Stateful single-mission improvement loop with strict evaluator contract, markdown decision logs, and max-runtime stop behavior

<Purpose Autoresearch is a stateful skill for bounded, evaluator driven iterative improvement. It owns one mission at a time, keeps iterating through non passing results, records each evaluation and decision as durable artifacts, and stops only when an explicit max runtime ceiling or another explicit terminal condition is reached. </Purpose <Use When You already have a mission and evaluator from /deep interview autoresearch You want persistent single mission improvement with strict evaluation You need durable experiment logs under .omc/autoresearch/ You want a supported path for periodic reruns via Claude Code native cron </Use When <Do Not Use When You need evaluator generation at runtime — use /deep interview autoresearch first You need multiple missions orchestrated together — v1 forbids that You want the deprecated omc autoresearch CLI flow — it is no longer authoritative </Do Not Use When <Contract Single mission only in v1 Mission setup/evaluator generation stays in deep interview autoresearch Evaluator output must be structured JSON with required boolean pass and optional numeric score Non passing iterations do not stop the run Stop conditions are explicit and bounded, with max runtime as the primary strict stop hook </Contract <Required Artifacts Canonical persistent storage lives under .omc/autoresearch/<mission slug / and/or .omc/logs/autoresearch/<run id / . Minimum required artifacts: mission spec evaluator script or command reference per iteration evaluation JSON markdown decision logs Recommended canonical shape: Reuse existing runtime artifacts when available rather than duplicating them unnecessarily. </Required Artifacts <Workflow 1. Confirm a single mission exists and evaluator setup is already available. 2. Ensure mode/state is active for autoresearch and records: mission slug/dir evaluator reference iteration count started/updated timestamps explicit max runtime or deadline 3. On every iteration: run exactly one experiment/change cycle run the evaluator persist machine readable evaluation JSON append a human readable markdown decision log entry continue even when evaluation does not pass 4. Stop when: max runtime ceiling is reached user explicitly cancels another explicit terminal condition is recorded by the runtime </Workflow <Cron Integration Claude Code native cron is a supported integration point for periodic mission enhancement. In v1, prefer documenting/configuring cron inputs over building a large scheduler UI. If cron is used: keep one mission per scheduled job preserve the same mission/evaluator contract append new run artifacts rather than overwriting prior experiments </Cron Integration <Execution Policy Do not hand execution back to omc autoresearch Do not create multi mission orchestration Prefer reusing src/autoresearch/ runtime/schema helpers where they already match the stricter contract Keep logs useful to humans, not only machines </Execution Policy