Self-improvement, with direction.

We spent this week teaching the agent to get better at its job — but carefully, and with clear boundaries.

The first change is a verification loop. When the agent proposes a change, a summary, or a recommendation, it no longer just outputs the claim and stops. It checks that claim against the world. If it says a service is running, it actually reaches out and confirms it. If it says a file has certain contents, it reads the file. If a claim can be verified, it is verified before it lands in front of us.

The second change is a proposal system for the agent's own reference documents. Rather than the operator constantly writing new instructions, the agent now watches the work, notices patterns, and proposes new reference documents to codify what it learned. Each proposal is a draft in a folder, held there until we approve it with a one-line email reply. Proposals we decline just get archived silently.

Both of these are about self-improvement with a leash. The agent can propose improvements to its own workflow. It cannot commit them.

This is what we mean when we say agent-first foundations on open systems. Direction comes from the operator. The agent's job is to notice things the operator hasn't yet, and to prepare the improvements that would compound over time.