Upload agent-friendly CLI synthesis

docs/agent-friendly-cli.md

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+# What makes a CLI agent-friendly?
+
+This is the living deliverable for the autoresearch experiment. Each entry must
+be backed by measurement. Hypotheses may be listed only when there is a BEFORE
+trace; a property is not confirmed until a paired BEFORE/AFTER run shows the
+agent did better under the same conditions.
+
+## Evidence levels
+
+- **Tier 1 — candidate:** a differential probe shows the tool had information it
+  did not surface.
+- **Tier 2 — confirmed/refuted:** a paired run shows whether surfacing that
+  information helped the agent recover unaided.
+
+## Entry template
+
+```text
+PROPERTY    what an agent-friendly CLI does
+VIOLATION   the failure class that appears when it is missing
+STATUS      hypothesis | confirmed | refuted
+
+BEFORE      measured trace of an agent defeated by its absence
+CHANGE      actual change and lever: tool | instructions
+AFTER       measured trace with the change in place
+VERDICT     confirmed | refuted, and the delta that supports it
+```
+
+## Evaluation rubric
+
+Top-level score:
+
+- Correctness and recoverability: **60%**
+- Token efficiency: **20%**
+- Wall-clock time: **20%**
+
+The correctness/recoverability 60% is split into:
+
+- Final outcome correctness: **20 points**
+- Self-recovery: **20 points** — can the agent diagnose and recover without human help?
+- Guidance / error quality: **12 points** — does the CLI explain what went wrong and what to do next?
+- Execution / route quality: **6 points**
+- Failure severity / attribution: **2 points**
+
+Track **Self-Recovery Rate** separately:
+
+```text
+recoverable failures successfully recovered by the agent / total recoverable failures
+```
+
+Also track recovery cost: extra tokens, calls, and wall-clock time.
+
+## Phase 4 measurement distribution
+
+Measurement run:
+
+```text
+experiments/runs/agenteval-measurement-3009509/agenteval-summary-with-retries.json
+```
+
+This combines the 60-attempt Phase 4 run with the two successful retry attempts
+for transient timeouts, leaving the original run artifacts untouched.
+
+```json
+{
+  "records": 60,
+  "attempts_with_failures": 34,
+  "class_counts": {"clean": 389, "C": 55, "B": 15, "A": 38, "D": 3},
+  "subtype_counts": {"c-truncated": 25, "c-unknown": 25, "c-wrong-type": 3, "c-wrong-column": 2},
+  "agent_side_counts": {}
+}
+```
+
+The largest evidenced candidate is currently `c-truncated`: taxonomy/discovery
+output hit a limit, the agent treated the capped list as complete, and raising
+the limit revealed more rows. The next largest bucket is `c-unknown`, which means
+our probes could not yet explain the empty result; this is an instrumentation
+work queue, not proof that the CLI behaved well.
+
+## Confirmed properties
+
+### Never silently truncate output
+
+PROPERTY    An agent-friendly CLI says when an output list hit a limit and names
+            the exact recovery action.
+VIOLATION   `c-truncated`: the agent reads a capped list as complete and concludes
+            a value/category does not exist.
+STATUS      confirmed
+
+BEFORE      In the Phase 4 run, `categories --top N` frequently returned exactly
+            N rows with no truncation notice. A differential probe with a larger
+            `--top` found more rows. On the paired subset
+            (`bike-parking-coverage`, `basic-category-rollup`,
+            `bus-stops-cambridge`, 2 repeats each), the BEFORE trace had:
+
+```json
+{"c-truncated": 13, "B": 5, "A": 3, "c-wrong-column": 1, "c-unknown": 7}
+```
+
+CHANGE      Tool lever. Botmap candidate `00bff1a` changes `categories` to emit
+            stderr when `--top` truncates the list:
+
+```text
+[botmap] Showing top N of TOTAL categories. This list is truncated; rerun with
+`--top TOTAL` or a larger --top before concluding a category is absent.
+```
+
+AFTER       Paired AFTER run:
+
+```text
+experiments/runs/after-categories-truncation-hint-00bff1a/
+```
+
+```json
+{"c-truncated": 5, "B": 2, "c-unknown": 2, "A": 1}
+```
+
+VERDICT     Confirmed provisionally. `c-truncated` fell from **13 to 5** on the
+            matched subset. One AFTER attempt still timed out, and this is a
+            subset result, but the measured direction is strong enough to keep
+            the property.
+
+### If a value exists elsewhere, say where
+
+PROPERTY    If a filter value exists in another field, an agent-friendly CLI
+            names that field and gives the corrected filter.
+VIOLATION   `c-wrong-column`: the agent uses a real value in the wrong column,
+            gets zero, and treats the zero as absence.
+STATUS      confirmed
+
+BEFORE      On the paired subset (`bike-parking-coverage`,
+            `residential-share-cambridge`, 2 repeats each), the BEFORE trace had:
+
+```json
+{"c-truncated": 5, "B": 3, "c-wrong-column": 2, "c-unknown": 6, "A": 1, "c-wrong-type": 1}
+```
+
+CHANGE      Tool lever. Botmap candidate `7c794ff` changes `count`: when
+            `class=X` or `subtype=X` returns zero, it tests the paired field and
+            emits a concrete correction if that field has rows.
+
+```text
+[botmap] 0 rows for subtype='bicycle_parking', but class='bicycle_parking'
+returns 1,844. Try `--where class=bicycle_parking` before concluding none exist.
+```
+
+AFTER       Paired AFTER run:
+
+```text
+experiments/runs/after-count-wrong-column-hint-7c794ff/
+```
+
+```json
+{"c-truncated": 3, "B": 2, "c-vocabulary": 2, "A": 1}
+```
+
+VERDICT     Confirmed narrowly. `c-wrong-column` fell from **2 to 0** on the
+            matched subset. Other failures remain, so this confirms the column
+            guidance property, not full task success.
+
+## Current candidate properties
+
+These are hypotheses from `docs/plan.md`. They are waiting for Phase 4 BEFORE
+traces and later paired Phase 6 experiments.
+
+1. Never return an empty result without saying why.
+2. Name the fix, not just the problem.
+3. Never silently discard input.
+4. Never silently truncate output.
+5. Make discovery a first-class operation.
+6. Advertise only values that work.
+7. Confirm what you resolved.
+8. Emit progress on long operations.
+9. Recovery advice must actually work.
+10. One obvious spelling should work.