prior-art

Prior Art & Reference Patterns Skill

Search → Audit → Adapt → Clean

This skill is the procedure the ambient Outward-Search Reflex invokes (ambient.md §"Outward-Search Reflex"). The mandate is ambient — every walker that reaches a design fork, a missing fact, or a non-trivial pattern runs this procedure before halting. The skill documents the how: tiered search, shallow-clone workspace hygiene, ≥2-reference grounding, and cleanup before every commit.

Adversarial path anchor. This lens is also invoked on the Verification Dual's adversarial path (rules.md §2 Invariant 1): the Dual's thesis — externalize correctness, never trust the generator's confidence — applies to external knowledge. Internal confidence is not evidence; a context-free search in decorrelated sources (production code, RFCs, literature) closes the condition where no deterministic evaluator exists.

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1. Search Hierarchy Directive

When addressing a non-trivial architectural or algorithmic task, you must systematically search for existing work using the following priority tiers:

graph TD
    A["Start Search Walk"] --> B{"Tier 1: Production Code Available & Permissive?"}
    B -- "Yes" --> C["Audit Code & Extract Invariants (MIT/Apache-2.0)"]
    B -- "No / Restricted (GPL)" --> D{"Tier 2: Official Standards / RFCs Available?"}
    D -- "Yes" --> E["Map Normative Protocol Constraints from Specification"]
    D -- "No" --> F{"Tier 3: Academic Papers / Formal Specifications (arXiv, TLA+)?"}
    F -- "Yes" --> G["Extract Mathematical Theorems & State Transitions"]
    F -- "No" --> H["Halt Sequence: Insufficient Constraints to Warop IBC"]

Tier 1: Production-Grade Code (Permissively Licensed)

• Search for active open-source projects on GitHub that implement the pattern or algorithm.
• Look for high maintenance signals: active commits, issues resolved, star density, and test suite coverage.
• Confirm permissive licensing (e.g., MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD-3-Clause). Do not read copy-restricted code (e.g., GPL, AGPL, proprietary) to avoid licensing contamination.