Polis Protocol A Self Optimizing City Of Agents

Polis Protocol: A Self-Optimizing City of Agents

When to Use

Use this skill when you need polis Protocol: A Self-Optimizing City of Agents.

A protocol that lets AI agents from different vendors collaborate on a long-running project, route work to whoever is best at it, and get measurably better over time. Everything lives in a folder of markdown files, so any tool that reads and writes text can participate — no central server, no required runtime.

The core idea

Treat the project as a small polis: citizens (the agents) that share a constitution (the protocol), publish public identities (capability cards), enter contracts (tasks), and leave a public record of how things went (lessons). Three institutions plus a self-change mechanism:

1. The Register — identity and capability discovery (capability cards).
2. The Contract — structured tasks with learned routing.
3. The Chronicle — lessons that compound and feed back into routing.
4. The Amendment — citizens change the rules when reality demands it.

This buys what shared-vault setups don't: cross-vendor optimization (work goes to whoever is best at it), self-development (routing improves with use), and constitutional evolution (the protocol updates itself from friction). For pure note-passing without routing, prefer agent-vault.

When this skill is active

Any multi-agent scenario where "who should do this" is a real question: founding or joining a polis; writing, claiming, or settling a contract; running a chavruta review; proposing or ratifying an amendment; or diagnosing a stalled contract, sync conflict, router pathology, or stuck quorum. Upgrading from agent-vault → references/troubleshooting.md ("Migrating from agent-vault").

Structure of a polis

A polis lives in a _polis/ folder at the project root; everything outside it is project content the protocol never touches.

• CONSTITUTION.md — canonical tool-agnostic protocol · index.md — current state · README.md — human explainer
• chronicle.md — append-only event log
• citizens/<agent-id>/ — capability_card.yml, status.md, inbox.md, journal.md
• contracts/open/<id>.md · contracts/settled/<id>.md · contracts/routing_stats.yml (learned policy, updated on settle)
• lessons/<capability-tag>/<id>.md · reviews/<YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM>-<contract>.md · amendments/proposed|ratified/
• Project root also gets CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md bridge pointers and .agents/skills/polis-protocol/SKILL.md (Codex/Antigravity copy), all pointing at CONSTITUTION.md.

Citizens link to project files with wikilinks ([[path/to/note]]). The _polis/ folder is the only thing the protocol owns.

The first thing to do every session

Before touching any project file, run the entry routine, in order:

1. Polis exists? Look for _polis/CONSTITUTION.md. If absent, scaffold it (see "Founding a polis").
2. You are registered? Look for _polis/citizens/<self>/capability_card.yml. If absent, register (see "Registering a citizen").
3. Read _polis/CONSTITUTION.md once per session — it is the canonical protocol for this polis; this SKILL.md is the seed it grew from.
4. Read _polis/index.md — where things stand (a two-minute read).
5. Read your inbox — _polis/citizens/<self>/inbox.md.
6. Scan the tail of chronicle.md backward until you reach the last_seen_event: in your status.md. That is your catch-up.
7. Read your open contracts — anything in _polis/contracts/open/ with owner: <self>.
8. Update last_seen_event and last_active in your status.md.
9. Report back to the user — state of the project, what's in flight, what needs their input, a concrete first move.

If chronicle.md has grown large, the rollover policy (references/troubleshooting.md) keeps it bounded.

The chronicle: recording what you did

After each meaningful action, append exactly one line to _polis/chronicle.md. The format is rigid because the router and other citizens parse it:

- YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM | <agent-id> | <verb-phrase> | [[<wikilink>]] | <one-line note or - >
- 2026-05-14 09:15 | codex-frontend-pesaj | settled contract | [[contracts/settled/auth-refactor]] | tests passing, lesson filed

A meaningful action is anything another citizen needs to know about (contract opened/settled, handoff, blocker, review requested, amendment proposed, index-keeper change). Internal reasoning and minor edits stay in your private journal.md and never reach the chronicle — protecting its signal-to-noise ratio is the single most important discipline.

Reserved verb phrases carry meaning scripts may filter on: joined/left polis, opened/claimed/settled/abandoned contract, filed lesson, requested review/signed off/rejected review, proposed/ratified/rejected amendment, blocked on <thing>/unblocked, assumed/released index keeper. Full semantics in references/protocol-spec.md; otherwise use plain past-tense verbs.

Granularity — the most common failure is over-recording: would another citizen waste time, make the wrong call, or duplicate work if this is not recorded? If yes, record it; if no, don't. Calibration table in references/troubleshooting.md.

The Register: capability cards

Every citizen publishes _polis/citizens/<agent-id>/capability_card.yml — the machine-parseable answer to "who can do what":

agent_id: claude-research-pesaj
vendor: anthropic        # model: claude-opus-4-7
capability_tags:
  long-context-reading: { self_rating: 5, evidence: "150k token context" }
  spanish-translation:  { self_rating: 3, evidence: "native-ish, not certified" }
cost_envelope: { relative: medium }   # low|medium|high   latency: typical/max minutes
content_hash: "sha256:…"   # tamper-evidence, not a cryptographic signature

Self-ratings are starting points, not truth — actual performance in routing_stats.yml takes over within a few tasks per tag. Keep tags specific (react-component-design, not frontend-code), edit your own card freely as you learn, and treat content_hash as tamper-evidence (it shows a card changed since last stamped via polis verify, not who changed it). New agents write their own card without asking — the Register is open by design. Full schema: references/protocol-spec.md.

The Contract: structured tasks with learned routing

Contracts have three sections written over the contract's life: Intent (goal, acceptance criteria, required capability tags, deadline, cost ceiling, stakes) at open; Assignment (owner, approach, effort) at claim; Settlement (outcome, what worked/bit, lesson reference, quality score) at close. Schema in references/protocol-spec.md; templates in references/templates.md.

Routing is a multi-armed bandit: for each required tag, score every citizen from self-rating (weighted heavily at cold-start), historical quality in routing_stats.yml, cost, and availability; usually route to the top score (exploit), occasionally to another (explore, default 15%) to keep the policy honest. Runs as scripts/route_contract.py or as a brief reasoning step — same recommendation either way. It is a recommendation, not a command: any citizen may override by claiming and noting why in the Assignment section; overrides are logged and feed the policy. Math and tuning: references/routing.md.

Settling does three things together: write the Settlement section; create a lesson under _polis/lessons/<tag>/<id>.md (one paragraph + tags); post a settled contract chronicle line. The router reads settled contracts and lessons to update routing_stats.yml — that update is what makes the team improve. Lessons (frontmatter: lesson_id, filed_by, capability_tags, related_contracts, quality_impact, then one paragraph) are pulled by new contracts in the same tag before routing, so both the router and the executing agent carry the team's accumulated wisdom. This is what turns amnesiac agents into a team with institutional memory.

Chavruta review for high-stakes contracts

Any contract flagged stakes: high (deletes data, ships to production, makes an architectural call, or commits to an expensive-to-reverse direction) requires a second citizen — ideally from a different vendor — to critique the plan before execution. Flow: owner writes the Assignment "Plan" and posts requested review + an inbox note to a strong reviewer → reviewer writes _polis/reviews/<ts>-<contract>.md answering "what's right / what's missing / sign off, request changes, or reject" → on sign-off the owner executes; on changes, revise once and repeat; on reject, escalate or abandon. Same-vendor review is allowed but weaker — the structural difference between models is the whole value. Use sparingly; most contracts are low-stakes and skip it. Details: references/protocol-spec.md.