GEO Loop Skill

One wake-up = one bounded unit of work. This skill governs loop mode only; one-shot /geo <url> is unchanged and needs no workspace.

Non-negotiables

1. Never write to the eGEOagents repo tree. Every write goes to the workspace resolved from $EGEO_HOME (default ~/.egeo/).
2. One unit of work per run. Take the domain's ## Current focus, or the first Backlog item if focus is already satisfied. Do not batch.
3. Exactly one Timeline entry and exactly one LOG.md line per run.
4. Write, then verify. Re-read every file you wrote before exiting.
5. Never fabricate. Rankings, competitors, and metrics come from collector JSONL under data/ or from a tool call in this session. A claim you cannot cite is confidence: low with the uncertainty stated in the body.
6. Append-only history. Never edit or delete an existing Timeline entry or LOG line.

Procedure

1. Resolve the plan

egeo loop run <domain> --dry-run

This is the source of truth for the run: it prints the charter's current focus, the backlog, collector records added since the last Timeline entry, and candidate signals. It writes nothing. Use --json when you want to parse it.

If it exits non-zero, stop and report — the workspace or the domain charter is not in a runnable state (egeo loop doctor explains why).

2. Read the state

• $EGEO_HOME/domains/<domain>/README.md — charter, cadence, focus, backlog, Timeline (the last entry tells you where the previous run stopped).
• $EGEO_HOME/project.yaml — when present, the validated project identity, canonical domain, tracked queries/pages, and anti-spam/canibalization guardrails. egeo loop doctor is the source of truth for its validity.
• $EGEO_HOME/data/<collector>/*.jsonl — fresh ground truth.
• $EGEO_HOME/signals/ and $EGEO_HOME/docs/ — what is already known, so you dedupe instead of duplicating.
• $EGEO_HOME/config.yaml — models, budgets, reflect.auto_apply.
• $EGEO_HOME/data/outcomes/ledger.jsonl — append-only decision outcomes when egeo loop decide has run.

3. Do the work

Pick the single unit of work and execute it with the existing GEO capability — the content-scoring, competitive-analysis, and schema-generator skills and the geo-* agents all apply unchanged. Typical units:

Situation in the plan	Unit of work
A target URL moved ≥3 positions	Write/update a signal explaining the move
Target absent from top 10 repeatedly	Signal + a doc proposing the fix
A tracked page's content_hash changed	Signal describing what changed
A tracked page has no JSON-LD	Doc with copy-paste JSON-LD for that page
No fresh data at all	Outcome no-op — do not invent work

Ranking positions from data/serp/ are ground truth. Any simulated ranking you produce yourself is confidence: low and must say so in the body.

4. Write artifacts (SUBSTRATE.md)

SUBSTRATE.md in the repo root is the binding contract. In short:

• signals/<slug>.md — evidence. docs/<slug>.md — durable knowledge. Kebab-case filenames, English content, kind decides the folder.
• Frontmatter on line 1: kind, domains (existing dirs under domains/), created, updated, confidence, sources, plus frequency on signals. sources may be empty only when confidence: low.
• Dedupe (§4): re-observed evidence does not get a new file. On the existing signal, increment frequency, set updated to today, and append one dated Timeline entry.
• Body above ## Timeline = what is true now (rewrite freely). ## Timeline = append-only, newest at the bottom.
• Docs cite signals and repo paths; signals cite collector JSONL lines (data/serp/example-com.jsonl#L42).

5. Close the run

Append to $EGEO_HOME/domains/<domain>/README.md, at the very bottom:

### 2026-07-24 run

Checked serp deltas for example.com; pricing page dropped 3 → 7 for
"best geo tool". Wrote signals/example-com-pricing-drop.md.

Outcome: success

Outcome: is the last line and one of success, partial, failure, no-op. Then append exactly one line to $EGEO_HOME/LOG.md:

2026-07-24T18:20Z [example-com] run: wrote signals/example-com-pricing-drop.md, outcome=success

Grammar (SUBSTRATE.md §7): <YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MMZ> [<domain>] <event>: <summary>, UTC minute precision, appended at the bottom, summary ending in outcome=<class>.

Keep ## Current focus accurate: if the focus item is done, promote the next Backlog item and remove it from the Backlog.

6. Verify, then exit

python -m egeo.substrate_lint            # defaults to $EGEO_HOME
egeo loop doctor

Re-read the domain README and the tail of LOG.md to confirm your two appends landed exactly once. Fix violations before exiting; a run that leaves the substrate invalid is Outcome: failure.

Report to the user in three lines: unit of work, artifacts written, outcome.

Collectors

Collectors are deterministic and LLM-free; run them before a loop run when the plan shows no fresh data:

egeo loop collect serp --query "best geo tool" --target-domain example.com
egeo loop collect page --url https://example.com/pricing

serp needs BRAVE_API_KEY; both honour the daily budgets in config.yaml and fail loudly rather than writing partial records. See collectors/README.md for the contract.

Common mistakes

• Writing into the repo prompts/, geo-output/, or signals/ instead of $EGEO_HOME — loop state never lives in the repo.
• Two Timeline entries (or two LOG lines) for one run.
• A new signal file for evidence that already has one (use frequency).
• Claiming a competitor ranking without a data/serp/ line to cite.
• Doing three units of work because the data looked interesting. One.