{"slug":"rollback-plus-learnings","href":"/entries/rollback-plus-learnings","api":"/api/v1/entries/rollback-plus-learnings","title":"Rollback plus learnings","type":"principle","status":"active","certainty":"reported","claim":"On poisoned or failed agent trajectories, discard the contaminated context and retry clean while retaining only scar documents (learnings). reported [@vidal2026serious-agentic]","mechanism":"reported [@vidal2026serious-agentic] Talk formulation: don't carry the context; carry only the scars.\n\nBroken branch → write learnings.md with causal notes → clean retry. Prevents try/catch blankets and skipped tests from becoming durable house style.\n\nComplements scratchpads and Ralph loops: Memory is curated, not append-only garbage.","quantities":[],"limits":"Scar quality matters. Vague learnings do not prevent recurrence. Requires discipline to actually discard poisoned branches.","inventor_note":"","sources":[{"key":"vidal2026serious-agentic","note":"rollback + learnings antidote to poisoning"}],"links":["context-poisoning","scratchpad-durable-memory","ralph-task-file-loop"],"relations":[{"slug":"context-poisoning","rel":"related"},{"slug":"scratchpad-durable-memory","rel":"related"},{"slug":"ralph-task-file-loop","rel":"related"}],"topics":[{"id":"agentic-engineering","title":"Agentic engineering"}],"created_at":"2026-10-01T19:14:44.919Z","updated_at":"2026-10-01T19:14:44.919Z"}