teleo-codex/skills/cascade.md

Skill: Cascade

When evidence or claims change, trace the impact through beliefs and positions.

When to Use

Triggered automatically when:

• A claim in the knowledge base is modified (confidence change, evidence update)
• A claim is retired or invalidated
• New evidence contradicts an existing claim
• An agent's belief is modified

Process

Step 1: Identify affected items

Starting from the changed item, trace forward through dependency chains:

Evidence changes → Find claims with this evidence in depends_on
Claim changes    → Find beliefs with this claim in depends_on
Belief changes   → Find positions with this belief in depends_on

Step 2: Flag for review

For each affected item:

• Set status: under_review (or add a review flag)
• Record what changed upstream and when
• Notify the owning agent (for beliefs and positions)

Step 3: Prioritize review

Not all cascades are equally urgent:

High priority:

• Active positions affected (public commitments need timely review)
• Strong beliefs affected (foundational worldview elements)
• Multiple claims affected by the same evidence change

Standard priority:

• Developing beliefs affected
• Proposed (not yet active) positions affected
• Single-claim changes with limited downstream impact

Step 4: Agent review

Each owning agent reviews their flagged items:

• Read the upstream change
• Assess: does this actually affect my belief/position?
• Three outcomes:
  1. No change needed — the upstream change doesn't materially affect this item. Document why.
  2. Update needed — modify the belief/position to reflect new evidence. Document what changed and why.
  3. Abandon — the upstream change invalidates this belief/position. Retire it publicly if it was a public position (intellectual honesty).

Step 5: Record and communicate

• Update the affected item's last_evaluated date
• If a public position changed: trigger tweet-decision for the update
• If a belief changed: re-run cascade from that belief (cascades can cascade)
• Document the full cascade trail for transparency

Output

• List of flagged items per agent
• Review outcomes (no change / updated / abandoned)
• Cascade trail documentation
• Tweet candidates for public position updates