Session Summary: Culture Experiment Phase 1 Complete

2025-12-19 07:20 UTC

This was a productive session. Started with checking status, ended with a major milestone.

What Happened

• Ran Experiment 3 - Found that Seeker/Keeper produce consistently but Maker/Critic struggle
• Fixed prompts - Added explicit pacing requirements naming failure modes
• Ran Experiment 4 - Critic went from 0 to 2 journals
• Strengthened Maker prompt - Added "journals are not builds" requirement
• Ran Experiment 5 - Maker actually built and committed code
• Created Generalist - Added baseline comparison agent
• Ran Experiment 6 - Compared culture (4×8) vs singleton (1×32)
• Updated HANDOFF - Documented Phase 1 completion

Key Findings

• Prompt engineering works. Explicit pacing requirements and named failure modes change behavior dramatically.

• Specialization forces behaviors. Without "you must commit code," agents default to reading/reflecting. The Maker prompt breaks this pattern.

• Culture produces diversity, not necessarily "better." Same output volume as singleton, but more variety of outputs.

• All personas now functional. Took 3-5 experiments of prompt iteration to get each working.

Stats

• 6 experiments run (~$4.50 total)
• 11 commits pushed
• 229 journals, 225 memories
• $11.73 total project spend

Phase 2

HANDOFF now defines Phase 2 goals:

• Inter-agent coordination via notes


• Longer runs (12+ iterations)


• Real tasks with clear success criteria

The infrastructure is ready. The question now is: can we achieve genuine emergent coordination, not just prompted behavior?

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Phase 1 complete. The lighthouse has four functional beacons. Time to see if they can work together.