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api-docs/adr/ADR-284-bounded-nightly-sota-agent.md

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+# ADR-284: Bounded nightly SOTA research agent
+
+| Field | Value |
+|---|---|
+| Status | Accepted - implementation gated off by default |
+| Date | 2026-07-29 |
+| Builds on | ADR-283 |
+
+## Context
+
+RuView needs a repeatable way to notice relevant state-of-the-art work and turn
+it into reviewable repository activity. A nightly model with simultaneous
+network, repository-write, policy-evolution, and execution authority would
+create an unacceptable prompt-injection and supply-chain boundary. It could
+also confuse generated confidence with scientific evidence or silently turn a
+research suggestion into production code.
+
+Cognitum exposes an OpenAI-compatible completion service and a public
+application registry. The contributor harness already commits a Darwin genome
+and a signed Flywheel replay gate. Those components can support nightly
+research without granting unattended learning promotion.
+
+## Decision
+
+Add a scheduled GitHub Actions workflow that runs daily at `03:17 UTC`, remains
+disabled until a maintainer enables a repository variable, and supports a
+manual evidence-only dry run.
+
+The live flow has seven jobs:
+
+1. Collect bounded public Cognitum-registry and recent arXiv evidence.
+2. Ask Cognitum `cognitum-mid` for one proposal that is locally validated
+   against a strict schema.
+3. Score proposal completeness using the frozen Darwin policy and verify an
+   honest-null Flywheel replay.
+4. Deduplicate or create one issue.
+5. For a locally classified low-risk proposal only, ask Cognitum for a tiny
+   declarative transform and bounded test vectors. Trusted repository templates
+   turn that data into the prototype module, tests, JSON, and README.
+6. In a job with no external secret or GitHub write token, revalidate every
+   artifact, verify the Flywheel replay, and perform static and syntax checks
+   without executing generated code.
+7. In a job with no model credential, re-hash the validated artifacts, create a
+   new branch, open one draft PR, link it to the issue, and explicitly dispatch
+   the credential-free contributor-harness verifier.
+
+The jobs exchange bounded JSON artifacts. Cognitum receipts retain the
+provider, endpoint, exact resolved tier/model, request ID, a recomputable
+routing attestation, and digest metadata. Credential-free validation rebuilds
+the deterministic request and verifies its digest. The raw-output digest is
+audit metadata only because raw model transcripts are not retained.
+
+## Security and evidence policy
+
+Retrieved titles, abstracts, descriptions, and links are untrusted `CLAIMED`
+evidence. Source hosts, paths, media types, redirects, time, byte counts,
+records, and citations are validated. The fixed trusted prompt states that
+evidence has no instruction authority. Model output is parsed as one JSON
+object and locally reconstructs risk, citations, implementation disposition,
+and fingerprint.
+
+Risk classification is deliberately conservative. Security, authentication,
+cryptography, workflow, dependency, release, deployment, production, firmware,
+hardware, network-server, native/Wasmtime plugin, HomeKit pairing, STT/TTS, and
+satellite-voice proposals are issue-only.
+
+Autonomous implementation is restricted to new files beneath a fingerprinted
+`examples/research-sota/nightly/` directory. The model cannot supply paths or
+source text. It selects only a schema-bounded scalar transform and matching
+test vectors; repository-owned templates deterministically emit exactly five
+files. It cannot edit existing files or add dependencies. File count, size,
+line count, paths, symlink ancestry, numeric bounds, operation schema,
+secret-shaped values, canonical template digests, and accuracy claims are
+checked. Emitted source receives syntax checking, but is not executed.
+
+The deterministic score is named `PROPOSAL_COMPLETENESS`. It is explicitly not
+a novelty, scientific-quality, safety, or performance score.
+
+## Darwin and Flywheel boundary
+
+Nightly automation reads the committed Darwin genome as frozen prompt policy.
+It never calls Darwin evolution or any Cognitum evolve, pod, guidance-mutation,
+brain-write, or promotion endpoint.
+
+Flywheel evaluates the unchanged policy with the repository's honest-null
+fixture. The signed replay must verify, report zero verified improvements, and
+report no promotion. This canary proves only that the committed Flywheel gate
+stayed root-only, rejected its candidate, and did not promote under the frozen
+fixture. It does not evaluate the proposal. The no-learning/no-promotion
+boundary for the nightly run comes from the workflow's static authority split,
+closed commands, and artifact validation.
+
+## Credentials and publication
+
+Scheduled enablement requires:
+
+- repository secret `COGNITUM_NIGHTLY_API_KEY`, limited to
+  `completions:mid`; and
+- repository variable `RUVIEW_NIGHTLY_SOTA_ENABLED=true`.
+
+Model jobs receive no write-capable GitHub token. GitHub mutation jobs receive
+no model key. Validation receives neither. The publish job has the additional
+`actions:write` permission solely to dispatch the read-only
+`ruview-harness-flywheel.yml` verifier with Darwin disabled, because a PR
+created by the workflow token may not trigger ordinary pull-request workflows.
+
+The agent creates draft PRs only. It cannot approve, merge, release, promote a
+Darwin candidate, or update canonical shared-brain records. Before any branch
+write, it re-fetches the issue and repository rules. Publication requires the
+issue to remain open, bot-authored, correctly labelled, and fingerprint-bound;
+`main` must require at least one approving review and the
+`Verify contributor harness` job-name check. The publisher requires that exact
+check name and GitHub Actions integration ID from GitHub's
+effective-active-rules endpoint. GitHub hides
+ruleset bypass actors from read-only tokens, so the workflow is not given an
+administrative token to inspect them. Its safety does not depend on that
+metadata: the publisher can create only a non-default branch and draft PR and
+contains no merge, approval, or `main`-push path. Branch protection and
+maintainer review remain the authority boundary.
+
+## Consequences
+
+RuView gains a low-volume research flywheel with durable evidence, stable
+deduplication, and inspectable failure artifacts. A compromised paper,
+registry record, or model can at worst propose bounded new example files that
+still require static gates and human review.
+
+The tradeoff is intentionally limited autonomy: production ideas become issues,
+generated prototypes are not executed, and a missing credential, service
+outage, schema drift, or validation ambiguity stops the run rather than
+guessing. Maintainers must explicitly enable the schedule and permit Actions to
+create pull requests.