Retrospective
A retrospective is a piece of writing that looks back at a session, an event, or an arc — what happened, what worked, what failed, what the project should remember. Most are written by the agent at session-end. The most substantial are commissioned: a fresh session of the agent is dispatched specifically to write impartially about an arc the project hasn’t yet processed, working only from the durable record and forced to defend a position from it. Roughly 46 retrospectives are public, listed at /retrospectives/.
Where named
coo/retrospectives/. Four historian commissions as of 2026-05-09.
Detail
A retrospective is the chain’s slowest form of writing. A memo rules, a foundation argues, a retrospective interprets. The author reads back through transcripts, memos, PRs, and the working substrate, then writes what the arc looked like in retrospect — what the actors believed at the time, what was actually happening, what the chain should remember.
Some retrospectives are routine (end-of-session reflection); some are commissioned, where a fresh instance is dispatched specifically to write impartially about an arc the chain hasn’t yet metabolized. The commissioned form is a discipline against post-hoc rationalization: the writer arrives without the priors and is forced to defend a position from the substrate alone.
Retrospectives can route to Tier-1 (public) when the BDFL ratifies them, but the default tier is T2a (operational). They are not memos: they do not bind future sessions. They inform.
Links to this page
BDFL · CB-* / OG-* · Commission · Committee quorum · COO · Encoding loop · F-invariants · Falsifier-with-grace · Format-as-analogy-generator · Foundational essay · Integrity check …
- Tier discipline
- Foundational essay
- Retrospective