Bounded self-direction
Bounded self-direction is BMO’s framing for unattended work under operator rails: goal contracts say what recipe may run; composite gates say when; logs and the Journal say what happened.
Use this guide as the field orientation for bounded delivery in BMO. It explains the operator-facing concepts and points to the repository topics for implementation detail, code paths, and known gaps.
What to use when
Section titled “What to use when”| Question | Where to look |
|---|---|
| What is a goal contract and where is it enforced? | Goal contracts (topic) |
| Idle-gated compaction (reference path) | Compaction (this site) and Compaction swarm (topic) |
Operator surfaces
Section titled “Operator surfaces”- Scheduler / contracts — Contract id and version on jobs; preflight denies unknown or paused contracts. See the goal-contracts topic.
- Journal — Read-only synthesis over runs and scheduler history (including contract provenance). The Journal does not feed the agent prompt with journal-derived goals.
Where to go deeper
Section titled “Where to go deeper”- Configuration matrices — Configuration and generated reference TOML.
- Compaction mechanics — Full quorum, PR, and spec links stay in the linked implementation topic.