# outcome The outcome ledger is the second loop. Filing notes earns nothing. The ledger earns trust. Brigade promotes a learned skill only when a real signal proves it helped, and rolls a regressed one back the moment a signal says it broke. The model never grades its own work. The whole ledger is append-only JSON and markdown under `memory/outcome/`, tracked in git and readable without Brigade. ## Recording a result `brigade outcome capture --run-id latest` records the result of a verify run, a real exit code rather than an opinion, against the artifact that produced it. `brigade outcome record` writes a result directly. Both stamp each new record with two facts about the world at capture time: - A `content_fingerprint`, the SHA-256 of the artifact's content, taken from the installed copy first and the registry master as a fallback. - A `context` manifest (Brigade version, interpreter major.minor, platform, plus best-effort harness and model tagged with their source) and a `capability_fingerprint` over the low-cardinality vector `{harness, model_family, python, platform}`. ```bash brigade outcome capture my-skill --run-id latest brigade outcome record my-skill ``` A content hash cannot see the harness a signal was earned under, so the two fingerprints answer different questions: `content_fingerprint` asks "is this signal about the text that still ships?", and `capability_fingerprint` asks "did this signal come from a context like mine?". ## content_fingerprint The fingerprint is what lets an edited artifact re-earn its score instead of coasting on signals for text that no longer exists. - **Skill bundles.** A skill's `content_fingerprint` covers its whole bundle, every file's path plus content hash, skipping `.DS_Store` and the `skill.json` sidecar. Editing a bundled helper invalidates the skill's signals the same way editing `SKILL.md` does. A skill whose only content file is `SKILL.md` hashes to exactly `sha256(SKILL.md)`, byte-identical to the prior scheme, so existing single-file records are never invalidated. - **Card links.** A card's `content_fingerprint` folds in the transitive closure of the cards it `[[links]]`, each reachable card's content hash. Editing a linked card invalidates every card that reaches it. The walk is cycle-safe, deterministic, and tolerant of dead links: a `[[missing]]` link contributes nothing until that card exists, and a card with no resolvable links hashes to exactly `sha256(card content)`. Pre-fingerprint records are grandfathered into the current score, so a never-edited artifact keeps its score and `rank` output stays byte-identical until the artifact is actually edited. ## Ranking `brigade outcome rank` ranks each artifact by a Wilson lower bound, so something that passed twice never outranks something vetted across twenty runs. The default sort drops proven-stale records, those fingerprinted against a different revision, while keeping lifetime counts visible. An edited skill earns its score back against the text that now ships. ```bash brigade outcome rank brigade outcome rank --by-capability brigade outcome rank --recency brigade outcome rank --recency --recency-half-life 30 ``` ### --by-capability `brigade outcome rank --by-capability` sorts by "what worked under my current context". It resolves the current runtime capability and scores each artifact's content-current records earned under it, pulling a thin cohort toward the pooled rate by deterministic shrinkage `(helped + kappa*pooled_rate)/(total + kappa)` with a single documented `kappa=4.0`. The sort key is the shrunk estimate, then on-capability sample size, then the pooled score. Records with no capability fingerprint are grandfathered into the current-capability cohort, so a pre-context ledger's default output stays byte-identical until signals under a different capability accumulate. ### --recency `brigade outcome rank --recency` weights the score it sorts by over recency-weighted counts, so a signal's weight halves every half-life and credit earned under a drifted-away environment fades without rewriting the append-only log. The default half-life is 45 days. Override it with `--recency-half-life DAYS`. Recency applies to the pooled score by default and to the capability-shrunk score with `--by-capability`, and the two flags compose. It is off by default, so rank output stays byte-identical until you ask for it. The promotion ratchet never uses recency. ## Explaining a decision `brigade outcome explain` prints the full signal trail behind any decision: which run produced each result, the threshold it crossed, and the reversible action taken. It also surfaces a per-capability breakdown, so you can see how an artifact scored under each `{harness, model_family, python, platform}` cohort rather than only in aggregate. ```bash brigade outcome explain my-skill ``` ## The ratchet: reconcile `brigade outcome reconcile` is the gate. It is dry-run by default. With `--apply` it installs a skill that earned it across your harnesses, or rolls a regressed one back to its last good version. ```bash brigade outcome reconcile brigade outcome reconcile --apply ``` The ratchet is fingerprint-aware. `outcome reconcile` and `outcome fork` score the current-fingerprint cohort when deciding, so an edited skill must re-earn `install_min_helped` against the text that now ships instead of coasting on signals for text that no longer exists. The decision rules, the thresholds, cooldown, and forward-only ratchet, are unchanged. Only the score fed in narrows. Grandfathering keeps a never-edited artifact's decision, receipt, and output byte-identical to before. Decisions that drop proven-stale evidence carry audit fields: `content_fingerprint`, `lifetime_*`, `stale_records`, and `legacy_records`, so a promotion that ignored old signals shows exactly which ones and why. The default `rank` sort, capability scoring, and recency all read the ledger without touching it. Only `reconcile --apply` and `fork` change what is installed, and both are reversible. Schedule `brigade outcome reconcile` in your own cron to run it hands-off. Outcome scoring does not start a daemon.