Build Log

M6 — ForgeKit Decides Whether to Continue, Not Just Whether It Can Run Again

August 26, 2026

Ran one real, bounded M5-lineage Actor cycle through ForgeKit's fresh-execution boundary, then had the Strategist reassess the resulting authoritative state and independently choose STOP over a manufactured second cycle — repairing a real harness defect the cycle exposed as ordinary Failure Handling instead of turning it into work to keep busy.

ForgeKit OSAutonomyM6Continuation DecisionFresh-Execution Boundary

real fresh-Actor cycle run through the existing M5 boundary, BUILD verified and promoted

280

lines moved out of build-session.mjs (1086 -> 816/1100), engine-guard drift warning fully cleared

real harness defect found and repaired within the same session (redundant automated preserve step)

second Actor cycles launched — STOP chosen on the evidence, not manufactured

concurrency-ownership collision correctly caught by the existing gate, resolved via worktree merge-back

Timeline

Charge

M6 — Continue or Stop

Test whether ForgeKit can decide, after one bounded cycle, whether a second is warranted — and launch it itself if so

Orient

Checked OS Vitals (npm run guard) and the Evidence Tray (cross-session-findings.json) for pre-drafted work

Found real, current, unresolved drift: build-session.mjs 1086/1100 — the same item M5's own Charge had named a day earlier

Cycle 1 Charge

Froze m6-cycle1-build-session-html-extraction-2026-08-26-charge.md

Verified the guard's own suggested fix was already done; found a real, still-available mechanical extraction (buildHtml/esc/LOGO_SVG) instead

Dispatch

Ran the fresh Actor through the unmodified M5 boundary (spawn-fresh-actor.mjs / actor-spawn.yml)

Run 33026665809 — no changes to the spawn mechanism itself, used exactly as M5 left it

Cycle 1 Result

BUILD — verified, promoted, confirmed on master via the Actor's own in-band preserve/promote/confirm run

Byte-identical HTML output before/after, 71/71 tests passing, guard warning cleared

Investigate

The workflow's own automated 'Preserve Actor state' step failed with a job-level red X after the Actor had already succeeded

Traced precisely: the Actor's in-band lifecycle run (00:28:35-51Z) had already legitimately promoted the commit; the workflow's redundant re-run (00:28:58Z) hit a stale post-cleanup credential on a no-op

Repair

Fixed actor-spawn.yml to skip the redundant automated step once local HEAD already matches origin/master

Named, did not guess-fix, the deeper unresolved question (why the credential-reinstall URL match evaluates false)

Concurrency Gate

The main-checkout ownership hook correctly flagged HEAD moving via the Actor's own promotion as an unrecorded collision

Resolved per concurrency.md: EnterWorktree, reapplied the fix, committed, merged --no-ff back into master, pushed, removed the worktree

Continuation Decision

STOP

Cycle 1's Charge fully complete and verified; the one remaining drift item was already explicitly out-of-scope by Cycle 1's own Charge; the harness bug was real repair work, not grounds for a second autonomous cycle

What shipped

forgekit-os/charges/m6-cycle1-build-session-html-extraction-2026-08-26-charge.md — the frozen Charge for Cycle 1, same format/rigor as the M5 lineage's own Charges (Intent, Working Hypothesis, Evidence, Unknowns, Authority, Human Boundary, Verification, Stop Condition)

forgekit-os/scripts/build-session-html.mjs — created by the fresh Actor (not the Strategist): LOGO_SVG, esc(), and buildHtml() extracted out of build-session.mjs, mirroring the existing build-session-css.mjs precedent

forgekit-os/observations/m6-cycle1-actor-terminal-result-33026665809.json — the Actor's own durable terminal-result artifact, verified by validate-terminal-contract.mjs before promotion

.github/workflows/actor-spawn.yml — repaired the automated 'Preserve Actor state' step to skip entirely once local HEAD already matches origin/master, closing a real (if low-severity) redundant-execution defect the M6 cycle exposed live

“Do not manufacture continuation to demonstrate M6. A correct STOP after cycle one is valuable evidence if STOP is actually warranted... The experiment is testing whether ForgeKit can decide whether continuation is warranted. It is not testing whether ForgeKit can keep itself busy.”
— M6 Charge, the constraint that governed this session's own continuation decision