The meta stack on the command line

The self-evolution machinery is operator-facing through three verbs, in the same words the MCP server exposes:

agentdescent portfolio [archive]                          rank layers, reallocate budget
agentdescent exam     [archive] --domain module:builder    re-judge adoptions with an oracle
agentdescent audit    <run_id> --archive PATH              trace an adoption's evidence rings

archive defaults to $AGENTDESCENT_HOME/archive (or ~/.agentdescent/archive). Every command accepts --json for machine-readable output. An archive that does not exist is an error (exit 2) that names continuous_meta_run and consolidation — evolve / plugin runs do not write one — and is never silently created, so a typo'd path cannot pass for an empty archive. The read-only verbs also leave an existing empty archive untouched (no runs/ directory is created as a side effect).

portfolio — rank the layers, reallocate the next window

Reads the consolidation archive, builds one LayerBudget per decision slot (layers_from_archive), runs portfolio_report, and prints each layer's return-per-cost, its reallocated budget, and why:

agentdescent portfolio ~/.agentdescent/archive
# meta:task_sampler: return-per-cost 0.077 (return 0.850 / spend 11.0, 2 measurements) -> budget 11.0
#     held: 2/3 measurements, not enough to move budget on

An existing but empty archive exits 1 with a pointer to run a meta session first — the portfolio needs rule records to rank.

exam — re-judge adoptions with an oracle

--domain module:builder resolves a module:attribute ref whose zero-arg builder returns the domain: oracle, tasks_for, run, reward, propose, strategy, and optionally spec (the SlotSpec the rules were written by — omitted, it falls back to the shipped spec for the --slot):

agentdescent exam ~/.agentdescent/archive --domain mypkg.domain:build --slot task_sampler
# 2 rule(s) examined: 1 passed, 1 flagged, 0 demoted
#   run-1: passed  (oracle gain +0.100 at or above min_gain +0.000)
#   run-2: flagged  (oracle gain -0.050 below min_gain +0.000 (flag 1/2))

audit — trace one adoption through its evidence rings

chain_audit walked per ring — governance, decision, meta-gain, self-exam, inner-reward, harness — with the optional stores you hand it:

agentdescent audit run-1 --archive ~/.agentdescent/archive \
    --meta-audit ~/.agentdescent/audit.jsonl --inner-audit runs/audit.jsonl
# run run-1: NOT VERIFIED
#   rings not verified: decision, meta-gain, self-exam, inner-reward, harness
#   governance: verified  slot 'task_sampler' is decision-plane (L1 harness)
#   ...

An unknown run, a --meta-audit / --inner-audit file that does not exist, or a bad --domain / --harness ref fails with a one-line error and a non-zero exit, never a traceback.