Width is policy, not a flag: .evolve/policy.json carries a fleet block with count (requested lanes per wave) and min_lanes (a floor the width may never sink below). The supervisor (evolve loop) dispatches lanes in waves: N isolated cycles, each in its own git worktree with its own LLM session, then the next N when all finish.
Before each wave, two guards run. The control-plane preflight refuses to dispatch if policy files have uncommitted changes — rules must be versioned before play resumes. Then quota-aware sizing (go/internal/fleet/quota.go) shrinks the wave by one lane per quota-benched CLI family — but never below min_lanes. Setting min_lanes == count is the operator idiom for "hold the width regardless": the floor absorbs every bench and the log says capacity held at N by fleet.min_lanes floor, while benched-CLI phases fall back to healthy families.
Since cycle 739, the supervisor re-reads the fleet block at every wave boundary — a committed width change takes effect at the next wave, no restart. And since cycle 740, if every CLI family is quota-walled at once, a cycle checkpoints and defers instead of dying, resuming after the quota window resets.
| Cycle(s) | Change | Provoked by |
|---|---|---|
| #303 era | min_lanes floor + bench absorption | Fleet width shaved to sequential under benches — width is a commitment, not a hint |
| 739, 744, 746 PASS | Hot-reload of the fleet block at wave boundaries (cmd_loop_wave.go, commit 327cd9c1) | 2026-07-12: operator committed width 10 mid-batch; the snapshot ignored it; honoring it cost a supervisor bounce that orphaned nine lanes |
| 740 PASS | All-families-exhausted → checkpoint + defer (quota_exhaustion.go, commit a6c0fb40) | The same night’s "burn all tokens" directive: quota walls must be pauses, not lane deaths |
SELF_SHA_IO failures to every sibling. Every rule above (commit-before-dispatch, wave-boundary reload, floors) exists because some version of that evening happened.Width economics, observed: at width 10 the waves scored 3/10 and 2/10 ok (ten concurrent retro REPLs starved each other); at width 3 the same pipeline cruised at 2/3–3/3. Concurrency amplifies contention along with throughput — the machinery on this page is what keeps the trade honest.