Rubbing research orchestrator

Rubbing Research Orchestrator

Manage research state and routing. Do not perform OCR, image restoration, source interpretation, or historical fact generation inside this Skill.

Current contract identity: rubbing-research-orchestrator version 1.4.0. Current route and record-event Schema version: 1.3. Preserve the immutable 1.1/Skill-1.2.3 and 1.2/Skill-1.3.0 Schema files only for historical validation; documents written under them keep validating unchanged.

The additive question-plan-v1 contract is advisory and provider-neutral. It does not change route 1.3, select a third-party Skill, admit evidence, or authorize historical publication.

The router accepts ReflectionMemo schema 1.0 or 1.1 from current research-hypothesis-reflection 1.2.0 and, for read-only historical routing compatibility, 1.1.0 and 1.0.0. Every version must bind the same case ID and the exact current ResearchCase bytes, and must prove that the input was not overwritten. Reject every unknown or missing Reflection Skill version. A memo bound to the case before reflection is stale after an updated case is emitted and must not be reused against that updated case.

Plan the question profile

Before assembling a workflow, classify what the question actually requires:

python3 scripts/orchestrate.py plan-question \
  --question "What differs between two precisely located carrier readings?" \
  --profile carrier-comparison \
  --output work/question-plan.json

Profiles are carrier-comparison, image-reading, and historical-inference. Every plan has the same ordered stage matrix, and every stage status is exactly required, optional, not_required, or blocked. The output binds each stage to a provider-neutral contract rather than a specific external component:

• carrier-comparison requires source acquisition, provenance, precise location, deterministic comparison, team review, and a dossier. Image preparation and OCR are optional; a historical entity graph and publication gate are not required.
• image-reading requires image preparation, OCR, precise location, and team review. Literature and historical graph work remain optional.
• historical-inference requires literature evidence, trusted external authentication, and the historical publication gate. Missing declarations produce typed blocked stages and a blocked plan.

--available-capability is a caller assertion that an independently verified capability contract is available. A catalog/search match, provider confidence, or component description does not satisfy it. Repeat the flag only after the caller has verified the relevant contract:

The host-level candidate-role and blocking registry for optional external Skills/SCPs is references/external-capability-registry-v1.json; registry membership never populates available_capabilities.

python3 scripts/orchestrate.py plan-question \
  --question "What historical appointment can the sources establish?" \
  --profile historical-inference \
  --available-capability literature-evidence \
  --available-capability trusted-external-authentication \
  --available-capability historical-publication-gate

Even an actionable plan keeps publication_authorization: false; normal evidence and publication gates still decide what may proceed. Read references/question-plan-v1.schema.json and references/orchestration-policy.md before consuming the matrix.

Build the edition-record evidence layer

scripts/edition_evidence.py is the shared P0 contract for evidence that says only what fixed carriers attest. It defines and validates:

• candidate-envelope-v1;
• edition-evidence-case-v1;
• edition-evidence-graph-v1, limited to attested-at, differs-from, derived-from, reviewed-by, and left-unresolved-by;
• case-dossier-v1.

The graph cannot contain a raw provider candidate, same-as edge, historical fact, or publication authority. A carrier difference remains unresolved with no preferred reading. Inspect the complete stdlib CLI with:

python3 scripts/edition_evidence.py --help

The optional service in scp/ exposes this layer through six tools: create_case, submit_source_candidates, register_artifact, submit_observations, compare_located_readings, and export_case_dossier. Its private case.json is workspace state, while export always writes the three public P0 objects through the shared validators. FastMCP and Streamable HTTP are optional transport dependencies; the core service remains offline and stdlib-only. See scp/README.md.

Compose external Skills and SCPs at the host

External components remain separate providers selected by the project-space host Agent. Sciverse SCP 43 has a local adapter that emits bibliographic CandidateEnvelope objects; it never writes the evidence graph directly. Other catalog Skills are host-composition or manual-advisory options until their licenses and machine contracts are reviewed. The current allowed roles, blockers, and observed platform metadata are frozen in references/external-capability-registry-v1.json.

Start a case

1. Rewrite the research intent as a falsifiable question.
2. Record at least one falsification condition and one stop condition.
3. Create a new case directory:

python3 scripts/orchestrate.py init \
  --case-dir work/SYNTHETIC-CASE-001 \
  --case-id SYNTHETIC-CASE-001 \
  --question "Does the named person have the proposed relationship?" \
  --scope "Declared material and cited sources only" \
  --falsification-condition "A verified independent source makes the relationship impossible" \
  --stop-condition "Two independent located sources agree, or the conflict remains unresolved"

Never reuse an existing case directory. Preserve every previous case and event.

Intake first (standing policy, owen 2026-07-27)

Before init, a multi-source funnel intake batch must exist for this line of inquiry: run the research-source-acquisition Skill in its default funnel-intake mode (its funnel_intake engine, not a script in this Skill), then register that batch's batch-manifest.json absolute path and SHA-256 as the case's first material. The intake's intake-receipt.json carries meets_multi_source_floor, which is attempted-and-logged (not success-required): failures are recorded, not hidden. See references/intake-first-policy.md.

This is a runtime/operational policy, not a ResearchCase schema change: the router does not machine-enforce it at init, and the existing init and route 1.3 behavior remains unchanged. The enforceable handle is the funnel's receipt plus the screening/audit stage that reads the first material — described honestly rather than pretended to be a router gate.

Presentation last (standing policy, owen 2026-07-27)

The dual of intake-first: intake binds the entrance, this binds the exit. Before a presentation-layer artifact (knowledge-visualisation.html, a feature deck / submission.pptx, any judge/public-facing chart page) is produced or rebuilt, the session must load anthropic-skills:canvas-design + dataviz, write or cite a visual-philosophy doc before touching the canvas (no philosophy doc, no work), implement, then run a mandatory second polish pass (no new elements, only refine), and attach the philosophy reference plus a polish record. The machine-checkable half lives in the presentation builder's COVENANT_CHECKS group and its self_check_design_philosophy_present, not in the frozen router. See references/presentation-last-policy.md.

Record a state transition

Create one JSON object for the next material, hypothesis, evidence, experiment, feedback, claim, uncertainty, or decision. Append it to a new case version:

python3 scripts/orchestrate.py record \
  --case work/CASE/case-v001.json \
  --collection materials \
  --record work/CASE/records/material-001.json \
  --output-case work/CASE/case-v002.json \
  --output-event work/CASE/events/0002-materials.recorded.json

Use materials, hypotheses, evidence, experiments, feedback, claims, uncertainties, or decisions. The command validates required fields and links, refuses duplicate IDs and existing outputs, preserves both inputs, records before/after hashes, and recalculates the recommended stage and gate. Never hand-edit an existing case version.

A human_review, stop_unresolved, or rollback decision remains blocking until a later typed decision explicitly names it in resolves_decision_id. A complete decision must name an exact registered stop_condition, cite at least two eligible evidence items from two independence groups, and include a structured per-evidence adjudication. Completion still requires an integrity audit bound to the exact current case bytes.

Every case with a persisted decision must carry extensions.latest_decision_state with exactly decision_id, decision_sha256, input_case_sha256, activated_at, and collection_counts. Reject missing markers, malformed fields, and a marker whose decision ID or canonical decision hash does not match the latest decision. The timestamp and collection counts are an activation snapshot: after a valid append they may be well-formed but stale. Staleness deactivates continue and complete, but does not silently clear a persisted human_review, stop_unresolved, or rollback block. Record a later typed decision to resolve such a block and refresh the snapshot.

This marker is a runtime consumer contract only. ResearchCase schema 1.0 does not express it, so the P2 contract-versioning gap remains unresolved; do not describe this repair as complete ResearchCase schema versioning.

Check an exchanged case before routing:

python3 scripts/orchestrate.py validate --case work/CASE/case-v002.json

Treat this as core-and-ID validation. Use the complete project JSON Schema when available.

Route the next action

Run the router after every material registration, experiment, feedback event, reflection, or integrity audit:

python3 scripts/orchestrate.py route \
  --case work/SYNTHETIC-CASE-001/research-case.json \
  --audit work/SYNTHETIC-CASE-001/audit.json \
  --reflection work/SYNTHETIC-CASE-001/reflection.json \
  --output work/SYNTHETIC-CASE-001/routes/route-002.json

Omit unavailable optional inputs. Treat the emitted route as a proposal; let the named Skill produce evidence before changing a research claim.

When proposed_skills names epigraphy-text-structure, inspect its machine-readable entry in handoff_gates. The router keeps that Skill out of the backward-compatible executable next_skills list while either the typed transcription_qualification_gate or physical_reading_order_gate is blocked. Do not initialize structure state until an epigraphy-transcription-evidence object independently proves qualified transcription intake, complete physical-region assignments, continuous reading order, and per-token locators. Never synthesize that order by sorting OCR coordinates, voting across image variants, or treating OCR confidence as transcription truth.

The current router does not accept the downstream evidence object, so both text gates remain blocked here and the text Skill is only proposed. Its own intake verifier is the next fail-closed boundary.

research-literature-evidence is executable only inside the capability fence declared by its handoff_gates entry and only under execution_profile: real-research-audit-v1: plan, query, discovery, bounded outcome, and real L0/L1 source-candidate logging. The required downstream input is a verified-route-bound ResearchCase and literature plan. This pass is permission to enter that audit lane, not evidence admission. Real L2/carrier/locator/card/L4, trusted-human, public, ResearchCase SRC, and text-structure authority capabilities remain blocked, and the handoff is never eligible as completion evidence. When text and literature are proposed together, only literature may appear in next_skills; the aggregate handoff remains blocked by the text gates.

Never stop without naming the next research action

A human_review or stop_unresolved route keeps next_skills empty: nothing may be chained automatically past a human gate. It must still say what to do next. Such a route names its proposals in proposed_skills, gives each one a proposal-only entry in handoff_gates (executable: false), and explains the target in actions and reasons using content read out of the bound case:

• unadjudicated Han character candidates found in usable, non-HYP evidence are named with their code points, together with the evidence IDs that record them, and research-literature-evidence is proposed to look them up;
• when a raw image material is still registered, rubbing-image-preparation is proposed so a wider region can be re-derived without disturbing the existing observations;
• when no character candidate exists, the open question text and the affected hypothesis IDs are named instead.

Treat those proposals as research suggestions for the human reviewer. They are not permission to act; only next_skills authorizes execution, and a route that stops for a human never fills it.

Supply --created-at only as a timezone-aware RFC3339 timestamp. A successful verify-route report proves that policy fields were recomputed against bound inputs whose digests were safely rechecked immediately before success. It does not authenticate the route's claimed generation time, route_id, or run_id; use an external signed checkpoint or append-only run ledger for those claims.

Apply the gates

• Route missing, unverified, blocked, or rights-unknown materials to provenance work.
• Route missing hypotheses, negative/null/invalid feedback, challenged hypotheses, or conflicting evidence to reflection.
• Detect a hypothesis-level conflict when usable evidence both supports and challenges it, even if no feedback row summarizes the conflict.
• Route claims without an audit to integrity audit.
• Prevent packaging while an audit is block.
• Require human review while an audit is warn on a high-impact or conflicted claim.
• Stop automated Skill routing when a ReflectionMemo requests human_review or stop_unresolved.
• Mark complete only when a fresh typed decision proves the registered stop condition with eligible independent evidence and an audit for the exact current case bytes is pass.
• Prefer stop_unresolved over invented certainty.

Read references/orchestration-policy.md before changing routing rules. Read references/route-handoff-contract.md before consuming a route or upgrading a legacy route. Read references/research-case-contract.md when another Skill needs to exchange ResearchCase objects.

Coordinate Agents

Give each Agent a bounded task, a dedicated output path, the case path, the relevant Skill, and an explicit validation command. Require the Agent to write inputs, methods, raw outputs, failures, uncertainty, and handoff notes to disk. Merge only persisted artifacts; treat chat messages as coordination signals, not research evidence.

Preserve research integrity

Keep raw evidence immutable. Keep generated restoration as HYP. Keep negative and failed results. Require coordinate- or page-level locators for publishable evidence. Never upgrade a claim from a route decision alone.