Continuous Improvement Harness (CIH)

A multi-agent system that audits any codebase, finds high-value improvements, and ships them in TDD-gated iterations — autonomously, and unable to push or bulk-stage by construction.

A change only merges if a non-LLM verifier proves — by checking out the commits and running the tests itself — that a new test failed before the fix and passes after, with the full suite still green. Every team works in a disposable git worktree; git push and git add -A are blocked at the wrapper level. Runs as an interactive CLI (with a --non-interactive opt-out for CI/scripts) or as an interactive Claude Code skill.

How it works

flowchart TB
    ORCH["orchestrator · pure control flow"] --> HP["high-planner<br/>audit → ledger → charters"]
    subgraph teams["isolated teams · one worktree each<br/>(run sequentially)"]
        T1["planner → plan-reviewer →<br/>executor → tdd_verifier (pytest) →<br/>execution-reviewer"]
        T2["team-NN …"]
    end
    HP --> T1 & T2
    T1 & T2 --> MQ["merge queue<br/>merge → re-verify → advance head"]
    MQ --> DEC{"ledger dry / N reached?"}
    DEC -->|no| ORCH
    DEC -->|yes| DONE["stop · report.html"]

A high-planner scores improvement opportunities and splits them into independent charters (meant to touch disjoint files). Each charter runs a five-stage pipeline — planner → plan-reviewer → executor → mechanical pytest verifier → execution-reviewer — in its own disposable worktree; teams run sequentially (the worktrees keep them isolated). Passing teams merge one at a time through a queue that merges onto the integration base, re-runs the full suite, then advances the integration head — so any cross-team conflict is caught there. An opportunity ledger remembers what's been tried, cools down failures, and drives the run to convergence.

Quick start

Requires Python 3.11+ and the Claude Code CLI (claude) on your PATH — CIH drives it for the agent pipeline.

pip install cih-agent

# interactive by default — cih interviews you for scope, then runs autonomously
cih --target-repo /abs/path/to/target --state-dir /abs/path/to/state

# scripted / CI — skip the interview and drive everything from flags (requires --mode)
cih --non-interactive --mode fixed-N --iterations 3 \
  --target-repo /abs/path/to/target --state-dir /abs/path/to/state \
  --focus tests --focus performance

pip install cih-agent installs the cih console command (the import name stays cih); cih … is equivalent to python -m cih.runner ….

target-repo and state-dir must be absolute, distinct, and non-nested. Add --report to write a self-contained report.html after every iteration.

Use it in another repo

CLI (interactive by default). No setup beyond the install. From anywhere, point --target-repo at the repo you want to improve and keep --state-dir outside it. The CLI runs a short scoping interview before proceeding; pass --non-interactive (alias --yes) to skip the interview for non-TTY/CI use (requires --mode):

pip install cih-agent

# interactive — cih asks for scope, then runs autonomously
cih --target-repo /abs/path/to/your-repo \
    --state-dir   /abs/path/to/your-repo-cih-state   # outside the target repo

# non-interactive / CI — skip interview, drive entirely from flags
cih --non-interactive --mode fixed-N --iterations 3 \
  --target-repo /abs/path/to/your-repo \
  --state-dir   /abs/path/to/your-repo-cih-state

Interactive (/cih skill). The skill and its agents aren't auto-installed by pip (Claude Code loads them from .claude/, not from site-packages). Install them once, then invoke /cih inside a Claude Code session:

cih install-skill                       # installs into ~/.claude (available in every repo)
cih install-skill --dest /path/to/your-repo/.claude   # or scope to one repo

The skill runs a short scoping interview, writes a run.json, then hands the run off to a fresh Superset workspace that executes it headless (cih --from-run-json …) — so the long autonomous run lives in its own workspace, not the scoping session.

Why it's safe to leave running

• Improvements are proven, not asserted — the TDD verifier independently confirms red→green with the full suite passing; it hard-blocks skip markers and flags weak assertions.
• Can't push or bulk-stage — git push, git remote, and git add -A/--all/. are structurally unreachable; forbidden paths (secrets/, *.pem, *.key) are rejected.
• Never touches your tree — all work happens in disposable worktrees; state lives outside the target repo and every git command is logged.
• Watchable — each iteration / audit / team / merge milestone is appended to <state_dir>/progress.md (tail -F it to follow a run live); set CIH_NOTIFY_CMD to a notifier command (e.g. one that calls osascript) to also get a desktop notification per milestone.

Tests

python -m pytest -q

Full config lives in RunConfig (cih/config.py); role prompts in .claude/agents/.