sakanaai/ai-scientist-v3/edit-program

What the skill is about

Create the next program variant safely for iterative optimization experiments.

When to use the skill

• After reviewing the latest evaluation results (or at the very beginning).
• When you want to test a new idea without overwriting previous attempts.

What to do

1. Find the next unused program index <idx> from {{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_<idx>.
2. Clone the full previous program project (program_<idx-1>) into the new program_<idx> with the trusted clone utility:

• ${TASK_PYTHON:-$WRAPPER_PYTHON} -I -m src.investigation.program_clone --from "{{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_<idx-1>" --to "{{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_<idx>"
• The utility creates the destination and applies the program_spec.toml copy rules without carrying evaluator artifacts.
• For every source after program_0, the utility refuses to clone until canonical evaluation and mirrored rubric artifacts prove the previous iteration is complete.
• Do not use cp, cp -r, cp -a, rsync, or any other recursive copy. If the trusted clone fails, stop the attempt and report the error; do not fall back to another clone method.

1. Edit code under {{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_<idx>/src/** (and update program_spec.toml if you change entrypoint or language).
2. Keep all older program_<idx> directories unchanged.
3. Never edit {{TASK_DIR}}/evaluate.py or {{TASK_DIR}}/capture.py.
4. Before creating program_<idx>, ensure previous evaluated program_<idx-1> already has:

• metrics.json
• correct.json
• program_<idx-1>/rubric_status.json
• {{RESULTS_DIR}}/rubric_status.json mirrored to that latest evaluated artifact

1. If latest rubric status has overall_pass: true, stop; do not create another program directory.
2. Single-attempt evaluation cap: never create/evaluate beyond program_{{MAX_PROGRAM_EVALS_PER_ATTEMPT}}.

Example usage

${TASK_PYTHON:-$WRAPPER_PYTHON} -I -m src.investigation.program_clone --from "{{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_2" --to "{{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_3"
# edit {{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_3/src/** (and {{RESULTS_DIR}}/program_3/program_spec.toml if needed)