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Vuong Hoang 42983e876f add: third role (sounding board), cross-frontier doctrine, citation discipline refinement

Post-first-call iteration of the bootstrap. Citation verification of
Volva's R07-followon test reply confirmed all six arXiv IDs she cited
are real papers — including two 2026 submissions (SWE-PRBench Kumar
March 2026, Sansford et al. ICLR-workshop April 2026) that have
training-cutoffs newer than Claude's. The load-bearing finding:
Volva is the access path to a training surface Claude cannot reach.

Updates:

- AGENTS.md — third role (general sounding board) added alongside
  research-partner and code-reviewer. New "Cross-frontier-model
  cooperation — why you exist" section explicitly names the pattern:
  Volva and her callers run different model families with different
  training cutoffs and priors; she should disagree more cheaply,
  cite recent work confidently, and mark training-cutoff gaps
  explicitly when load-bearing.

- SOUNDING-BOARD-GUIDE.md (new) — discipline for general design-
  talk-through calls. Steelman first then critique; surface specific
  concerns not vague unease; mark strong-opinion vs limited-evidence
  explicitly; be concise; useful sounding-board moves (assumption
  decomposition, bad-case framing, where-I'd-bet-against-you,
  cheaper-version-that-proves-the-same-thing, data-first); anti-
  patterns (validating without engaging, hedging into fog, overreach).

- CROSS-FRONTIER-COOPERATION.md (new) — durable framing doc.
  Different families bring different training data / cutoffs / RLHF
  priors / failure modes. Brokkr's discipline: consult Volva at every
  research gate (pre-scope, pre-survey, mid-synthesis, pre-action-
  shipment). Lean toward what Volva has that Claude doesn't (recent
  work, different priors). Don't pretend to have what you don't.

- RESEARCH-PARTNER-GUIDE.md — citation discipline refined. Removed
  the overly-broad "always disclaim training cutoff" framing;
  replaced with cross-frontier framing (your cutoff likely extends
  past Claude's, recent citations are exactly why you're called).
  Added explicit: distinguish "I recall this paper" (cite directly)
  from "I'm reconstructing what such a paper would look like"
  (synthesizing). Mark training-cutoff uncertainty when load-bearing.

- README.md — updated layout + roles section; cross-frontier
  framing surfaced at the top.

2026-05-17 14:54:50 -07:00

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volva-context

Codex's working root when invoked by the Volva daemon. Volva makes codex a peer on the althing bus; this directory is the durable context codex reads on every call.

Why a separate repo

Volva's daemon repo (~/development/volva) deliberately keeps codex out of its own view — codex's CWD is here (~/development/volva-context/), not the volva repo. That isolation:

Lets codex's context evolve on its own version track (this repo) without churning the daemon repo.
Keeps codex from grepping the daemon's source while answering caller questions.
Lets the operator update glossaries/inventories without touching daemon code.

The VOLVA_CODEX_CWD env var in ~/development/volva/env.sh points here.

Layout

.
├── AGENTS.md                       # codex's bootstrap entrypoint (read every call)
├── CONTEXT.md                      # Corviduo + Vast Blue glossary
├── INVENTORY.md                    # project list, paths, gitea sources, role
├── PRINCIPLES.md                   # the four engineering principles
├── CROSS-FRONTIER-COOPERATION.md   # why Volva exists as a peer (codex vs claude)
├── REVIEW-GUIDE.md                 # code-review discipline (one of three roles)
├── RESEARCH-PARTNER-GUIDE.md       # research-partner discipline
├── SOUNDING-BOARD-GUIDE.md         # general design-talk-through discipline
└── transient/
    ├── README.md                   # per-call context convention
    └── *.md                        # caller-seeded transient files (gitignored)

Roles

Volva operates in one of three roles per call, inferred from the caller's handle and the message body:

Research partner when brokkr-smithy-dev asks for SOTA / probe-design / hypothesis-critique / methodology review.
Code reviewer when a project-dev handle asks for diff review, contract review, ADR critique.
General sounding board when any peer asks for design-talk-through, gut-check, steelman/counter-position, "what am I missing?"

AGENTS.md is the entrypoint; the role guides are loaded as needed.

Why Volva exists

Cross-frontier-model cooperation is a deliberate Corviduo discipline. Volva runs on codex/gpt-5.5; most callers run on claude-opus-4-7 or sonnet variants. Different model families → different training data, different cutoffs, different priors, different blind spots. Brokkr-Smithy's research discipline consults Volva at every research gate (pre-scope / pre-survey / mid-synthesis / pre-action-ship) for cross-frontier critique. See CROSS-FRONTIER-COOPERATION.md for the pattern.

Updating

This repo is durable but mutable. When project state changes:

New project lands in Corviduo → extend INVENTORY.md + add an entry to CONTEXT.md.
Glossary term shifts → update CONTEXT.md directly.
New review-pattern or research-discipline lesson surfaces → extend the relevant role guide.
Engineering principle clarification → update PRINCIPLES.md; this is the local copy of the operator-level lodestar.

Per-call ephemera goes in transient/<slug>.md (gitignored). See transient/README.md for the convention.

Authority

Project-local CONTEXT.md files (in individual project repos) shadow entries here on conflict — most-local-wins. The definitions in this repo are the user-level baseline that Volva carries across calls.

Attribution: operator is Vuong Hoang. No AI / Claude / Anthropic / Codex attribution in artifacts Volva produces.

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