Frontier survey move #2, path (c): give the always-on idle life a stream of experience via
SYMBOLIC intake (not the afferent→field seam, which is deferred pending a commensurability
ruling — docs/analysis/afferent-field-ingest-scope-2026-06-15.md). The idle heartbeat
converges (idle_tick drains a finite backlog + saturates is-a closure, then does nothing
forever); this makes it autonomously MINE its frontier with no user turn.
Reuse-heavy (the mechanism largely existed): a gated idle pass wires ADR-0080 contemplation
into the always-on loop.
- core/config.py: contemplate_frontier_during_idle (default off → no behavior change).
- chat/runtime.py: idle_tick pass 2b — when on, runs core.contemplation.run_contemplation()
(mines the checked-in frontier-compare reports) and persists a reviewable ContemplationRun
to <engine_state>/contemplation_runs/idle_<substrate_hash>.json. IDEMPOTENT per frontier
(an already-mined frontier is not re-persisted → the life converges, no churn) and MEMOIZED
per session (the static frontier is mined once, not re-read every beat). SPECULATIVE-only
(ADR-0080: ContemplationFinding.__post_init__ RAISES if not SPECULATIVE → wrong=0 by
construction; never ratified here — the HITL path is untouched). IdleTickResult gains
frontier_findings.
- chat/always_on.py: run_continuous did_work + HeartbeatRecord count frontier work, so the
heartbeat/soak convergence (H3) stays honest.
- core/cli.py: `core always-on --contemplate-frontier` (explicit learning-daemon mode) +
honest per-beat log ("+N findings").
Adversarial 3-lens review (wrong=0/convergence, determinism/trust-boundary, test-vacuity)
found 7; fixed the real ones: the MEDIUM torn-write (write_contemplation_run is now atomic
temp+os.replace — the indefinite-uptime daemon expects SIGKILL mid-write, and the skip-guard
would never repair a torn canonical file), the gitignore breadth (contemplation_runs/ at any
engine-state root), the 64-bit filename truncation (full substrate_hash), and the
re-mine-every-beat cost (session memoization). Deferred + documented: the shared
contemplation miner embeds absolute report paths in finding CONTENT — a portability wrinkle
that does NOT affect wrong=0/convergence/soak determinism (those key on the content-only
substrate_hash) and touches shared code + its test surface; a follow-up.
Tests (non-vacuous): 7 — off-by-default (no behavior change), mines-when-enabled,
findings-SPECULATIVE (wrong=0), converges-idempotent, heartbeat-mines-then-converges,
mines-once-per-session (memoization), atomic-no-orphan. 55 idle/contemplation/always-on +
96 invariants/contemplation + 28 smoke green; `core always-on --contemplate-frontier` mines
end-to-end. engine_state contemplation_runs are per-life runtime state (gitignored).
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