Rollback plus learnings

relations

• related context-poisoning
• related scratchpad-durable-memory
• related ralph-task-file-loop

topics

• agentic-engineering Agentic engineering

sources

• vidal2026serious-agentic — rollback + learnings antidote to poisoning

json

{
  "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": "2026-10-01T18:51:07.176Z",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-01T18:51:07.176Z"
}