miaodx/talos/escalate

Status: v0 scaffold — unverified. Behavior not yet validated end-to-end in this

repo. See `../../STATUS.md`.

escalate

The keep/revert ratchet is greedy and autonomous. Two conditions require escalation.

Trigger 1 — safety-critical / high-risk change

If a proposed change touches a safety-relevant path (planner, controller, anything that could cause real-world harm) or is otherwise high-risk:

• Stop autonomous merging. Treat the result as candidate evidence only.
• Open a human-review request with: the diff, the measured effect, the evaluator

used, and the residual risks.

• Proceed only after a human approves. See `../../AGENTS.md`.

Trigger 2 — the loop has plateaued (local-search trap)

If N consecutive experiments fail to improve the metric beyond measured noise, the greedy ratchet is likely stuck in a local optimum (see `../../docs/pitfalls.md`). Switch strategy:

• Factorial grid — sweep several variants in parallel to catch interaction

effects (see `../../src/talos/orchestration.py`).

• Tree search — branch from the best node, not just the latest (AIDE-style).
• Evolutionary search — a population with novelty rejection (ShinkaEvolve /

OpenEvolve-style) when single-lineage search is exhausted.

• Or hand a moonshot to a human to seed a bigger architectural bet.

Output

Either a human-review request (Trigger 1) or a switch to a broader search procedure (Trigger 2), recorded in the ledger so the change of strategy is auditable.