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dream

Source: skills/dream/SKILL.md

/dream is the interactive face of the Dream system. It should drive the same engine as ao overnight; do not invent a parallel workflow.

Purpose

Use Dream to:

  • preview or persist Dream setup and scheduler assistance
  • run a bounded private overnight compounding pass against the real .agents/ corpus
  • render and interpret the latest morning report, including Dream Council and DreamScape sections
  • explain the difference between the private local Dream lane and the public nightly proof harness

Routing

Map user intent to one of three lanes:

Intent Command Notes
bootstrap, install, configure Dream ao overnight setup Default to preview. Use --apply only when the user explicitly wants config or scheduler artifacts persisted. Detects Tier 1 local curator separately from Tier 2 Dream Council runners.
inspect or feed local Gemma curator ao overnight curator status|diagnose|enqueue|compact|event Use for Ollama/Gemma worker health, allowlisted queue jobs, pending LOG compaction, and bounded needs-review events.
run Dream now ao overnight start Include --goal when the user provides one. Use --runner and --creative-lane only when the user asks for multimodel or wildcard analysis.
inspect a prior run ao overnight report Use --from <dir-or-summary.json> for non-default report paths.

Compounding Loop (v2)

Dream v2 runs a bounded outer loop of INGEST -> REDUCE -> MEASURE iterations until a halt condition fires: wall-clock budget exhausted, plateau (K sub-epsilon deltas in a row), regression beyond a per-metric floor, or metadata integrity failure. Each iteration is atomic and checkpointed so any rollback leaves the corpus clean. Dream is strictly knowledge-only.

Anti-goals (hard constraints):

  • NEVER mutates source code.
  • NEVER invokes /rpi or any code-mutating flow.
  • NEVER performs git operations (no commits, branches, push, rebase, checkout).
  • NEVER creates symlinks anywhere.
  • No swarm/gc fan-out inside iterations in the first slice (serial only).

Tier 1 Curator And Trigger Mesh

Dream can expose a local Tier 1 curator through dream.local_curator.*. The first supported shape is Ollama + Gemma, backed by an operator-owned worker directory such as D:\dream and a vault such as D:\vault. This is not a Dream Council runner: Gemma drafts, lints, triages, and writes auditable queue or event records; Codex and Claude remain Tier 2 review/synthesis runners; humans own promotion into durable authored memory.

Use ao overnight curator status --json to check the worker, queue, model, and Ollama endpoint. Use ao overnight curator enqueue --kind lint-wiki|dream-seed or --kind ingest-claude-session --source <path> --chunk-start <n> --chunk-end <n> only for allowlisted knowledge jobs. Use ao overnight curator event when Gemma or a local SOC signal needs Tier 2 attention. Events carry source, severity, desired action, escalation target, and budget; no runner should recursively invoke another runner without consuming an explicit event budget and leaving a ledger entry.

Key Rules

  • Keep the shared control plane authoritative. Dream settings live under dream.*; do not duplicate config logic inside the skill.
  • Keep platform semantics honest. Never promise scheduled execution on a sleeping laptop.
  • Keep the first slice bounded. Dream is for close-loop, defrag preview, metrics, retrieval proof, optional briefing, and optional artifact-mediated council synthesis.
  • Do not imply tracked source-code edits overnight unless the runtime actually supports them.
  • GitHub nightly is the public proof harness. Dream is the private local engine.

Execution Steps

Step 1: Resolve the operator lane

Interpret the request as setup, start, or report.

Examples:

Bash
/dream setup
/dream setup --apply --runner codex --runner claude --at 01:30
/dream start "close the loop on today's auth work"
/dream report
/dream report --from .agents/overnight/latest

Step 2: Setup lane

Use ao overnight setup to inspect the host, available runtimes, scheduler mode, and keep-awake behavior.

Bash
ao overnight setup
ao overnight setup --apply --runner codex --runner claude --at 01:30

Default behavior:

  • Preview first when the user asks how Dream would work on this machine.
  • Persist with --apply only when the user explicitly asks to save config or generate scheduler artifacts.

Expected outputs:

  • a config preview in terminal, JSON, or YAML
  • optional generated scheduler assistance under .agentops/generated/dream/
  • optional dream.local_curator config when a supported local curator is configured or detected

Step 2a: Local curator lane

Use ao overnight curator when the user asks about Gemma, the local worker, the SOC trigger path, or Tier 1 drafts.

Bash
ao overnight curator status --json
ao overnight curator diagnose
ao overnight curator enqueue --kind lint-wiki
ao overnight curator enqueue --kind dream-seed
ao overnight curator compact --dry-run
ao overnight curator event --source local-soc --severity high --desired-action "review alert cluster" --budget 1

Do not promote Tier 1 drafts directly into authored content. Treat draft promotion as Tier 2 or human review work.

Step 3: Bedtime run lane

Use ao overnight start for the actual local run.

Bash
ao overnight start --goal "close the loop on today's auth work"
ao overnight start --goal "stabilize release follow-ups" --runner codex --runner claude --creative-lane
/dream start --queue=.agents/dream/tonight.md
/dream start --max-iterations=3
/dream start --warn-only=false

Expected behavior:

  • operates against the real repo-local .agents corpus
  • writes summary.json and summary.md
  • degrades honestly when soft-fail steps or keep-awake helpers are unavailable

Step 4: Morning report lane

Use ao overnight report to render the latest Dream result.

Bash
ao overnight report
ao overnight report --from .agents/overnight/latest
ao overnight report --from .agents/overnight/latest/summary.json

Focus the response on four questions:

  1. What state did I wake up to?
  2. What ran overnight?
  3. What degraded or failed?
  4. What should I do first?

Output

  • Dream setup preview or persisted dream.* config with optional scheduler assistance artifacts
  • Dream morning report artifacts:
  • .agents/overnight/<run>/summary.json
  • .agents/overnight/<run>/summary.md
  • A concise operator summary with degraded items and the single highest-signal next action
  • v2 morning reports also include per-iteration sub-summaries, composite fitness_delta, and plateau_reason / regression_reason when applicable

Examples

Text Only
Help me get Dream working on this Mac without pretending launchd survives sleep.
Text Only
Run Dream tonight with Codex and Claude, goal: stabilize the Homebrew release follow-up.
Text Only
Read the latest Dream report and tell me the first move.

Reference Documents

Troubleshooting

Problem Cause Fix
ao overnight setup suggests manual scheduler mode Host scheduler semantics are ambiguous or unsupported Keep the run operator-armed, or use generated assistance only after reviewing the host behavior
Dream report shows degraded keep-awake caffeinate or the platform helper is unavailable Continue with the degraded report; do not claim the machine will stay awake
No morning report exists Dream has not been run yet or the output dir is different Run ao overnight start, or point ao overnight report --from at the correct directory
User expects GitHub nightly to replace local Dream CI proof harness and local Dream are different surfaces Explain that nightly proves the contract, while Dream operates on the private local corpus

Delineation vs /evolve

Lane Runs Mutates code? Mutates corpus? Outer loop? Budget
/dream nightly, private local No Yes (heavy) Yes (convergence) wall-clock + plateau
/evolve daytime, operator-driven Yes (via /rpi) Yes (light) Yes cycle cap

Dream owns the knowledge compounding layer; /evolve owns the code compounding layer. Both share fitness-measurement substrate via corpus.Compute / ao goals measure. Run Dream overnight, then start each day with /evolve against the freshly-compounded corpus with a clean fitness baseline.

See Also

  • /handoff - capture explicit session closeout before bedtime
  • /status - inspect the current repo state before deciding whether to run Dream
  • /compile - compile the knowledge corpus when the morning report points at corpus hygiene work
  • /rpi - run the daytime delivery flow before handing work off to Dream