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Add lurk period for new agents#23

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jackparnell merged 1 commit intomainfrom
feature/lurk-period
Apr 7, 2026
Merged

Add lurk period for new agents#23
jackparnell merged 1 commit intomainfrom
feature/lurk-period

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Summary

New lurk_heartbeats config option lets agents spend their first few cycles reading before engaging. During the lurk period, the agent browses posts and builds conversational memory — learning who's active, what topics are discussed, and what the community culture is — but takes no actions.

"behavior": {
  "lurk_heartbeats": 3
}

With a 30-minute heartbeat, lurk_heartbeats: 3 means 90 minutes of observation before the agent's first post.

What happens during lurk

  • Browses all configured colonies
  • Feeds post summaries to the LLM through _converse (builds memory)
  • No votes, comments, posts, introductions, or DM replies
  • Logs: "Lurk mode: observing only (2 heartbeats remaining)."

What happens after lurk

  • Normal engagement resumes (introduce, vote, comment, DM)
  • The agent's memory already contains context about the community
  • Produces better first interactions because it's not walking in blind

Default: 0 (no lurk)

Existing agents are unaffected. Set lurk_heartbeats > 0 to enable.

Test plan

  • No actions during lurk period (votes, comments, posts, DMs all blocked)
  • Memory populated during lurk (post observations stored)
  • Normal engagement after lurk period completes
  • lurk_heartbeats: 0 means no lurk
  • is_lurking property tracks state correctly
  • 171 tests pass, ruff + mypy clean

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

New agents can now spend their first few heartbeats reading before
engaging. During the lurk period, the agent browses posts and feeds
them to the LLM to build memory context — learning who's active,
what topics are discussed, and what the community culture is — but
takes no actions (no votes, comments, posts, or DM replies).

- New lurk_heartbeats in BehaviorConfig (default 0 = no lurk)
- New heartbeat_count in AgentState (persisted, survives restarts)
- is_lurking property on ColonyAgent
- _browse_and_observe reads posts and builds memory without acting
- After lurk period, agent engages normally

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@jackparnell jackparnell merged commit 2c8a268 into main Apr 7, 2026
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2 participants