feat!: required headline parameter — 3-4 word ask in HUD callout#6
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The calling agent must compress its ask to 3-4 words. The headline: - Fires as a `request.headline` event at seq=1, before any other phase, so the floating HUD popup shows it the moment the call lands and keeps it visible for the rest of the run. - Embeds in `packet.meta.headline` so the model sees the agent's own self-summary alongside the longer goal — useful signal for catching when goal and headline drift apart (sign of confused intent). - Returns at the top of the result so the calling agent can confirm what got logged. Soft cap 4 words (warning emitted at 5); hard cap 6 (truncated with … at 7+). Empty/whitespace rejected with a contract message that names the discipline: "if you can't compress the ask to a phrase, you're not clear on what you need." The pause to write the headline IS part of cept's value. Today the agent calls cept reactively; with a required headline the agent has to articulate the gist in newspaper-headline style before the call goes out — that's a proprioceptive moment by construction. HUD redesigned: 15 pt semibold headline header above the existing phase row (now 11 pt monospace, secondary). Panel grew 70 → 96 px. BREAKING CHANGE: v0.4.0. Existing call sites must add `headline=`. The validation error names the contract so any failing site self-documents. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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eidos-agi/cept#6 (BREAKING): cept now requires a 3-4 word `headline` parameter that surfaces in the HUD callout, the packet's `meta.headline`, and the result. Discipline-as-schema: forces the calling agent to articulate the ask in newspaper-headline style before invoking. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Summary
Every cept call now requires a 3-4 word `headline` describing the ask. Surfaces in the floating HUD popup (so the human watching sees what's happening), in `packet.meta.headline` (so the model gets the agent's own self-summary alongside the longer goal), and in the return value.
Discipline-as-schema, not summarization. The calling agent (Claude Code) already has full context — it doesn't need a model to derive a headline; it needs to be required to write one. The pause to articulate the ask in 3-4 words IS the proprioceptive value. If the agent can't compress, it doesn't know what it's asking — and that's exactly the moment cept exists for.
Why no T5/local-summarizer (which is where this conversation started): `packet.objective` already carries the goal verbatim. A model running on it would just reword something cept already has, plus 60-200 MB of deps and 1-2s of latency. Schema beats inference.
What changed
Validation
BREAKING CHANGE — v0.4.0
Existing call sites must add `headline=`. The validation error names the contract so failing sites self-document.
Test plan
🤖 Generated with Claude Code