Skill — Continuous Learning

When this skill activates

When discussing learned behaviors, instinct management, pattern capture, or skill evolution. Also activates during session-end reviews where patterns may be captured.

Mandatory actions when this skill is active

Understanding the Instinct System

MindForge automatically observes sessions and captures behavioral patterns as "instincts" — lightweight learned behaviors that may evolve into full skills.

Instinct lifecycle:

Observation -> Instinct (confidence: 0.5)
                  | applied successfully
              Confidence grows (0.5 -> 0.6 -> 0.7 -> ...)
                  | confidence >= 0.85 AND applied 5+ times
              Promotion candidate
                  | user approves
              Full SKILL.md created and registered

Auto-Capture (Always Active)

The instinct engine runs in auto-capture mode, watching for:

1. User corrections -> instinct created at confidence 0.6

• "No, always use X instead of Y" -> captures the preference

1. Repeated patterns (3+) -> instinct created at confidence 0.4

• Same action pattern 3 times in a session -> probably intentional

1. Successful outcomes -> instinct created at confidence 0.5

• Non-obvious action followed by verification pass -> worth remembering

Managing Instincts

View active instincts:

• Check .mindforge/engine/instincts/instinct-store.jsonl
• Use /mindforge:status which includes instinct summary

Manually capture:

• Use /mindforge:learn-instinct "observation" --behavior "what to do"
• Manual instincts start at confidence 0.7 (user-stated = higher trust)

Promote to skills:

• Use /mindforge:evolve-skills to review mature instincts
• Candidates: confidence >= 0.85 AND times_applied >= 5
• Promotion creates a full SKILL.md and registers in MANIFEST.md

Deprecate/Prune:

• Instincts below 0.2 confidence after 10+ applications are auto-pruned
• Instincts inactive for 30 days are auto-pruned
• User can manually deprecate any instinct

Project scoping (no cross-project leak)

Every captured instinct carries a project_id (a stable 12-char SHA256 of the git remote URL, normalized so https/ssh/scp clones of the same repo match) plus a human-readable project name. Outside a git repo, both fall back to global. This enforces the invariant that instincts learned in repo A never surface in repo B:

• Read-time filter: when recalling instincts (status, evolve-skills,

cluster-instincts), match project_id to the current repo's detected id, OR global. Ignore entries from other projects.

• Detection: bin/hooks/lib/detect-project.js (detectProject(cwd)) is the

single source of the id; the capture hook stamps it on write.

• Promotion across projects: an instinct seen in 2+ projects with avg

confidence >= 0.8 is a candidate to promote to a global instinct (deeper cross-project promotion criteria are handled by evolve-skills).

During any task (passive observation)

• Note patterns that repeat across tasks
• When user corrects behavior: acknowledge and create instinct
• At session end: report any new instincts captured
• Never let instinct count exceed 100 per project (prune lowest confidence)

After session

Report instinct activity:

Instincts this session:
  [NEW] "Pattern observed" (confidence: 0.5)
  [REINFORCED] "Existing pattern" (0.6 -> 0.7)
  [READY] "Mature pattern" -- eligible for promotion
  
Active: 47/100 | Promotion candidates: 3

Self-check before task completion

• [ ] Did I report any new instincts captured this session?
• [ ] Did I verify instinct count remains under 100 for this project?
• [ ] Did I check for promotion candidates meeting the threshold?
• [ ] Did I confirm captured instincts are project-scoped (not leaking to other projects)?