183. Evolution is scheduled at the episode boundary and carried out by a session; nothing promotes itself
Context
ADR 0118 derives routed candidates without a model and leaves acting on a route to a later milestone; the owner asked (2026-10-16) that /evolve run at the right time without being called. ADR 0091 makes promotion a person's act.
Decision
The boundary derives a readiness verdict (skip, defer, run) from recurrence, routes, a cooldown and a budget declared in policy, records it even when skipped, and the next session is told; a 'run' is executed by a session through the evolve skill; changes it makes are not sources for the deriver; promotion and merging remain acts.
Alternatives rejected
- A session-end hook that runs evolve itself
- A manual 'review this session' prompt as the mechanism
- Promoting candidates automatically
- Another orchestration system
Consequences
Amends ADR 0118's non-scope; four sessions meeting one snag yield one correction to the mechanism rather than four notes.
Sources
Promoted on 2026-10-18 from the owner's ChatGPT project (workspace chatgpt-majordomus, issue I3100). The owner's acceptance is at chatgpt-majordomus:c274#0; accepting this record is still the owner's act.
chatgpt-majordomus:c197#8chatgpt-majordomus:c274#4