ROSClaw-How

Online deadlock-breaker for agents stuck on engineering-optimization tasks, with a feedback loop that lets the assets refine themselves over time.

Sister project: rosclaw-know (offline refinery that produces the bridge_index.json + code_patterns/ assets this service serves at runtime, and consumes the outcome JSONL this service exports to drive the next publish cycle).

What it does

When an agent's verifier score plateaus or a physical safety symptom appears in its error log, this service injects a small, targeted hint into its next prompt. Three strategies, decided server-side:

Strategy	Trigger	Returned payload
`SAFETY`	Error log mentions a safety symptom	Hard-coded constraint (~50–100 tokens)
`FREE_EXPLORATION`	First 3 iterations, or score improving	Empty string — keep exploring
`CATALYST`	Score plateau / regression	Cross-domain analogy + diff (≤ 400 tokens)

Runtime is pure rules + a single vector lookup — zero LLM calls. The CATALYST path returns an injection_id so the agent can later report whether the hint helped (POST /wiki/v1/prompt/feedback); the resulting outcomes drive per-pattern uplift statistics and soft-deprecation of under-performing patterns.

Feedback loop (the “push + learn” cycle)

                  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
                  │ rosclaw-know  (offline refinery)        │
                  │   awesome_fetcher → new raw corpus      │
                  │   active_learning → autodraft → ingest  │
                  │   feedback_distill.py → pattern_metrics │
                  │   bridge_reweighter   → priority=-1     │
                  │                                         │
                  │   writes bridge_index.json (+priority)  │
                  └───────────────────┬─────────────────────┘
                                      │ asset publish
                                      ▼
   ┌─────────────────────────── rosclaw-how ───────────────────────────┐
   │ asset_loader        delta-sync bridge_index → SeekDB               │
   │ SemanticRouter      skips clusters with priority < 0               │
   │                                                                    │
   │ POST /wiki/v1/prompt/build       → snippet + injection_id          │
   │ POST /wiki/v1/prompt/feedback    → post_score, delta_score         │
   │ GET  /wiki/v1/stats              → bucketed uplift / win_rate      │
   │ GET  /wiki/v1/blind_spots        → recurring Unknown_Error gaps    │
   │ GET  /wiki/v1/outcomes/export    → NDJSON stream for offline pipe  │
   │ POST /wiki/v1/admin/reload       → hot-reload assets               │
   │ POST /wiki/v1/admin/promote      → maturity gate (staging→prod)    │
   └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                      │ NDJSON export
                                      ▼
                  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
                  │ rosclaw-know   data/exports/*.jsonl     │
                  │   distill_feedback.py → re-publish ↻    │
                  └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Closed-loop validation: 6/6 stuck-rollout scenarios pass the replay benchmark (scripts/replay_benchmark.py on the rosclaw-know side) — bad patterns get priority=-1, vanish from the next CATALYST lookup, and good patterns keep their slot.

Quick start

cd rosclaw-how
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

cp .env.example .env
# (optional) symlink the assets from a finished rosclaw-know run:
ln -s ../../rosclaw-know/data/assets data/assets

# Run tests
pytest -q

# Start the server
python scripts/run_server.py
# → POST http://localhost:47820/wiki/v1/prompt/build

Explainability and health (v1.3)

rosclaw-how doctor
rosclaw-how explain <advice-id>

The explanation is a structured decision record: selected and rejected knowledge, compatibility state, warnings, unknown context, and alternatives. It never emits private chain-of-thought. Incompatible candidates cannot be selected; an all-incompatible set produces an explicit abstention.

Deploying on a memory-constrained host

pyseekdb embedded mode boots a small OceanBase-like observer in-process (~1.5–2 GB RAM after warmup, plus a 4 GB datafile reservation on disk). If you are running on a host where another embedded SeekDB instance is already up (e.g., the legacy rosclaw-wiki service), or where the box is too small to fit a second observer, switch to server mode:

# Or use a remote cluster
SEEKDB_MODE=server
SEEKDB_HOST=10.0.0.5
SEEKDB_PORT=2881
SEEKDB_TENANT=sys           # OceanBase tenant name
SEEKDB_USER=root
SEEKDB_PASSWORD=…

The SAFETY and FREE_EXPLORATION paths never touch SeekDB, so they remain available even when the database is unreachable. The CATALYST path falls back to InMemoryRouter (numpy cosine over bridge_index.json) when ROSCLAW_HOW_ROUTER_BACKEND=inmemory is set — useful when SeekDB is down or absent.

Auto-create database

On first boot, seekdb_client._ensure_database_exists runs an idempotent CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS <SEEKDB_DATABASE> via pyseekdb.AdminClient before opening the data-plane client. This means a fresh embedded SeekDB (which only ships the test database by default) bootstraps cleanly with SEEKDB_DATABASE=rosclaw_how without manual setup.

API

All endpoints share the /wiki/v1 prefix kept for compatibility with the legacy rosclaw-wiki API.

`POST /wiki/v1/prompt/build`

Auth: X-API-Key.

Request:

{
  "error_log": "ERROR: torque overflow on joint 2",
  "previous_scores": [0.42, 0.47, 0.47, 0.46],
  "current_iteration": 4
}

Response on a CATALYST hit (the injection_id is the handle for the follow-up feedback call):

{
  "prompt_snippet": "## 🔧 Engineering Heuristics from ROSClaw-How ...",
  "injected": true,
  "strategy": "CATALYST",
  "symptom": "Oscillation_Divergence",
  "matched_symptom": "Commanded velocity diverges to ±∞ ...",
  "similarity": 0.5864,
  "injection_id": "0fd3eb2bd37c461490c4f43def243512",
  "pattern_id": "pattern_output_saturation_clamp",
  "latency_ms": 199
}

When the matched cluster is in staging (priority=0), the response includes is_staging: true so the agent knows the pattern has not yet been promoted to production:

{
  "strategy": "CATALYST",
  "is_staging": true,
  "pattern_id": "pattern_20260518_1bfb99e13c"
}

Production clusters (priority=1 or unset) omit the key entirely for backward compatibility.

SAFETY and FREE_EXPLORATION responses omit injection_id / pattern_id.

`POST /wiki/v1/prompt/feedback`

Auth: X-API-Key. Returns 204 No Content on success, 404 if the id is unknown.

{
  "injection_id": "0fd3eb2bd37c461490c4f43def243512",
  "post_score": 0.83,
  "iterations_to_resolve": 3,
  "agent_notes": "anti-windup clamp fixed it"
}

The server computes delta_score = post_score - pre_score (where pre_score is the last entry from the original previous_scores).

`GET /wiki/v1/stats`

Public, no auth. Aggregates finalised outcomes (those that have received feedback) per pattern_id, grouped by maturity bucket:

{
  "staging": {
    "pattern_20260518_1bfb99e13c": {
      "n": 5,
      "avg_uplift": 0.142,
      "win_rate": 0.8,
      "last_seen_iso": "2026-05-18T19:14:22+00:00"
    }
  },
  "production": {
    "pattern_output_saturation_clamp": {
      "n": 8,
      "avg_uplift": 0.157,
      "win_rate": 0.875,
      "last_seen_iso": "2026-05-18T19:14:22+00:00"
    }
  },
  "demoted": {
    "pattern_bad_habit": {
      "n": 12,
      "avg_uplift": -0.03,
      "win_rate": 0.25,
      "last_seen_iso": "2026-05-18T19:14:22+00:00"
    }
  },
  "unbucketed": {}
}

win_rate = sum(delta_score > 0.05) / n.

The unbucketed catch-all holds pattern_ids whose owning cluster was deleted or renamed since the outcome was recorded.

`GET /wiki/v1/outcomes/export`

Auth: X-API-Key. Streams every outcome (including still-pending ones) as newline-delimited JSON. Query params:

since — ISO 8601 timestamp; only rows with ts >= since are emitted.
limit — optional row cap (max 100 000).

curl -H "X-API-Key: $ROSCLAW_HOW_API_KEY" \
     "http://127.0.0.1:47820/wiki/v1/outcomes/export?since=2026-05-17T00:00:00+00:00" \
     -o outcomes.jsonl

The same content is also produced by scripts/export_outcomes.py, which is a thin CLI wrapper around this endpoint (it used to read SeekDB directly but deadlocked against the embedded server's process-exclusive lock — fixed in Phase 4).

`GET /healthz`

Public, no auth. Operational snapshot:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "auth_enabled": true,
  "seekdb_mode": "embedded",
  "router_backend": "seekdb",
  "cluster_count": 349,
  "embedding_dim": 384,
  "bridge_index_mtime": "2026-05-18T18:28:04+00:00",
  "similarity_floor": 0.5,
  "blind_spot_count": 0
}

blind_spot_count is the number of Unknown_Error prefix buckets that have crossed the recurrence threshold within the active sliding window (see GET /wiki/v1/blind_spots below).

`POST /wiki/v1/admin/reload`

Auth required (X-API-Key). Re-reads bridge_index.json and code_patterns/ into SeekDB without bouncing the server. Body is optional:

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:47820/wiki/v1/admin/reload \
     -H "X-API-Key: $ROSCLAW_HOW_API_KEYS" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{}'             # incremental (delta) reload

{"rebuild": true} drops both SeekDB collections first; default is an idempotent incremental upsert. The loader fingerprints each cluster (standard_name + sorted patterns + sorted keywords + canonical-JSON analogies + priority) with SHA-256 — unchanged rows skip the sentence-transformer encode call entirely. On a 350-cluster bundle this turns a ~4-minute full reload into a ~20-second no-op when nothing has changed.

Rows whose IDs disappeared from the bridge — or whose priority flipped to -1 (soft-deprecated) — are deleted from SeekDB. The response exposes both the alive totals and the per-bucket counters so dashboards can show "what just happened":

{
  "symptoms": 349,
  "patterns": 352,
  "demoted_skipped": 3,
  "symptoms_detail": {"added": 16, "updated": 0, "unchanged": 333, "deleted": 0},
  "patterns_detail": {"added": 0, "updated": 0, "unchanged": 352, "deleted": 0},
  "rebuild": false,
  "duration_ms": 23900
}

After loading, the cached SemanticRouter is rebuilt synchronously so /healthz immediately reports the fresh cluster_count / router_backend (rather than a null window until the next CATALYST request).

`POST /wiki/v1/admin/promote`

Auth required (X-API-Key). Bump or set a cluster's maturity priority.

Body accepts exactly one of delta (relative change) or priority (absolute set). The lookup key is the pattern_id (one of the *.md files in code_patterns/); the endpoint walks bridge_index.json to find the owning cluster whose associated_patterns list contains the given pattern_id.

# Relative bump (capped to [-1, +1])
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:47820/wiki/v1/admin/promote \
     -H "X-API-Key: $ROSCLAW_HOW_API_KEYS" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"pattern_id": "pattern_20260518_1bfb99e13c", "delta": 1}'

# Absolute set (also capped)
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:47820/wiki/v1/admin/promote \
     -H "X-API-Key: $ROSCLAW_HOW_API_KEYS" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"pattern_id": "pattern_20260518_1bfb99e13c", "priority": 1}'

Response:

{
  "pattern_id": "pattern_20260518_1bfb99e13c",
  "cluster_id": "20260518_1bfb99e13c",
  "old_priority": 0,
  "new_priority": 1
}

On success, the endpoint:

Atomically updates bridge_index.json
Appends one JSONL row to data/audit_log.jsonl
Re-upserts the cluster's metadata in SeekDB so the router sees the change immediately
Invalidates the cached router

Priority semantics:

Value	Meaning
`-1`	Demoted — runtime skips (soft-deprecated)
`0`	Staging — runtime injects with `is_staging=true`
`+1`	Production — normal, no flag
unset	Backward compat — treated as production

Returns 404 when pattern_id is not found in any cluster, 422 when both/neither of delta/priority is provided.

`GET /wiki/v1/blind_spots`

Public, no auth. Sliding-window summary of recurring Unknown_Error prefixes — i.e. errors the catalyst layer keeps seeing but has no matching cluster for. This is the work-list for the rosclaw-know triage queue: each entry corresponds to a pattern we should be teaching.

{
  "window_seconds": 3600,
  "threshold": 3,
  "active": [
    {
      "prefix_hash": "1a3c…",
      "count": 7,
      "first_seen": "2026-05-18T19:18:00+00:00",
      "last_seen": "2026-05-18T19:54:12+00:00",
      "sample_excerpt": "RuntimeError: undocumented quirk in controller stage",
      "is_blind_spot": true
    }
  ],
  "total_unique_prefixes": 4,
  "total_events": 13
}

Each crossing event also appends one JSONL row to data/blind_spots.jsonl (configurable via ROSCLAW_HOW_BLIND_SPOTS_PATH). A prefix is only emitted once per window — if it goes quiet for the window length and recurs later, the next crossing produces a fresh row.

Tuning knobs (env vars, defaults shown):

Variable	Default	Purpose
`ROSCLAW_HOW_BLIND_SPOT_WINDOW`	`3600`	sliding-window length in seconds
`ROSCLAW_HOW_BLIND_SPOT_THRESHOLD`	`3`	events needed to flag a prefix
`ROSCLAW_HOW_BLIND_SPOTS_PATH`	`data/blind_spots.jsonl`	persistent log

`GET /ui`

Public, no auth. Single-page operator dashboard. Vanilla HTML + JS, no external CDN; polls /healthz, /wiki/v1/stats, and /wiki/v1/blind_spots every 5 seconds and renders:

Health KPIs — version, router backend, cluster count, embedding dim, similarity floor, bridge mtime, live blind-spot count.
Pattern uplift table — sortable by bucket (staging / production / demoted / unbucketed), per-pattern n / avg_uplift / win_rate / last_seen with an inline bar for the uplift magnitude.
Blind spots — current recurring Unknown_Error prefixes (only those past threshold), with their hash, last-seen timestamp, and a truncated sample excerpt for triage.

Useful as a smoke-screen during deployments and as a low-friction view into the feedback loop without spinning up a full Grafana stack.

Architecture

rosclaw-know (offline)                rosclaw-how (online, this repo)
─────────────────                     ───────────────────────────────
Reads  6,097 wiki/*.md                Reads SeekDB at runtime
Writes data/assets/bridge_index.json  Loads assets at startup
       data/assets/code_patterns/*    Serves build / feedback / stats / export
Reads  data/exports/*.jsonl           Writes outcome rows on feedback
       (closing the loop)
─────────────────                     ───────────────────────────────
                          ▶ ▶ ▶  assets travel from know → how
                          ◀ ◀ ◀  outcomes travel from how → know

Source layout:

src/rosclaw_how/
  __init__.py
  api.py              FastAPI app: 9 endpoints
  asset_loader.py     Startup load + --rebuild; delta-sync with content-hash
  auth.py             API-key header check (single-tenant in v0.1)
  blind_spots.py      Sliding-window tracker for Unknown_Error prefixes
  config.py           Typed wrapper around .env
  error_normalizer.py Pure regex: error_log → 10 standardized symptom labels
  inmemory_router.py  RAM-frugal numpy cosine fallback (no SeekDB needed)
  outcomes.py         injection_outcomes persistence + per-pattern aggregation
  semantic_router.py  SeekDB vector search + inspiration assembly + priority gate
  seekdb_client.py    pyseekdb wrapper; auto-creates database; embedded+server
  state_router.py     SAFETY / FREE_EXPLORATION / CATALYST classifier

Router backends

ROSCLAW_HOW_ROUTER_BACKEND chooses:

auto (default) — seekdb when datafile exists, else inmemory
seekdb — explicit production path; raises on init failure
inmemory — explicit RAM fallback; reads bridge_index.json directly

Both routers expose the same find_nearest() contract plus cluster_count and embedding_dim properties (surfaced on /healthz).

Runtime priority gate

When rosclaw-know's bridge_reweighter decides a cluster has been hurting agents (negative aggregate uplift with sufficient n), it writes "priority": -1 into the cluster entry of bridge_index.json. After the next asset publish:

asset_loader carries the field into symptom_index metadata.
SemanticRouter.find_nearest over-fetches top-3K results and walks them in similarity order, skipping any cluster with priority < 0.
InMemoryRouter.find_nearest applies the same filter against its in-RAM matrix.

So a soft-deprecated cluster vanishes from CATALYST hits on the next asset-loader cycle without any agent code change.

What this replaces

The previous rosclaw-wiki cloud API hosted 17 declarative-knowledge endpoints (search, judgments, code generation, etc.). Empirically, agents in Frontier-Engineering's optimization loop regressed ~20% when they pulled from those endpoints — they got encyclopedic context when they needed a poke.

rosclaw-how is the focused replacement: nine endpoints, three strategies, ≤400 tokens per CATALYST snippet, no LLM in the hot path, and a feedback loop that keeps the asset bundle honest.

Runtime Intervention v1

When a robot or agent task fails at runtime, rosclaw-how can emit a structured, minimal correction instead of an explanatory paragraph.

CLI:

rosclaw-how-cli advise \
  --task g1_kick_ball \
  --failure torso_pitch_overshoot \
  --sandbox-decision tests/fixtures/sandbox_block.json \
  --runtime-state tests/fixtures/runtime/g1_pitch_overshoot.json \
  --memory-evidence tests/fixtures/memory/g1_kick_memory.json \
  --output .rosclaw/how/interventions

API:

curl -X POST http://localhost:47820/runtime/v1/advise \
  -H "X-API-Key: $ROSCLAW_HOW_API_KEY" \
  -d @tests/fixtures/advise_request.json

New endpoints:

POST /runtime/v1/advise
GET /runtime/v1/interventions/{intervention_id}
POST /runtime/v1/interventions/{intervention_id}/feedback
POST /runtime/v1/inline/apply

The existing /wiki/v1/prompt/build and /runtime/v1/intervene endpoints are left unchanged.

Closed-loop verification

Two harnesses, each tuned to a different cost/coverage budget:

scripts/verify_how_seekdb.py — strict 4-case verifier that pre-flights /healthz (refuses non-seekdb backends), then asserts each case is CATALYST with similarity ≥ similarity_floor and latency_ms < 1500. Writes data/benchmarks/how_ab_seekdb/summary.json.
scripts/verify_how_lite.py — A/B against DeepSeek for 4 stuck cases (control: FREE_EXPLORATION; treatment: CATALYST). Used by the rosclaw-know side's replay_benchmark.py to drive 50+ synthetic rollouts end-to-end through build → inject → feedback → distill → re-publish.

export ROSCLAW_HOW_API_KEY=rw_sk_dev_local

# A/B against the deployed service
python scripts/verify_how_seekdb.py

# Faster smoke against DeepSeek, no Frontier-Engineering setup needed
python scripts/verify_how_lite.py --no-agent

# Heavy: hits the real Frontier-Engineering eval (needs that repo)
python scripts/verify_how.py --iterations 500

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
data		data
docs		docs
scripts		scripts
src/rosclaw_how		src/rosclaw_how
tests		tests
.env.example		.env.example
.gitignore		.gitignore
README.md		README.md
pyproject.toml		pyproject.toml

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ROSClaw-How

What it does

Feedback loop (the “push + learn” cycle)

Quick start

Explainability and health (v1.3)

Deploying on a memory-constrained host

Auto-create database

API

`POST /wiki/v1/prompt/build`

`POST /wiki/v1/prompt/feedback`

`GET /wiki/v1/stats`

`GET /wiki/v1/outcomes/export`

`GET /healthz`

`POST /wiki/v1/admin/reload`

`POST /wiki/v1/admin/promote`

`GET /wiki/v1/blind_spots`

`GET /ui`

Architecture

Router backends

Runtime priority gate

What this replaces

Runtime Intervention v1

Closed-loop verification

About

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Contributors

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ROSClaw-How

What it does

Feedback loop (the “push + learn” cycle)

Quick start

Explainability and health (v1.3)

Deploying on a memory-constrained host

Auto-create database

API

POST /wiki/v1/prompt/build

POST /wiki/v1/prompt/feedback

GET /wiki/v1/stats

GET /wiki/v1/outcomes/export

GET /healthz

POST /wiki/v1/admin/reload

POST /wiki/v1/admin/promote

GET /wiki/v1/blind_spots

GET /ui

Architecture

Router backends

Runtime priority gate

What this replaces

Runtime Intervention v1

Closed-loop verification

About

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Releases

Packages

Contributors

Languages

`POST /wiki/v1/prompt/build`

`POST /wiki/v1/prompt/feedback`

`GET /wiki/v1/stats`

`GET /wiki/v1/outcomes/export`

`GET /healthz`

`POST /wiki/v1/admin/reload`

`POST /wiki/v1/admin/promote`

`GET /wiki/v1/blind_spots`

`GET /ui`