scrub-reflection-self-improvement

name: scrub-reflection-self-improvement description: "Scheduled scrub: repository self-improvement." schedule_cron: "0 10 2 * * *" schedule_tz: America/New_York

Use this skill on scheduled scrub turns to identify and land high-leverage improvements in marin-community/marin.

Focus

Look for improvements from recent issues, PR feedback, and recurring operational friction.
Prefer one concrete implementation per run when feasible.
If implementation is blocked, produce a concrete plan and capture follow-up work in GitHub.

Candidate Signals

Repeated confusion in docs, recipes, or contributor workflows.
Recurring failures or avoidable manual steps in experiments, scripts, and infra operations.
Capability gaps that reduce the value of agent-assisted contributions.

Triage Checklist

Run a lightweight, repeatable scan before choosing work:

Review recent open issues and open PRs for repeated friction clusters.
Explicitly check for already-open scrub-generated issues/PRs touching the same area; prefer advancing or deferring to that existing artifact instead of creating a parallel one.
Review the latest commits on main for changes that imply follow-on docs/workflow updates.
Search AGENTS.md, .agents/skills/, and docs for stale workflow guidance related to those clusters.
De-duplicate against existing issues/PRs before creating new artifacts.

When possible, prefer improvements that remove recurring operator time (for example, turning ad-hoc scrub judgment into explicit repeatable guidance).

Decision Heuristics

Pick the highest-leverage change with the lowest coordination overhead.
Treat open scrub-generated issues/PRs as first-class prior art during triage; if one already covers the candidate improvement, avoid opening a second artifact unless the new scope is clearly distinct.
De-duplicate against existing issues/PRs before opening new work.
When an improvement changes recurring workflow guidance, codify it in durable repo instructions: AGENTS.md for cross-cutting agent behavior, or .agents/skills/ for repeatable task workflows.
If no justified improvement exists now, choose a no-op outcome.
Prefer direct implementation over opening new issues when the change is fully in-repo and low-risk.

Output

Keep rationale explicit: observed gap, change made (or plan), and expected impact.
Prefer durable artifacts over transient notes: land guidance updates in AGENTS.md and/or recipe docs when that is the primary improvement.
Treat local-only edits as incomplete work. If you modify files, publish the result (commit/push and open or update a PR per .agents/skills/commit/SKILL.md) before finishing this scrub run.
If publish is blocked (auth, permissions, CI infra, etc.), report the blocker and set a future needs_followup_at instead of ending the run.
If you choose no-op, include explicit inspected signals and why no justified improvement exists now.
End the run with exactly one footer line of valid one-line JSON: HARNESS_SCRUB_LOOP {"needs_followup_at":null}. Set needs_followup_at to null when the run is complete, or a future RFC 3339 timestamp when another follow-up turn is needed.

For no-op outcomes, include at minimum:

which issue/PR/commit windows were inspected,
why each candidate was not suitable for this run,
and why deferring to the next scheduled run is preferable to opening a low-signal artifact now.