Docs · Team research
docs/TEAM-RESEARCH.md in the ZoeyOS source. Last verified 2026-10-08. State current, fixed against the running house on 2026-10-08.Team research: the self-improving loop
Nightly research so the krew improve at their role and as a team. Real sources, a thin night is a pass, work split from knowledge, a reviewer's veto before anything lands.
Who researches
| Scout | the nightly notes, and spoken one-offs from Zoey. Never a card assignee. |
|---|---|
| Lila | commissioned research on the board |
| Ada | routes; does not take the card |
The jobs, in the off-hours chain
| Collect | no model: fetch the sources into one bundle |
|---|---|
| Research | Scout writes the night's note, one section per role and one for the team |
| Eval | every role scores every pick for its own job |
| Rank and file | the ranker adds the voices; an agreed idea becomes one green-gated card |
| Outcomes | what landed, and whether its number moved |
| Monthly | a source scan proposes additions; nothing is promoted without a card |
The catch-up runs at 02:25 if the night's research did not.
Sources that heal themselves
- pinned sources cannot be dropped by the monthly scan; watch sources may be promoted or demoted.
- The collect counts hits and misses. Three consecutive misses mark a source stale unless pinned.
- Proposed sources need a card; Ada does not auto-promote.
Seeded from The Next New Thing's featured repositories, Hacker News, the agent runtime's own docs, the vLLM project, r/LocalLLaMA, and a podcast craft list (watched, not scraped). One file holds the list, and only one; a second copy once went stale in a day and led a note to propose fixing a path that was already right.
The note's shape
Per role: Ada, Lila, Bash, Vera, Steward, Zoey, Scout, and the team in general. Work items are bucketed: improve operations, expand capabilities, improve the existing, cool and fun. Knowledge stays in the note. Work becomes improvement bullets, which become cards. Never invent a source. An honest empty is a pass.
The Next New Thing
The week's top repositories. Scout picks the ones that touch the house and researches each with one README lookup, writing why it matters here. The brief carries them as the day's debate; the roles answer agree or pass in their own idea notes; an agreed pick (Zoey's ruling, or Steward after two roles agree) is filed as a green-gated improvement card and appended to the top-improvements ledger. No verdicts from Scout; the team decides.
Team eval: rank and aggregate
Each of Ada, Bash, Lila, Vera and Steward scores every pick and every improvement bullet 0 to 3 for its own job, with one line why. The ranker adds the voices: every role at 2 or more is the top tier; then breadth, sum, minimum. A faked voice (one number down the column, a 3 with no reason, under half scored) is not counted and is named. The top tier is filed as cards; the ranked table is shown in the brief and the House Daily. A missing voice fails the run rather than ranking without it.
Measuring the board
Counts and the age of the oldest ready card, a stuck-and-stranded diagnostic, and a nightly snapshot that records the seed KPIs: oldest ready age, blocked count, open count, and the precision of architect tries against the production gate. An agreed try carries the number it should move and the baseline to beat; the outcomes ledger says a week later whether it did.