| `--patch \| --rewrite` | patch | Edit ops only vs. full rewrites |
| `--dry-run` | off | Cost preview, no LLM calls |
| `--no-mutate` | off | Write proposed.md, don't replace SKILL.md (no held-out needed) |
| `--allow-mutate-bundled` | off | Required to mutate gbrain-bundled skills in place — ALSO requires `--held-out` (>=5 rows) or the run hard-refuses |
| `--held-out <path>` | — | Independent test set (same JSONL shape as the benchmark, task IDs disjoint from it). A candidate that beats the benchmark but regresses on the held-out set is refused. Required for in-place bundled mutation. |
| `--max-cost-usd N` | 5.00 | Hard cap; preflight refuses if exceeded |
| `--max-runtime-min N` | 30 | Wall-clock cap |
| `--force` | off | Bypass dirty-working-tree refusal |
| `--resume <run-id>` | off | Resume a prior interrupted run |
| `--json` | off | Machine-readable stdout |

## Exit codes

| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | Improved + accepted (or `--no-mutate` proposed.md written) |
| 1 | No improvement; best skill unchanged |
| 2 | Aborted by gate (dirty tree, over budget, bench validation, etc.) |

## Cost model

A typical 20-task benchmark with defaults costs ~$0.90 per run:

- 32 rollouts × Sonnet ($0.009 each) ≈ $0.29
- 8 reflect calls × Opus (cached) ≈ $0.25
- 24 sel-judges × Sonnet (cached) ≈ $0.10
- Final test eval ≈ $0.07
- **Total ≈ $0.71**

For a 100-task benchmark: ~$5.00 (right at the default cap). Preflight
refuses to start when the estimate exceeds `--max-cost-usd`.

## Safety guards (the cathedral)

| Guard | Decision | What it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Validation gate is mandatory | D12 (paper) | Accepting LLM judge noise as improvement |
| Frontmatter mutation forbidden | D5 | Routing surface drift (`check-resolvable` regression) |
| Per-skill DB lock | D14 | Two concurrent runs corrupting history/versions |
| Bundled-skill gate | D16 | Auto-mutating skills shipped with gbrain (in-place mutation requires `--allow-mutate-bundled` + a `--held-out` set of >=5 benchmark-disjoint tasks; else hard-refuse + proposed.md) |
| Held-out gate | F11 | Accepting a candidate that overfits its own benchmark — `--held-out` refuses a candidate whose held-out score regresses below baseline |
| Bootstrap review sentinel | D15 | Self-referential benchmark gaming |
| Read-only tool sandbox in rollouts | D13 | Optimization runs writing junk pages to your brain |
| History-intent-first atomic commit | D8 | Half-written SKILL.md on crash |
| Cost preflight | D3 | Surprise mid-run budget exhaustion |
| Dirty-tree refusal | dry-fix pattern | Overwriting your uncommitted changes |

## When NOT to use SkillOpt

- **No benchmark.** Optimizing against guesses is worse than not optimizing.
- **Write-flavored skills.** Skills whose job is to `put_page` heavily can't
  use the v1 read-only sandbox; mocked-write capture is a v0.42 follow-up.
- **Tiny benchmarks (<10 tasks).** D_sel < 5 refuses by default; meaningful
  validation needs ≥20 tasks total per the paper.

## Related skills

- `gbrain skillify scaffold <name>` — create a new skill (use BEFORE skillopt)
- `gbrain skillpack-check <name>` — audit conformance + skillopt status
- `gbrain check-resolvable` — routing MECE validation (NOT mutated by skillopt)