core/docs/decisions/ADR-0150-autonomous-inter-session-contemplation.md

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ADR-0150 — Autonomous Inter-Session Contemplation

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-05-25

Context

ADR-0056 Phase C1 shipped contemplate() as a pure function that enriches DiscoveryCandidate with polarity, evidence, claim_domain, and sub_questions. It ran inline (opt-in via attach_contemplation) or via CLI batch. Neither path ran at session boundaries. Engine state (ADR-0146) persists discovery candidates to disk, but stored candidates were unenriched (raw Phase B output).

Decision

Run contemplate() on pending session candidates at checkpoint_engine_state() before persisting to engine_state/discovery_candidates.jsonl. Enriched candidates (polarity/evidence/claim_domain populated) are stored instead of raw ones.

Flag: RuntimeConfig.auto_contemplate = False (null-drop default).

Trust boundary

contemplate() is read-only w.r.t. corpus, pack, and vault per ADR-0056. It enriches the in-memory candidate struct only. Nothing is written to any shared store during enrichment.

Why checkpoint, not inline

Fresh candidates are produced during the turn and accumulated in _pending_candidates. Contemplation at checkpoint runs after the session completes, not on the hot turn path. This avoids blocking turn latency.

Unlocks

W-017: auto-proposal pipeline can filter enriched candidates (polarity, evidence) to generate TeachingChainProposals.