steer-every

/steer-every — one steer file, round after round, a settle between

This is the STRANGER-SAFE /steer-every. It ships inside the ThetaCog npm package and the VS Code extension, and every command below is a door: npx thetacog-mcp <door>. A door not listed here does not exist here yet; say not run — no <name> door rather than guessing.

The doors

The shape (learned 2026-10-28, keep it)

1. The file comes first. A steer file carries one line SCOPE: C1,C2,… (the rows each round works). Rows are added to the file; a track keeps one file. SCOPE is re-read every round, so promoting a row needs no restart.
2. No chat in the loop. Each round is one steer until --max-cycles 1 with turn-capped headless workers. A chat-scheduled tick re-reads the whole conversation every time; this loop spends only what its workers spend.
3. A round, then a settle. After every round the loop calls mem --settle: reap what nobody is coming back for, unload every model ollama holds, then rest at least --every-min, on until CALM, never past --max-rest-min. CALM is both: 1-min load per core at most 0.4, and under 100 swap-ins/s. So the period is round time plus rest, by design, never a fixed slot.
4. Swap used is never waited on. It sits at 85–97 % on a busy Mac, calm or not, and shrinks only when the processes holding its pages exit. The settle line names the biggest holders; stop the ones that are yours and idle (a dev server nobody is using), reload the apps.
5. The budget is projected before a round. The loop stops when spent plus its largest round so far would pass --budget-usd. Every round so far has run past its per-worker ceiling, so the ceiling alone never caps the spend.