--- name: field-borrow description: One repeatable pass that turns an outward field idea into grounded backlog WITHOUT guessing whether fak already has it — the dogfood-witnessed capability-import loop. Before filing "fak should add X" from a named external system (Letta/MemGPT, Mem0, Zep/Graphiti, Cognee, vLLM/SGLang, a dated paper) or a row from the RESEARCH-*/industry field scans, it DOGFOODS fak's own self-query surface (`fak_feature_query` / `fak capabilities` / `fak index docs|leaves|verbs|claims`) to witness PRESENT / PARTIAL / ABSENT, grounds each real gap in a file:line seam, and files epic-anchored issues carrying the named source + the dogfood witness + the seam + a first checkable step. The human-curated, witness-first counterpart to the automated `idea-scout` (which dedups a candidate only against already-filed issues — a seen-cache, issue-body stamp, and title-Jaccard index — and never asks fak what it already has in the codebase); the product/agent-capability counterpart of `sota-check` (kernels) and `industry-score` (the competitive map). Use when reading a field/SOTA/research note and wondering "do we already have this?", before filing a capability-gap issue, after a competitor or paper ships a capability, or on a /loop cadence over the docs/notes RESEARCH-* corpus to convert inert research into witnessed, grounded backlog. --- # field-borrow — borrow from the field, but witness the gap against yourself first ## Why this skill exists fak researches the outward field well — the `docs/notes/RESEARCH-*` corpus, `industry-score`, `idea-scout`, `sota-check` all point *outward*. But applying a field idea inward has a silent failure mode: an agent reads "Cognee does GraphRAG" or "Zep has bi-temporal memory" and files "fak should add graph memory" **without first asking fak whether it already has it** — so the tracker accretes gaps fak already closed, or gaps described one abstraction away from the real seam. The research was outward-complete but the *witness step* was manual and skipped. The law, in one line: **the default answer to "does fak already have this field-standard capability?" is _ask fak, don't assume_ — dogfood the self-query surface to witness present / partial / absent, then file only the witnessed gaps, each grounded in a seam.** This is the loop that produced #3161 / #3162 / #3163 (edge-aware query, retrieval-eval, freshness rung) under epic #1494: three retrieval-*quality* gaps borrowed from Cognee/Zep, LongMemEval/LOCOMO, and Zep/Mem0 — each witnessed by querying `fak_feature_query` against fak's own `internal/selfquery` before filing, each grounded at `internal/selfquery/selfquery.go` (the flat lexical ranker at `:566`). See [`docs/notes/CONCEPT-FIELD-BORROW-QUERY-QUALITY-2026-07-08.md`](../../../docs/notes/CONCEPT-FIELD-BORROW-QUERY-QUALITY-2026-07-08.md) for that worked instance. ### How this differs from its siblings (do not duplicate them) | Skill / tool | Direction | Mechanism | Files issues? | Dogfoods the self-query witness? | |---|---|---|---|---| | `sota-check` | inward, **kernels only** | `fak sota ` prior-art matrix | no | no | | `industry-score` | outward | scorecard: coverage + parity-debt over a taxonomy | no | no | | `idea-scout` (`tools/idea_scout.py`) | outward, **automated** | arXiv/GitHub scan, dedup vs **existing issues** (seen-cache · body-stamp · title-Jaccard) | yes (triage queue) | **no** (issue-vs-issue only, never capability-vs-codebase) | | **field-borrow** (this) | outward→inward | **dogfood `fak_feature_query` to witness the gap**, then file epic-anchored | yes (grounded, under the right epic) | **yes — this is the point** | field-borrow composes with all three: it can be the human-in-the-loop pass over an `idea-scout` hit, it feeds witnessed coverage rows to `industry-score`, and once a spine ships it hands off to `spine-fanout`. ## The pass ### 1 — Name the source and the capability axis (dated) Pick ONE capability from a **named** external system or a dated source: an agent-memory product (Letta/MemGPT, Mem0, Zep/Graphiti, Cognee, Supermemory), a serving system (vLLM/SGLang/TensorRT-LLM), a competitor feature, a benchmark (LongMemEval, LOCOMO), or a row from the `RESEARCH-*` / industry field scans. Write it down with the source, so the borrow is falsifiable: *"Zep/Graphiti — bi-temporal edges: facts carry validity windows; a newer fact invalidates the old one."* One capability per pass; do not batch. ### 2 — Dogfood the self-query WITNESS (the heart of this skill) Ask fak, three ways, whether it already has the capability — do **not** reason about it from memory: - **`fak_feature_query`** (MCP) / `fak capabilities ` — intent → ranked capability cards (name, summary, `witness` content-address, the call to make). - **`fak index docs|leaves|verbs|claims `** — the dev self-index over docs, packages, CLI verbs, and the CLAIMS ledger. - Also a plain `Grep` for the concept's obvious symbol, to catch a capability the lexical ranker missed (see Honest limits). Classify the result, and **paste the top cards as the witness**: - **PRESENT** — a card / verb / leaf directly does it. *Read it and confirm* it truly does (not just a name collision). PRESENT is a valid, complete, **good** outcome — "fak already has this, here is the card" ends the pass; do not file. - **PARTIAL** — an adjacent surface exists but not this capability (e.g. `fak_index_freshness` covers index↔tree drift but not semantic supersession). - **ABSENT** — the query surfaces nothing on-point. An ABSENT claim **must** show the query that returned nothing on-point — that null result is the falsifiable witness. ### 3 — Ground the PARTIAL/ABSENT in a seam (file:line) The capability cards point at the code. Find the **exact file:line** the capability would touch and quote **one** dogfood result as the in-issue evidence — e.g. the flat lexical ranker `score()` at `internal/selfquery/selfquery.go:566`, or the `FeatureCard` struct at `:37` that carries no freshness/edge field. **No file:line seam, no issue** — a gap you cannot locate is not ready to file; keep witnessing until you can point at the code. ### 4 — Dedup, then file grounded (under the right epic) Search existing issues **and** the natural parent epic before filing (avoid re-filing what `idea-scout` or a human already opened). File under the epic with, in order: 1. the pain, in fak's terms, quoting the seam from step 3; 2. the **named external inspiration** (dated — a fabricated "system X does Y" is the exact citation failure `dos_citation_resolve` exists to catch); 3. the **dogfood witness** from step 2 (the query + what it returned); 4. a **concrete first checkable step** (the smallest thing that proves the gap is real and the fix is buildable); 5. **honest fences** (deterministic / advisory / read-only where they apply). Set milestone + labels at creation. On this host, run `gh` via PowerShell or the Bash tool deliberately (quote bodies through `--body-file`, not inline heredocs that the shell mangles). ### 5 — Register the trail (or it lives only in a transcript) Record the instance in a dated `docs/notes/CONCEPT--.md`: source → witness → seam → filed issues, with a `Companions:` block. Add its **`INDEX.md`** line in the *Notes & research* section (an unindexed dated note is an orphan `fak index freshness` flags). Link the children from the parent epic. **This registration — not the issues alone — is what makes the research path durable.** ### 6 — (optional) Feed the map A witnessed PRESENT/PARTIAL/ABSENT is a coverage row `industry-score` can absorb; a genuinely novel, spine-shaped gap can seed `spine-fanout` once a working spine ships. ## What "done" proves - Every filed gap carries a **dogfood witness** (the query + its top cards), a **file:line seam**, a **named dated external source**, and a **first checkable step**. - No gap was filed that fak already ships (step 2 caught the PRESENT cases). - The instance is registered: a dated `docs/notes` entry, its `INDEX.md` line, and the epic links its children. `python tools/... ` freshness / `fak index freshness` reads clean for the new note. ## The anti-gaming rule (specific to this surface) **Never file a capability gap you did not dogfood-witness, and never mark ABSENT without the null query.** The witness is the falsifiable record — the way `sota-check`'s `Prior-art:` trailer is. Two failure modes this rule kills: - **Assumed-absent.** Filing "fak lacks X" from memory when `fak_feature_query` would have returned the card. The fix is the query, pasted. - **Fabricated borrow.** "Zep does bi-temporal invalidation" when it does not, or citing a system/paper you did not read. Name the source, dated; if you could find no prior art, say *that* so the next person can disprove it. PRESENT is not a failed pass — a witnessed "we already have this" is a real result. ## Where this misleads / honest limits - **The self-query score is lexical.** `rankCards`/`score()` (`internal/selfquery/selfquery.go:540,566`) is `strings.Contains` substring matching over name/tags/ref/summary — a poorly-phrased query can miss a card fak *does* have, producing a **false-ABSENT**. Read the top cards, vary the phrasing, and cross-check with a raw `Grep` before trusting an ABSENT. (This limit is itself issue #3162 — the ranker is ungraded.) - **ABSENT means "fak's own index doesn't surface it", not "it doesn't exist."** The index can be stale or the capability can live under a name you didn't guess. - **The witness is a snapshot.** A card added tomorrow changes the verdict (the freshness problem is issue #3163). Re-witness before acting on an old pass. - **Composes with, does not replace:** `idea-scout` (automated outward feeder), `industry-score` (the competitive coverage map), `spine-fanout` (post-spine fan-out), `sota-check` (kernel prior-art). If the capability is a **compute kernel**, use `sota-check` instead — this pass is for product / agent / memory / serving capabilities. ## When to run this - Reading a `RESEARCH-*` / SOTA / competitor note and wondering *"do we already have this?"* - Before filing any "fak should add X" capability-gap issue. - After a competitor or a paper ships a capability worth borrowing. - On a `/loop` cadence over the `docs/notes/RESEARCH-*` corpus, to convert inert research into witnessed, grounded, epic-anchored backlog — the inward, human-curated complement to the daily `idea-scout`.