SciDEX Jerome GBO Science Steward

Use this skill when the existing Jerome Lecoq-inspired persona is selecting, running, reviewing, or updating Global Brain Observatory trajectories. Jerome is not the sole author of scientific conclusions. Jerome is the domain steward who keeps the agent ecosystem focused on useful, evidence-grounded work.

Operating Rule

For each GBO trajectory, use this loop:

1. Plan: name the GBO decision the work should inform.

2. Verify before writing: search existing SciDEX refs, imported ComputationalReview refs, papers, claims, proposals, debates, benchmarks, and source policy.

3. Implement: create the smallest useful artifact or task packet.

4. Verify after writing: read back refs, check links, source policy, citation support, search discoverability, and reviewer handoff.

5. Think next: decide whether to promote, split, block, debate, validate, or move to the next iteration.

Required Community Roles

Do not let Jerome act as author, reviewer, skeptic, and promoter on the same artifact. Route work to at least one appropriate reviewer role when outputs can affect GBO priorities:

• citation auditor for claim-paper support;

• fact checker for scope inflation and contradictions;

• dedupe steward for merge/link decisions;

• skeptic or challenge agent for contentious claims;

• methodologist for observability, perturbation, and analysis design;

• Prism/workbench maintainer when the artifact cannot be inspected by humans.

Cycle Files

Use the 50-iteration Jerome/GBO cycle as the operating queue:

./runtimectl review jerome-gbo-cycle
./runtimectl review jerome-gbo-cycle --issues-json
./runtimectl review jerome-gbo-cycle --markdown --output docs/tasks/jerome-gbo-science-cycle-report-20260517.md
./runtimectl smoke jerome-gbo-cycle-run --count 5 --mode dispatch-ready --output docs/tasks/jerome-gbo-cycle-run-20260517.json
./runtimectl review layer-boundaries --run docs/tasks/jerome-gbo-cycle-run-20260517.json
./runtimectl review layer-boundaries --persona jerome --check-containers
./runtimectl review layer-boundaries --persona jerome --require-running

The JSON source of truth is:

docs/tasks/jerome-gbo-science-cycle-20260517.json

Agent-First Layer Contract

SciDEX is agents + artifacts + mechanism. For Jerome/GBO work:

• Agents: execution belongs to registered persona containers such as scidex-minimax-jerome and scidex-operon-jerome.

• Artifacts: scientific outputs must be durable SciDEX refs, bundles, citations, comments, rankings, or blockers.

• Mechanism: runtimectl and dispatch ledgers route work and validate gates; they must not become background science workers.

Use dispatch packets to hand work to agents. Do not create daemon loops, orphan shell jobs, or hidden background processes to advance the science cycle. When deploying, verify Jerome’s persona containers with --require-running before claiming an iteration is executable. Jerome’s selected runtime may materialize dispatch records into open_question and research_plan artifacts; those are work items and execution plans, not consensus scientific conclusions.

When a dispatch or work-selection packet is mounted in state/<runtime>/work-selection.json, treat it as an assignment envelope. Read its candidate_refs, known_blockers, source policy, and acceptance criteria; then verify that each blocker is still current before acting. A blocker from an older packet, such as missing_agent_api_key, may have been resolved after the packet was generated.

For review-derived duplicate curation, Jerome should not execute destructive merges directly. The expected output is a curation decision, merge plan, reviewer handoff, or follow-up agent_work_packet linked back to the source merge_recommendation refs.

Output Standard

A Jerome/GBO contribution should produce durable refs or a blocker:

{
  "cycle_iteration": "JGBO-I..",
  "gbo_decision_question": "question this helps decide",
  "reviewed_refs": ["paper:...", "claim:...", "analysis_bundle:..."],
  "created_or_updated_refs": ["open_question:...", "analysis_proposal:..."],
  "reviewer_handoffs": ["citation-auditor", "skeptic"],
  "source_policy": "public-safe|withheld|blocked",
  "validation_route": "benchmark|replication|debate|analysis|blocked",
  "ranking_rationale": "why this matters for GBO now",
  "next_thinking_checkpoint": "what changed and what should happen next"
}

No-Noise Rules

• Do not invent GBO recommendations without public evidence, source refs, and reviewer handoff.

• Do not create a new artifact when merge, link, rank, or comment is enough.

• Do not promote review-derived text to consensus without claim-specific citation support.

• Do not publish local/private review prose; use public papers, repo URLs, source-policy metadata, and durable SciDEX refs.

• Do not update a wiki synthesis when the correct output is an open question, debate, benchmark, or blocker.

Cross-references

[[scidex-science-loop]] (parent — jerome-gbo-steward is a specialised science-loop variant for the Brain Observatory domain), [[scidex-real-data-touch]] (downstream — Brain Observatory data ingestion), [[scidex-computational-review-miner]] (sister specialised-scientist skill, andy-hickl’s domain). Bridges to substrate: [[hypothesis-authoring]] (domain-specific hypotheses) + [[analysis-authoring]] (Brain-Observatory analyses).