Method

How proposals and artefacts are conceived and tested here. The de Bono hat sequence, run by an agent swarm, gated by a fitness function, with two seats kept irreducibly human — the Red gut check and the final Blue verdict. The apparatus is as transparent as the claims it evaluates.

How this work conceives and tests artefacts, proposals, and applications (a "DNA-economy cell", a coordination artefact, a candidate move). It is the disciplined, non-firehose alternative to an autonomous adversarial loop — and, because this is a Living Epistemic Work, the method and every run are published in full. The verdict is never handed down as a conclusion; the working is shown, including where the case was wounded and where it leapt. That is what "openness" means here: the evaluation apparatus is as transparent as the claims it evaluates (siblings: /objections, /attack).

Why this and not a loop

An autonomous adversarial loop optimises for survives-the-attack, not for truer / more alive / in-voice. Unsupervised it over-hedges (death by a thousand concessions), entrenches the frame, and drifts from voice. And it firehoses — volume defeats assessment. The Six Hats (de Bono) fix both: they sequence generation and critique so neither dominates, and Blue is the selector seat — so the human audits a small, structured synthesis, not a pile. (Full reasoning: see the memory thread on recursive self-improvement.)

The fitness function

Every hat measures against the same standard: Fuller's mission as CE's viable objective — prefer configurations that bring greater life to all and less to none, without ecological offence. No-regret over moves, not maximise-a-number. Each candidate is gated by the CE critics: displaced-costs, substitution-limits / binding-constraint, asymmetry. CE is generative and possibility-sized — we want directions of movement and best-next-actions, not legal certainty.

The sequence (de Bono ordering, yellow before black)

The orchestration (how the swarm runs)

A Workflow (deterministic): each substantive hat is a small swarm (3 agents competing truest-in-mode — insight, not intensity; caricature is discarded), then a Blue conductor synthesises the swarm into one hat-output before the next hat sees it. State threads forward via an accumulating dossier, so Black attacks this Yellow and Green solves these Black wounds — a relay, not six disconnected runs.

The two human seats

Red (the gut) and the final Blue (the verdict) stay human. The agents do the legwork — facts, the case, the wounds, the leaps, the non-logical briefing — and the human makes the call. This is the line we hold between what is delegable (White/Yellow/Black/Green, and Red-as-briefing) and what is irreducibly the author's (the gut, and the decision). It is also how the firehose is tamed: the human reads a structured six-part synthesis and wears two hats, not a pile.

Worked example

NOTES-ogwen-six-hats.md — the first full run, on the Ogwen DNA-economy cell. It is the proof the method produces decision-grade output: White corrected the proposal against real data, Black found a genuine fracture (the upregulation engine fails arithmetically at Turn 1→2), and Green leapt to a re-sequencing that survives the wounds (break "N funds N+1"; the cell owns the pattern, legibility and aggregated demand, external balance sheets own the atoms; the network is the capstone, not the leap of faith; sell the pattern).

Possible next step (not done)

This method + its runs are candidates for a public /method or /evaluations surface — openness made navigable: anyone can see how a proposal was tested, hat by hat, and where the human judgment entered. Flagged, not built.

Every run and treatment
Evaluation
The Ogwen six-hat run

The first full Six-Thinking-Hats evaluation, published in full: White corrects, Yellow makes the case, Black finds the fracture, Green leaps. The two human seats left open.

 Evaluation
The SSi six-hat run — a strong failure

The second run, and the first to come back decisively critical — of the author’s own company. Published unedited, because a Living Epistemic Work cannot cherry-pick. A strong failure: certain doors closed, for now. Now we’re learning.

 Evaluation
The Saudi-legal six-hat run

The method in the hardest domain yet — and its best work. It refused both the feel-good yes and the reflexive no: a clean positive-sum configuration exists, but cleanliness and scale are inversely correlated. The honest answer points at the exit, not the entrance.

 Evaluation
The autonomous-fleet six-hat run

The canon stress-tested. The frozen value is real — but the thaw and the re-freeze are the same motion: on the default configuration it re-freezes behind a private toll-gate. A greater-life-to-all version exists, won or lost at the per-city operating permit, racing a closing clock.

 Method
The iterative search-based loop

The six-hat method made iterative: search, not optimisation. Re-level → expand → find walls → classify each as frame-artefact or physical-invariant → loop, never settling for a compromise. The agents do the search; the human breaks the box. The method as a meta-tool.

 Run
The search loop re-levels the car problem

First outing. Fed the car run’s residual trade-offs, the loop re-leveled "cars" up to "access", dissolved four trade-offs onto a member-owned mutual pool, hit two genuine physical floors, and handed back exactly one box-stuck point: the enclosure-timing race.

 Treatment
The ratchet cell — the local-energy configuration

The first definite treatment: a nine-rung no-faith ladder from one household to a valley mutual — every rung individually rational, the cell a by-product, Bethesda entering mid-climb as the worked instance. Bridge-gated by three adversaries: passes-with-conditions, verdict printed in-surface.

 Treatment
The second commodity — mobility on the energy cell’s rails

The second definite treatment, and the diligence upgrade the mobility work was owed: evidence contradicted the prior run’s political lever, precipitation turns out to require rails (the cells compound), and the gate split the design — passing the eight-rung ladder while failing the AV-bargaining headline. Passes-with-conditions, printed in full.

 Treatment
The stowaway curriculum — forest school as the medium (Walton-on-Thames)

The third definite treatment, brought in from the field: forest delivery of the non-tested-but-mandatory curriculum routes around the SATs constraint entirely — literacy stows away as content, never timetable; one willing teacher per school; permission surface near zero. The evidence fleet was refused at the permissions wall, so the verdict is the gate’s weakest form — passes-on-paper — with the degradation printed, condition zero being the live re-run. The domain’s clock runs backwards: a window that opens (the 2028 curriculum reset), not one that closes.