akc-cycle

The install entry point for the Agent Knowledge Cycle (AKC) — six phases (Research, Extract, Curate, Promote, Measure, Maintain) plus Scaffold Dissolution. Two install paths, minimal to full:

1. Rules file (minimal, recommended floor) — a single behavioral rules file, loaded every session, that distills the cycle into actionable principles an agent can follow through natural conversation, without installing any skills.
2. Claude Code plugin (skill layer) — the nine cycle-phase skills plus the two subagents they invoke, installed via the plugin marketplace.

Install

Path 1 — Rules file (minimal)

# Copy into your global rules directory
cp rules/common/akc-cycle.md ~/.claude/rules/common/akc-cycle.md

Any agent harness that loads a rules directory each session works the same way — point the copy at wherever your harness reads rules from. This path is harness-agnostic and is all you need for the cycle to run.

Path 2 — Claude Code plugin (skill layer)

/plugin marketplace add shimo4228/akc-cycle
/plugin install akc-cycle@akc-cycle

Installs nine skills bound to the six phases — search-first (Research), learn-eval (Extract), skill-stocktake / skill-health / rules-stocktake (Curate), rules-distill (Promote), skill-comply (Measure), context-sync / repo-asset-stocktake (Maintain) — plus the adr-writer and codemap-writer subagents they invoke.

Note: Claude Code plugins cannot ship always-loaded rules, so the plugin does not include the rules file. The rules file (Path 1) is the cycle's floor; the plugin adds the deeper how-to layer on top. The skills are scaffolding by design — see Scaffold Dissolution below.

What it gives you

Each phase is a behavioral principle with an explicit trigger condition:

Phase	Principle	Trigger
Research	Search broadly, filter by signal — define the signal before the search	A task that adds a dependency or creates a utility that might already exist
Extract	Capture reusable patterns from sessions	End of a productive session, after a hard-won debugging victory
Curate	Audit accumulated knowledge for redundancy, staleness, silence	When skills/rules grow noticeably, or a reference breaks
Promote	Elevate recurring patterns to rules	The same advice keeps resurfacing across skills and conversation
Measure	Verify behavioral change quantitatively	After adding or modifying a rule
Maintain	Keep documentation roles clean	After major refactoring, when context files bloat

It closes with Scaffold Dissolution: these rules are scaffolding, and success is measured not by rule count but by whether the cycle runs naturally once internalized — by absorption inward (into conversation patterns) or downward (into the harness substrate).

Syncing from the harness

The canonical copies of every published component — the rule file, the nine skills, and the two subagents — live in the author's live Claude Code harness (~/.claude/). This repository is a one-way publication mirror; the sync script publishes a fixed allowlist and aborts if any listed component is missing or lacks its origin marker:

scripts/sync-from-local.sh --dry-run   # report differences only
scripts/sync-from-local.sh             # apply to working tree (never commits)

About this repository

This repository belongs to the Agent Knowledge Cycle (AKC) research line — a Zenodo-citable six-phase bidirectional growth loop (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19200726) for sustaining intent alignment between an AI agent and its operator over time. The AKC repository holds the judgment lineage (ADRs) and the concept-level knowledge graph; this repository is the cycle's install target — the rules file plus the skill-layer plugin. Each cycle skill also has its own standalone repository under @shimo4228. AKC is one of three research lines by @shimo4228, alongside Contemplative Agent (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19212118) — autonomous agents grounded in four contemplative axioms — and Agent Attribution Practice (AAP) (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19652013) — harness-neutral ADRs on accountability distribution.

License

MIT