Darwin Engine — Self-Evolving Civilization (25 Phases)

The skill population, memories, and swarm agents evolve autonomously: fitness from real usage signals, live trials in production cron jobs, speciation from harvested knowledge, energy economy, cross-machine grid duels, metacognitive gap analysis, and a 30-minute autonomous loop that runs everything without human input.

Quick reference (repo root)

# THE one command - full autonomous cycle (also runs via cron every 30 min)
python scripts/autonomous_loop.py --loop

# skill evolution only
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --autopilot
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --full

# trials & tournaments
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --trial skillA skillA__mutX
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --trials
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --compete

# predation & quarantine
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --predate            # dry-run
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --predate-apply      # real duels
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --quarantine         # dry-run
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --rollback N

# metacognition & species
python scripts/darwin_metacognition.py --introspect
python scripts/darwin_metacognition.py --evolve-gaps --apply
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --explain <skill>
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --status

# memory darwinism
python scripts/memory_darwinism.py --scan --duel --cull --stats

# swarm os
python scripts/swarm_os.py --status
python scripts/swarm_os.py --tick
python scripts/swarm_migration.py --emigrate worker target

# grid (cross-machine natural selection)
python scripts/darwin_grid_github.py --publish <machine-id>
python scripts/darwin_grid_github.py --list
python scripts/darwin_grid_github.py --duel <machine-id>

# reporting
python scripts/darwin_engine.py --report
python scripts/darwin_weekly_report.py --post
python scripts/darwin_dashboard.py --port 8910   # live dashboard

Exit codes

0 = ok, 1 = error, 2 = evolution made changes (SUCCESS for cron).

Full chronicle

See PHASES.md — all 25 phases with live evidence.

Pitfalls

• Exit code 2 is success-with-changes, not failure.
• Starvation: workers with energy <= 0 die in tick (last worker never dies).
• Predation tie-break: fitness rank decides when both duel participants exit 0 — only a functional prey win saves it.
• Harvested blueprint slugs come from _pretty_slug (readable names).
• Memory duels need opposite polarity texts to count as contradictions.
• Grid genome is only as fresh as the last --publish (cron runs every 6h).