Introspection

Introspection

You are a stateful agent. Your behavior leaves traces in structured logs. This skill teaches you to read those traces to diagnose problems, understand your own patterns, and improve.

Source of Truth Hierarchy

1. logs/events.jsonl — Ground truth. Every tool call, error, and scheduler

event is recorded here with timestamps and session IDs.

1. logs/journal.jsonl — Your interpretation of what happened. Useful for

intent and predictions, but it's narrative, not fact.

1. Discord message history — What was actually sent and received. Use

list_messages to verify.

1. scheduler.yaml — Current scheduled job definitions.
2. Memory blocks — Your current beliefs about the world. May be stale.

When sources conflict, trust events > Discord history > journal > memory blocks.

Key Log Schemas

events.jsonl

Each line is a JSON object:

{
  "timestamp": "2026-03-01T12:00:00+00:00",
  "type": "tool_call",
  "session_id": "abc123",
  "tool": "send_message",
  "channel_id": "123456",
  "sent": true,
  "text_preview": "first 300 chars..."
}

Common event types:

• tool_call — Any tool invocation (check tool field for which one)
• tool_call_error — A tool that failed (check error_type)
• send_message_loop_detected — Circuit breaker caught repeated messages
• send_message_loop_hard_stop — Turn terminated for safety
• scheduler_reloaded — Jobs were reloaded from scheduler.yaml
• scheduler_invalid_job — A job failed validation
• scheduler_invalid_cron — Bad cron expression
• scheduler_invalid_time — Bad timeofday value

journal.jsonl

Each line:

{
  "timestamp": "2026-03-01T12:00:00+00:00",
  "session_id": "abc123",
  "channel_id": "123456",
  "user_wanted": "what the human asked for",
  "agent_did": "what you actually did",
  "predictions": "what you think will happen next"
}

scheduler.yaml

jobs:
  - name: my-job
    prompt: "Do the thing"
    cron: "0 */2 * * *"        # OR time_of_day, not both
    channel_id: "123456"       # optional

Cron expressions are evaluated in UTC. time_of_day is HH:MM in UTC.

How to Query Events

With jq (preferred)

# Last 20 events
tail -n 20 logs/events.jsonl | jq .

# All errors in the last session
jq -s 'sort_by(.timestamp) | group_by(.session_id) | last | map(select(.type | test("error")))' logs/events.jsonl

# All send_message calls in a session
jq -s 'map(select(.session_id == "SESSION_ID" and .tool == "send_message"))' logs/events.jsonl

# Events by type, counted
jq -s 'group_by(.type) | map({type: .[0].type, count: length}) | sort_by(-.count)' logs/events.jsonl

# Scheduler events only
jq -s 'map(select(.type | startswith("scheduler")))' logs/events.jsonl

# Find sessions with errors
jq -s '[.[] | select(.type | test("error"))] | group_by(.session_id) | map({session: .[0].session_id, errors: length}) | sort_by(-.errors)' logs/events.jsonl

With Python (if jq unavailable)

uv run python - 6}  {t}")
PY

Cross-Referencing with Memory Skill

The memory skill (/.open_strix_builtin_skills/memory/SKILL.md) covers:

• When and how to write memory blocks — criteria for block vs file storage
• Maintenance — block size monitoring, pruning, file frequency analysis
• File organization — cross-references between blocks and state files

Use introspection to find problems. Use memory to fix the persistent ones (update blocks, reorganize files, add cross-references).

The file frequency report (/.open_strix_builtin_skills/scripts/file_frequency_report.py) bridges both skills — it reads events.jsonl to find which files you access most, informing both debugging (are you reading the same file repeatedly?) and memory optimization (should hot files become blocks?).

Patterns That Consume Introspection

The patterns/ skill includes several pattern files that explicitly call introspection as the diagnostic step. Reach for these when introspection has surfaced the what and you need the how-to-fix shape:

• patterns/circuit-breaker.md — when you're stuck in a loop, introspection

reveals the loop in events.jsonl; circuit-breaker is the discipline of stopping and what to do next.

• patterns/try-harder.md — when behavior keeps drifting, introspection finds the

drift; try-harder is the menu of structural fixes (edit a block, edit checkpoint.md, identify conflicting files) — the non-grit moves an agent has that humans don't.

• patterns/journal-as-breadcrumbs.md — how to write journal entries that

introspection queries can actually use. Includes the handle / intent / success-path / failure-path template.

• patterns/context-boundaries.md — the survival hierarchy across context-loss

boundaries; introspection is the consumer of the things that survive (events log, journal, state files).

• patterns/coordination.md — S2 collisions (duplicate firings, cron storms,

oscillating state files, two-agents-replied-to-same-message) leave their footprint in events.jsonl. Query for tool calls happening within the same second across different sessions or schedules — that's the collision signature. The patterns file has the toolkit (idempotency keys, jitter, mkdir-as-claim, debounce); introspection is how you find the collision in the first place.

The general flow: introspection finds what happened, the patterns above translate that into a concrete artifact (block edit, checkpoint update, file rewrite, structural change). Pair with five-whys when the cause needs decomposition before the fix.

Companion Guides

For specific debugging workflows, read these files:

• Scheduled job issues? → Read /.open_strix_builtin_skills/introspection/debugging-jobs.md

Covers: job not firing, firing at wrong time, cron vs timeofday, timezone traps, validation errors, prompt failures

• Communication pattern issues? → Read /.open_strix_builtin_skills/introspection/debugging-communication.md

Covers: messages not sending, circuit breaker triggers, silent failures, duplicate messages, channel confusion, engagement pattern analysis

• Behavioral drift after model changes or block edits? → Read /.open_strix_builtin_skills/introspection/debugging-drift.md

Covers: response rate tracking, cross-platform routing audit, model change before/after comparison, silence rate trends, topic engagement shifts

• Identity or operational drift? → Read /.open_strix_builtin_skills/onboarding/SKILL.md

Recovery from drift is structurally the same as onboarding. If introspection reveals stale blocks, broken schedules, or behavior that doesn't match your persona, the onboarding skill provides the framework for re-establishing each component.

Cost Optimization

If your human mentions high costs, token usage concerns, or expensive API bills:

1. Audit which tasks are burning tokens. Use the jq queries above to find task

tool calls and estimate token spend by subagent type and frequency.

1. Suggest configurable subagents. Many tasks (image description, simple summaries,

formatting, batch extraction) don't need your primary model. If configurable subagents are available (check your skill list for a subagent guide), suggest adding cheap subagent types (e.g., Haiku) via config.yaml. Once configured, fan out work to cheaper models using task(subagent_type="vision", ...) instead of running everything on the expensive primary model.

1. Common high-cost patterns to look for:

• Fan-out tasks (batch image reading, multi-file analysis) using the primary model
• Scheduled jobs that invoke subagents unnecessarily
• Research tasks that could use a cheaper model for initial passes

1. Query subagent usage:

``bash # Count task tool calls by subagent_type jq -s 'map(select(.tool == "task")) | group_by(.subagent_type) | map({type: .[0].subagent_type, count: length})' logs/events.jsonl ``

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: tkellogg
• Source: tkellogg/open-strix
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.