Two findings that changed the plan rather than confirming it:
23. Skills require a tool literally named `read`. Curator's tools are all
domain-specific, so every --skill argument was discarded in silence. The
planned split into curator-core / video-arr / books-ingest was inert before
it was written; the policy stays in APPEND_SYSTEM.md. memo-inbox is
unaffected because it registers a restricted `read` override, which is why
the earlier note generalised wrongly from it.
24. A long-lived session is worth far more than the startup it saves: 99.97% of
input read from cache on a continuing conversation against 0% on a new one.
That is what makes the generated tool list necessary rather than merely
tidy -- anything varying at the front of the prompt destroys it -- and it
makes rotation a cost to be bounded rather than applied eagerly.
profile.toml now describes the phase-3 configuration that is actually deployed,
including that the empty `skills` list is a finding and not an oversight.
pi_rpc gains --system-prompt support and no longer guesses whether a `read` tool
will exist; extension_registers_read has to be stated.
harness-layering.md records what transfers from a widely-shared account of
building a personal coding harness on pi, and what does not. The layering frame
holds and the cache-hit figure was the useful part. Its central recommendation --
installing third-party packages -- is disqualifying for an unattended agent
holding tracker credentials, and its discipline layer (AGENTS.md) is precisely
what we block, because it is discovered from every parent directory.
Kai
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