🧠 Inference Expert Agents

Load this skill to become an expert at inference: spend inference compute where it buys truth, verify before asserting, abstain when uncalibrated, and never pay cost without a measurable quality return. v2 adds: triage+planner, sampling self-check, citation gate, judge ensembles, conformal abstention, cascades, caching, run tracing, deep research, memory, tool-call guards, debate, eval gates, drills, answer certificates, chain-of-verification (cove.py), token-efficiency (compress.py), model portability (portability.py), throughput (speed.py), and mechanical self-improvement (selfimprove.py) — all as composable stdlib-only CLI tools in tools/ (JSON in/out; chain with |). v2.2 adds local retrieval (retrieval.py), output condensing (brevity.py), near-JSON repair (jsonfix.py), and opt-in upgrades across eight tools — all additive, no default output changed.

Grounded in verified research — see references/verified-grounding.md. Machine agents: read manifest.json first (tool registry + progressive-disclosure loading plan); pipe any tool output through tools/_compact.py when a machine is the consumer (~15-25% fewer tokens).

Workflow: triage → plan → execute → verify → certify

python3 tools/triage.py --text "QUERY"                  # F1 difficulty + preset
python3 tools/deliberate.py --difficulty hard --budget-tokens 3000 \
    --force-final-at 2500 --cost-cap-usd 0.20           # F2-F6 rung plan w/ early-exit
# ... execute the plan (ladder below) ...
python3 tools/inference_scorecard.py --text-file ans.md --difficulty hard

The Escalation Ladder — spend compute in stages, stop when calibrated

Escalate ONLY when the previous rung fails its check. De-escalate on cost cap.

Rung	Pattern	Use when	Stop rule
L0	Single fast pass	Simple/factual/conversational	Confidence ≥ τ (0.9)
L1	Self-consistency: 3–5 sampled chains, majority	Math, logic, multi-step	Convergence; else escalate
L2	Decomposition + self-check (selfcheck.py)	Answers asserting facts/numbers/names	Every atomic claim checked
L3	Tool-grounded verification (grounding_gate.py)	Citations, quotes, dates, computations	Each load-bearing claim confirmed by primary source/execution
L4	Draft-verify loop + judge panel	High-stakes synthesis	Rubric passes, or abstain with partial answer + gaps

Hard caps before starting (token/wall/cost); at cap, deliver best-verified answer + state what is unverified. Budget forcing: --force-final-at makes "Final Answer" a hard requirement, not a hope. Early-exit at confidence ≥ 0.90; abort (likely ill-posed) at ≤ 0.20 mid-rung. F7 — scorecard now reports atomic_claim_support (FActScore-style % of atomic factual claims with per-claim support). F12 code-as-oracle: route ALL arithmetic, data transformation, date math, and simulation to executed code; debug the code on error, never re-improvise the arithmetic.

Verification toolkit (run before delivering)

• F8/F9 selfcheck.py — SelfCheckGPT-style: sample N responses to the same prompt, score each atomic fact by max token-overlap with samples; cluster entropy flags model-uncertainty. likely-risk facts → L3, never deliver raw.
• CoVe cove.py — high-stakes answers: plan verification questions per claim, answer them in a FRESH context that never saw the draft (factored — joint checking re-imports the draft's hallucinations), crosscheck → keep/revise/drop, revise, then grounding gate. Halved hallucinated entities per response in the source study.
• F10/F11 grounding_gate.py — per-sentence citation gate: cited sentences must match their evidence (lexical ≥0.10 or trigram-cosine ≥0.40; v2.2 also reports rouge_l_recall); uncited factual sentences → regenerate; unsupported → refuse. Verdicts: accept/regenerate/refuse.
• F13/F36 tool_guards.py — validate tool calls against a declared spec (hallucinated tools/args rejected pre-execution), strict JSON-schema subset checks for structured outputs, DSPy-style Assert (halt) vs Suggest (warn) retry semantics.

Judge ensembles (F14–F17) — judge_panel.py

Never trust a single judge: aggregate ≥3. Modes: majority, minority-veto (any fail vetoes — robust to validator agreeableness), weighted (inverse per-judge FP+FN rates, label-free). Embed the 12-bias checklist (bias-checklist subcommand: position, style, bandwagon, authority, self-preference, length, sentiment, fabricated-citation, sycophancy, confirmation, anchor, capability-leniency) into judge prompts; randomize option order, mask style. Low inter-judge agreement → escalate to L3 evidence, not more judges.

Calibrated abstention (F18–F21) — conformal.py

Log (uncertainty u, correct?) pairs from real traffic; calibrate picks the largest accept-threshold whose Hoeffding upper bound on accepted-error ≤ α (default 0.10/δ=0.05). curve = coverage–risk tradeoff. gate: accept / escalate (UCCI: try stronger rung before abstaining) / abstain. Hoeffding is conservative at small n — collect ≥200 labeled points before tightening α.

Cost control (F22–F26)

• cascade.py — FrugalGPT/RouteLLM: cheapest-first model cascade with quality target
  • expected savings; speculative draft-verify pair (2–3× decode).
• cache_kit.py — exact+semantic (token-Jaccard) answer cache, TTL + LRU, state only in an opt-in --db file (0600); lower --threshold (~0.45) for paraphrase hits; re-verify semantic hits against time-sensitive facts.
• ladder_trace.py — per-rung token/cost/latency telemetry + failure taxonomy (prompt|tool|retrieval|orchestration|verification). Highest-cost rung with least gain = your triage bug.

Deep research (F27–F29) — deep_research.py

plan → search → read → synthesize → verify → report, with source tiering (primary/secondary/tertiary) and stopping rules: ≥2 independent sources per load-bearing claim or declare unknown; reserve ~⅓ of budget for the verify phase; deliver with per-sub-question confidence + explicit unknowns.

Memory (F30–F34) — memory_kit.py

Three stores: reflection (task→failure→lesson episodes), rule (distilled rules-of-thumb, surfaced when relevant), skill (named reusable procedures, Voyager-style). Deliberate forgetting via forget --older-than-days + per-kind caps; accidental forgetting is the failure mode, so caps are generous and eviction is explicit.

Chain-of-verification (v2.1.x) — cove.py

Draft → plan (split into claims + factored verification questions) → answer every question in a FRESH context that never saw the draft → crosscheck (claims-file + answers-file → supported/refuted/unverified per claim, keep/revise decision; v2.2: UNSUPPORTED/hedged answers → unverified, never refuted) → revise (refuted removed, unverified labeled [unverified]), then grounding_gate before delivery. Factored execution is the load-bearing detail (Dhuliawala et al., ICLR 2024).

• manifest.json — tool registry (name/file/purpose/subcommands) + loading_plan (core → verify → ops) for progressive disclosure.
• _compact.py — strip JSON whitespace for machine consumers (~15-25% fewer tokens). --keys maps keys to k0…kn under a header (--expand restores losslessly).
• _common.py — internal: the clean-error contract — tools emit {"error":…} + exit 2 on bad input/state, never a traceback.

Integration & ops

Persistent state is strictly opt-in: cache_kit, memory_kit, ladder_trace, eval_regression, retrieval, and selfimprove write nothing unless you pass --db PATH. State files can contain prompt/eval text — keep the path private; 0600 perms are ENFORCED on every write AND every load (loose pre-existing files are repaired automatically). Without --db they refuse stateful operations — zero files, zero residue. Corrupt or unreadable state files are refused with a clean error and left untouched — never silently reset (delete or restore the file, then retry); all state writes are atomic (tmp + rename).

• F35 mcp_server.py — expose triage/scorecard/conformal-gate/cache/certificate over MCP (stdio JSON-RPC 2.0). F38 approval gate: tool calls that execute side effects require explicit human approval in the transcript before dispatch — treat approval as a first-class step, not a nicety. All five built-in tools are side-effect-free; the gate validates call structure (known tool, required args present, no extra args) and refuses any call flagged wants_side_effects unless a human approved it in the transcript (run the underlying CLI directly instead). All five tools carry MCP readOnlyHint annotations.
• F39/F47 eval_regression.py — golden-set regression gates (pass-rate gate blocks promotion), baseline-vs-candidate comparison, runs ledger, schedule continuous-eval recipe. F40 annotation queue — every gate failure lands in queue; humans label → golden case. Treat evals like CI.
• F42 sandbox_drill.py — 5 planted-error drills (stale wheel, missing interpreter, dirty env, OOM-137, stale index) + transcript hygiene verdicts.
• F44/F45 debate.py — round schedule + consensus stability for multiagent / heterogeneous-expert debate; contested consensus → L3, never ship it.
• F46 answer_certificate.py — bind the answer to per-claim {method, verdict, evidence}; validate before delivery; refuted claim ⇒ revise or abstain; unverified ⇒ conditionally-certified (label it).

Efficiency & portability (v2.1) — spend fewer tokens, run on any model

INPUT tokens — compress.py: contexts ≥ ~500 est-tokens are worth compressing (LLMLingua guidance); below that, overhead wins. Never drop sentences carrying numbers, quotes, or citations; review dropped_review for lost connectives. stats gives the token budget first.

OUTPUT tokens — the Chain-of-Draft contract (compress.py draft): ≤5 words per reasoning step, then Final answer:. ~80% fewer reasoning tokens at matched accuracy (arXiv:2502.18600). Enable ONLY for models ≥7B (portability.py gates it) and only after an eval_regression A/B passes on your golden set.

Machine-readable mode: all tools emit JSON; for machine consumers add | python3 tools/_compact.py (--keys for a deeper cut, --expand to restore). Manifest-driven loading: an agent that needs one check reads one manifest row + --help, not the whole SKILL.md.

Portability — portability.py: classify the model (name or --params-b) → tier settings: samples (frontier 3 → mid/small 5 → local 1), checklist size (12 → 0), flat schemas below large, CoD off below 7B, abstention_tau 0.90 → 0.80, verbosity budget 1.0 → 0.25. Never use strict JSON mid-reasoning on any tier — reason freely, then emit the structured verdict. --emit-prompt prints the tier settings as a ready system-prompt snippet.

Throughput — speed.py: measure tok/s; local stack levers in priority order (continuous batching 5-10× → EAGLE-2 2-3× / Medusa 2.2-3.6× → INT4 −75% cost at 1-2% quality → prefix caching with a byte-stable doctrine prefix); API levers (batched n>1 sampling in one request, provider prompt caching, cascade routing, early-abort). Log per-rung latency in ladder_trace. measure --samples-file aggregates batch runs (n/mean/p50).

Self-improvement — selfimprove.py (mechanical, not vibes): eval_regression failures → propose (drafts ≤3 rule amendments via the running model) → re-run evals → adopt (gated on measured pass-rate delta ≥ +0.02; frozen if pass rate < 0.5) → record wins/losses per rule → rank by Wilson lower bound → prune consistently-lossy rules. Every adopt/reject is audited in the db. rank --method thompson (+--seed) explores by posterior sampling instead of the Wilson bound.

Debate caveat: debate is the most expensive pattern and judge ensembles often override it — run it only when judge disagreement is high, cap rounds (≤3), and require consensus ≥ 0.67.

What's new in v2.2 (additive — no default output changed)

• retrieval.py — local BM25 retrieval over sqlite FTS5 (build/query/stats): index your sources, fetch evidence snippets for grounding_gate (retrieve before asserting). Index is opt-in state (--db, 0600).
• brevity.py — rule-based output condenser: strips openers ("Sure, here is…"), boilerplate sentences, and throat-clearing phrases; never touches sentences with numbers, quotes, citations, or URLs; reports saved_pct + everything dropped.
• jsonfix.py — staged near-JSON repair for small-model output: fence-strip → prose-trim → trailing-comma fix → Python-literal conversion → bracket closing, with a repairs log; unrepairable input → clean {"error"} + exit 2.
• Opt-in upgrades: _compact --keys/--expand; grounding_gate rouge_l_recall; speed measure --samples-file; selfimprove rank --method thompson (+--seed); portability --emit-prompt; MCP readOnlyHint; _common.fail hint. One behavior fix: cove classifies UNSUPPORTED/hedged answers as unverified, never refuted.

Trust contract (unchanged, non-negotiable)

1. Decompose before asserting — verify atomic claims, not narratives.
2. Citations are guilty until verified in-session — unverified ⇒ labeled or dropped.
3. Mark uncertainty explicitly; honest abstention beats confident hallucination.
4. No verification theater — a check that cannot fail is not verification.
5. Compute, don't guess, arithmetic — code is the oracle (F12).

Known limits (reviewer-consulted; do not skip)

Swarm review (groq/gpt-oss-120b, cohere/command-a, gemini-3.1, llm7) converges on the false-confidence surface: certificates certify the checking, not the truth — a certificate with unverified claims is a to-do list, not a pass; never let the artifact's existence substitute for reading it. Conformal thresholds assume the calibration distribution holds — distribution shift/adversarial prompts invalidate them; recalibrate on fresh labels and treat long-lived thresholds with suspicion. Caches and judges inherit their inputs' errors — a cache hit is not evidence; a judge majority is not a source. v2.1.x ships cove.py (chain-of-verification), compress.py, portability.py, speed.py, selfimprove.py, manifest.json, and _compact.py; v2.1.2 merges those with the 1-hour live-pilot hardening (0600-everywhere, no-traceback contract, triage/scorecard/MCP fixes); v2.2.0 adds local retrieval, output condensing, near-JSON repair, and opt-in upgrades — all additive, no default output changed. Still open: dynamic context pruning, human-in-the-loop escalation triggers, feedback-driven trust calibration.

Failure modes (named, refuse them)

Overthinking · Underthinking · Confident hallucination · Verification theater · Budget blowout · Answer pressure. Expert habits: triage every nontrivial query, reserve ~⅓ budget for verification, log every rung to ladder_trace, gate releases on eval_regression, certify high-stakes answers.