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Work and Evolve

Choose bounded implementation work or multi-branch evolutionary search with explicit epoch and provider authorization.

Work and Evolve

Prerequisites

  • A confirmed Goal Contract with exact starting evidence.
  • A saved target Harness Version and canonical measurement bindings.
  • Authorization for the selected worker source, epochs, and provider use.

Within the Coevolve experience, choose Work for one bounded implementation or investigation and Evolve when the confirmed Goal supports systematic exploration across several candidate branches and epochs. External Agents and External fine-tuning use different execution boundaries and should be selected only when their return or provider contracts are clear.

Work

Work can run through Teammately or an offered external execution source such as Codex, Claude, or another worker. The source receives the confirmed Goal and scoped evidence. It must return an observable immutable Harness Version or evaluation request; a handoff package alone is not proof that private work occurred.

Use Work when the likely intervention is known, the change is narrow, or operator review should follow one candidate at a time. Review returned source, candidate identity, evaluation receipt, constraint result, and chronology before treating the work as complete.

Evolve

Evolve uses Teammately and explores three Patch-to-Eval branches per epoch against the full pinned cohort. Choose user-gated to approve each epoch or autonomous to authorize a bounded number of epochs from 1 through 100. Set the target Case pass percentage and review provider usage by model.

An epoch does not merely generate text. Each viable branch must materialize an exact saved Harness Version and obtain canonical evaluation evidence before retention. Failed, incomparable, or constraint-violating branches remain visible rather than being presented as improvement.

Select the mode

Use Work when evidence points to a specific retrieval filter, prompt rule, tool call, or output mapping change. Use Evolve when multiple independent interventions could satisfy the Goal and the benchmark can distinguish them. Do not use autonomous epochs when the Goal has unresolved authority, the evaluation boundary is unstable, or provider usage is not authorized.

Object and state changes

Starting Work or Evolve advances the Session and can create handoff packages, epoch branches, saved Harness Versions, evaluations, receipts, usage, and frontier decisions. Pause and cancellation preserve recorded evidence.

Success criteria

  • Mode and execution source match the problem.
  • Every retained branch has exact candidate identity and canonical evidence.
  • Epoch limits, pass target, and provider usage remain within authorization.

Common failure modes

  • Using Evolve before the benchmark can distinguish hypotheses.
  • Treating a handoff package as returned implementation.
  • Retaining a focused-only or constraint-violating candidate.

Related reference pages

Reference / ImproveGoal ContractsBind an Improvement Session to exact targets, measurable objectives, constraints, and permitted intervention scope.Reference / ImproveCandidates and the Current FrontierInterpret candidate stages, canonical receipts, constraints, retained Candidate Systems, and the current frontier.Reference / ImproveChronology, Trajectories, and ReceiptsRead durable session events, safe narrated work segments, evaluation receipts, external handoffs, and usage evidence.

Related troubleshooting pages

Troubleshooting / Recovery LibraryBenchmark run troubleshootingDiagnose a Run that cannot start, has no usable outputs, or produces results that cannot be compared safely.Troubleshooting / Recovery LibraryBenchmark Results Changed UnexpectedlyDiagnose result changes across target behavior, benchmark cases, standards, and versions.

Source confidence

Code-backed: the active Improve setup, session contract, and work-review model define sources, Work and Evolve modes, authorization styles, epoch bounds, three branches, pinned cohort, pass target, and provider usage.

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Related docs

Improve Start an Improvement Session Start from benchmark evidence, prepare a measurable Goal Contract, and choose bounded Work or Evolve behavior. Improve Goal Contracts Bind an Improvement Session to exact targets, measurable objectives, constraints, and permitted intervention scope. Improve Chronology, Trajectories, and Receipts Read durable session events, safe narrated work segments, evaluation receipts, external handoffs, and usage evidence.
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