Cycle Loop¶

Last revised: 2026-04-29.

The cycle/ directory is the artefact store for a 4-role loop that iteratively improves pccx-lab without user intervention between rounds. The loop completes one round in Judge → Research → Plan → Implement order; the next round’s Judge re-evaluates the prior implementation. Round artefact layout, grade history, and current state are collected here.

Loop driver specification: cycle/driver.md. Round summary index: cycle/ROUNDS.md.

Loop structure¶

The loop is composed of four roles. Each role has a dedicated agent prompt file under cycle/agents/.

Judge (agents/judge.md) compares pccx-lab’s current state objectively against a reference set of commercial RTL simulators, GPU profilers, and FPGA vendor synthesis tools. It scores individual dimensions — UI, ISA validation, API integrity, UVM coverage, FPGA/ASIC verification, and documentation — independently, then writes the aggregate grade and top-five issues to round_NNN/judge_report.md. The round-N+1 Judge receives both the prior judge_report_N and implemented_N, so it grades absolute quality and round-over-round progress simultaneously.

Research (agents/research.md) surveys arxiv, IEEE, ACM, and official vendor documentation to collect prior-art citations and SOTA references for every weakness the Judge identifies. Every claim is backed by a canonical citation before the findings are written to round_NNN/research_findings.md.

Planner (agents/planner.md) reads the Judge and Research outputs and converts weaknesses into concrete implementation tickets, each specifying target file paths, patch direction, and acceptance criteria. Output: round_NNN/roadmap.md.

Implementer splits into three specialised prompts (implementer_ui.md, implementer_core.md, implementer_bridge.md). The top tickets from roadmap.md are executed in parallel in isolated worktrees; diff and test results are recorded in round_NNN/implemented_T*.md. No commit is made without a passing build and test run.

Round artefacts¶

Each round directory (cycle/round_NNN/) contains the following standard file set.

Table 12 Standard file set per round directory¶
File	Producing role	Contents
`judge_report.md`	Judge	Per-dimension scores, overall grade, top-five issues
`research_findings.md`	Research	Canonical citations + SOTA summary per issue
`roadmap.md`	Planner	T-1/T-2/T-3 tickets (file paths, patch, acceptance criteria)
`implemented_T1.md`	Implementer	T-1 diff + test results
`implemented_T2.md`	Implementer	T-2 diff + test results
`implemented_T3.md`	Implementer	T-3 diff + test results

After round completion, a one-line summary is appended to cycle/ROUNDS.md, cycle/STATE.json is updated to the new round and phase, and the next wake-up is scheduled.

Grade progression¶

The table below summarises rounds 1–6 based on cycle/ROUNDS.md.

Table 13 Judge grade and key deliverables by round¶
Round	Judge grade	Key deliverables
001	C-	T-1 real VCD/.pccx ingest in WaveformViewer, T-2 coverage merge, T-3 flame-graph bottleneck; 5 hardcoded-data gaps resolved with 3 real IPC tickets, all landed
002	C	T-1/T-2 core+UI registration and rename fixes, T-3 docs+accessibility; implementer agents hit API limit mid-work, main thread completed
003	C+	T-1 synthetic_fallback killed + resolveResource fixed, T-2 ELK auto-layout, T-3 real second-trace file picker; 6 fake fixes identified and called out
004	B-	T-1 fake-telemetry dragnet removed (Math.random 20→9), T-2 Vivado parser, T-3 flat-buf v2; tests 39→51
005	B	T-1 SynthStatusCard, T-2 Monaco+Monarch syntax highlighting, T-3 useLiveWindow hook; 4-round Monaco technical debt paid
006	B-	T-1 step_to_cycle + useCycleCursor, T-2 Roofline 2.0 + resizable-panels v4 fix, T-3 scheduler/visibility hooks + panel rewire; cycle-granular UI + 60 fps target

Round 7 is pending Judge evaluation as of 2026-04-29 (cycle/STATE.json).

Current state¶

Current contents of cycle/STATE.json:

{
  "round": 7,
  "phase": "judge",
  "r1_grade": "C-",
  "r2_grade": "C",
  "r3_grade": "C+",
  "r4_grade": "B-",
  "r5_grade": "B",
  "r6_grade": "B-",
  "max_rounds": 50,
  "heartbeat_every": 10
}

round: 7, phase: "judge" indicates that round 6 implementation is complete and the next Judge evaluation has not yet run.

Halt conditions (see cycle/driver.md):

If the file cycle/HALT exists the loop stops immediately. Activate from the shell: touch cycle/HALT.
Reaching max_rounds: 50 suspends the loop until the user unblocks it.
Two consecutive rounds with zero implementation commits cause an automatic halt — the loop does not silently retry.
Three consecutive rounds sharing the same top-ranked Judge issue trigger a halt and escalation.

A heartbeat summarising the prior ten rounds’ grade trajectory and landed tickets is emitted at every tenth round (10, 20, 30, 40).

Cite this page¶

@misc{pccx_self_evolution_2026,
  title        = {pccx-lab cyclic self-evolution loop: 4-role iterative design refinement},
  author       = {Kim, Hyunwoo},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pccxai.github.io/pccx/en/docs/Lab/self-evolution.html}},
  note         = {Part of pccx: \url{https://pccxai.github.io/pccx/}}
}