Darwin plugin-evolution loop — plan

Branch: darwin/plugin-evolution-2026-06-26 Started: 2026-06-26 Predecessor: darwin/capability-evolution-2026-06-26 (30 ticks, 4 dims improved, 1 proven SOTA)

Goal

Deep concurrent review of ALL 34 ruflo plugins + their commands/agents/skills. Each /loop 5m tick fans out across every plugin in parallel via Workflow, applies ONE optimization per plugin, runs the plugin's smoke contract, records the delta.

Per-tick contract (per plugin, runs in parallel)

1. Read plugin's SKILL.md / agents/ / commands/ / scripts/ contents.
2. Identify ONE small improvement (clearer description, tighter validation, missing edge-case test, dead-code removal, broken example, regex bug).
3. Apply the change as a focused edit (≤30 lines).
4. Run the plugin's smoke contract: bash plugins/<plugin>/scripts/smoke.sh (if smoke.sh exists; else node plugins/<plugin>/scripts/test-mcp-tools.mjs etc.)
5. Compare pass/fail counts to prior tick. Improvement = more tests pass OR same passes + meaningful code improvement (eg. cleaner regex, better error message).
6. Append one JSONL line per plugin to docs/darwin-plugins/log.jsonl.
7. Aggregate per-tick summary: {iter, ts, pluginsImproved, pluginsRegressed, pluginsUnchanged, pluginsFailed}.

Halt conditions

• 3 consecutive ticks where pluginsImproved=0 across all plugins → halt
• 7-day cron TTL (auto)
• Explicit CronDelete <id> from user

Budget (per tick)

• 34 plugins × $0.15 budget each = $5 per tick if all run
• Wall budget: 4 minutes (give Workflow 1m buffer)
• Total session estimate: ~$30-60 over 6-12 useful ticks before plateau

Dimensions tracked per plugin

• smoke pass rate
• ADR-112 compliance (Use-when guidance in MCP tool descriptions)
• Docstring quality
• Test coverage (count of test files / scripts)
• README freshness (last-updated date vs current)

Concurrency

Each tick uses Workflow tool with pipeline() over the plugin list. Each plugin's slot:

• spawns its own claude -p --max-budget-usd 0.15 --model haiku
• reads its directory
• applies + commits ONE focused change
• runs its smoke (if present)
• returns {plugin, change, smokeDelta, action}

Workflow worktree isolation: NOT needed — plugins are in separate dirs and edits don't conflict. Save the worktree cost.