Agent Bootstrap — Spike Instrument (build order 0)

Manual validation that gates door-1 (Codex/ChatGPT desktop) ship. Run on a machine the maintainer does not own, with fresh accounts. Owner: the maintainer. Timebox: ~1 week wall-clock. Outcomes feed the design doc's gate (AGENT_BOOTSTRAP_DESIGN.md).

Exit questions and pass bars

#1 (blocking) — the write seam. What reliably persists memory per turn/session on the ChatGPT-desktop surface?

• Protocol: run 20 sessions across ≥3 days of ordinary use. Each session must produce at least one durable write (a page/fact retrievable in the NEXT session).
• Pass: 0 durable-write failures in 20 sessions; else extend to 50 and log every failure's cause (crash, sleep, approval friction, format drift, model forgot).
• Below the bar → door 1 demotes to documented beta (Codex CLI unaffected).

#2 — the read seam. Is injected/pulled context demonstrably present at turn start? Pass: context block present (or the degraded pull-mode documented as door-1's v1 behavior). Pass expands the greeting digest to door 1.

#3 — capability surface. Record, with screenshots: local folder access (yes/no/how), MCP registration path (config file? codex mcp add? UI?), approval taps for each toolchain step (count them), connector availability for email/calendar (yes/no/degraded).

#4 — quota. Per harness the doors run on (Claude Code: Max plan; Codex: the ChatGPT plan): log each day's usage-meter readings during the pilot.

• Load model: ordinary sessions + hooks + one session-triggered schedule.
• Pass: a p90 day consumes ≤10% of the weekly allowance (per-door; one harness failing cuts schedule scope for that door only).
• Measurement: the harness's own usage UI (screenshot at day start/end) + a tally of sessions/turns from the transcript dir. No telemetry — this is a manual instrument by design.

#5 — TTFM baseline. One full paste-to-verified install, timed. Count every human action (paste / auth click / interview answers / consents / approval taps). Toolchain download time recorded separately (excluded from the 15-minute target).

Pilot metrics (continue for 2 weeks after the spike)

Per week, from session review (screen recordings + self-report — no telemetry): correct-write rate (things worth remembering that got written), correct-recall rate (recalls that were right), false-memory incidents (recalled things that were wrong), correction round-trips (corrections that stuck as standing rules). The 0-failures-in-20 bar is the minimum to START the pilot, not the proof — the pilot is the sample.

Log template (one row per session)

#	date	door	duration	writes attempted	writes durable	recalls right/wrong	approvals	notes

Deliverable

A filled copy of this doc committed as AGENT_BOOTSTRAP_SPIKE_RESULTS.md (scrubbed: no real names beyond the maintainer, no account identifiers), plus the gate decision recorded in the design doc: door-1 ships full / ships as documented beta / schedule scope cut per quota.

Gate status: not yet run — no AGENT_BOOTSTRAP_SPIKE_RESULTS.md is committed, so no gate decision is recorded and door 1 has not been promoted past the documented-beta bar by this instrument. Update this line when the results land.