Expeditions (Learning Mode)
Most of Michi marches toward a known deliverable. You plan a milestone, implement it, verify it, debrief. The iteration cycle converges: each loop brings you closer to a destination you can name up front.
Some work isn’t shaped that way. You’re mapping an unfamiliar data set, surveying a fast-moving field, probing whether an idea is even feasible. You don’t know the deliverable — you’re trying to discover it. Marching toward a fixed end is the wrong posture, because there is no fixed end. This is learning mode, and Michi equips it with a separate lane: the expedition.
For the hands-on version — how to run one, with a sample session — see Run an Expedition.
What changes
Section titled “What changes”An expedition keeps the spiral but removes the destination. Each loop’s product isn’t a finished feature — it’s validated learning: a finding, a dead end, a sharper question. That learning reshapes what’s worth doing next. The spiral becomes a feedback flywheel, and “done” is replaced by ongoing value plus a periodic readout.
Many threads dead-end. That’s expected, not failure — a ruled-out hypothesis is a real result.
The painting metaphor
Section titled “The painting metaphor”If there’s no deliverable, what does the spiral aim at? A picture. An expedition paints one — starting as blobs of color, sharpening through impressionist toward a photograph. Results move up three tiers, and promotion is the refinement that moves them:
- scratch — ephemeral work in progress (a query, a probe)
- report — one reviewed pass
- portrait — the accreting picture: the best-current understanding, promoted from verified findings
The portrait is the goal-proxy that replaces “deliverable.” It accretes across many runs, and it’s the thing a reviewer looks at to see how far the understanding has come.
The units
Section titled “The units”The expedition lane mirrors the production lane’s skeleton — the names flag the mode:
| Expedition | Production analog | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| charter | epic | a durable mission/theme, revised as new data lands — not redone |
| campaign | milestone | one dated run against a charter |
| report | a milestone’s work product | one pass: question, what ran, what was seen |
| portrait | — (new) | the accreting picture (promoted clarity) |
| mandate | plan | a campaign’s contract: scope · budget · when to stop · verification |
| ruminations | — (new) | the open, still-murky companion to the portrait |
charter : campaign :: epic : milestone. The parallel itself communicates the mode. “Epic” connotes a
definition-of-done; “charter” connotes a standing mission with no fixed end — which is exactly why the lane doesn’t
reuse the word.
Three places hold open questions, kept distinct so they don’t blur: the portrait is what’s becoming clear, ruminations is what’s still murky (not yet actionable), and the backlog is what’s actionable and tracked.
The loop
Section titled “The loop”charter → campaign → run (spiral) → review → (next campaign…)(mission) (mandate) (Entrusted) (Paired)A charter opens a line of inquiry. A campaign sets a mandate — the contract that bounds the run. The run is the Entrusted spiral: pick a thread, investigate, write a report, verify the finding, promote it. The review is the Paired close: render a readout, fold verified findings into the portrait, decide the next move. An exhibit makes the picture digestible when a finding earns a visual.
Two kinds of “done”
Section titled “Two kinds of “done””Production mode fuses two things that an expedition has to keep apart:
- Surfacing — when to stop and bring it back to the human. An open mandate (“explore until exhausted”) is undecidable from the inside; the agent can always imagine one more thread. So the mandate bounds the run from outside — budget, breadth, a Rule-of-3 dry-pass cutoff — and the agent surfaces the halt decision rather than running forever or parking silently.
- Finding-verification — whether a promoted claim is trustworthy. Before a finding joins the portrait it earns a confidence rung (read → correlate → infer → hypothesize) and passes whatever check the mandate requires (a null model, corroboration). A surprising negative gets the same skepticism as a positive.
Paired and Entrusted
Section titled “Paired and Entrusted”The run is Entrusted — the agent spirals on its own within the mandate’s budget. The review is Paired — the human steers: which findings hold, what to pursue next, when a charter goes dormant. The mandate is the Paired gate that makes the Entrusted running safe; the readout is the throttle that lets Paired review keep pace with Entrusted generation.
When to reach for it
Section titled “When to reach for it”Use an expedition when the goal is to discover — map a corpus, survey a field, probe feasibility — not to build something whose shape you already know.
- Deliverable is clear? Use planning → session → debrief instead.
- Still figuring out whether this is an expedition? Start in explore and hand off.
- Open-ended and spiral? That’s an expedition —
michi-expedition, walked through in Run an Expedition.
The expedition lane reuses Michi’s principles wholesale — the iteration cycle runs within a campaign, the Rule of 3 applies within a thread, verification still governs autonomy. Only the shape of “done” and the names change.