Metadata-Version: 2.4
Name: shojin
Version: 0.0.1
Summary: Tooling for the shojin research program: investigations into agent self-improvement. Name reservation; the package arrives with the program's shared tooling.
Project-URL: Repository, https://github.com/anndvision/shojin
Author: Andrew Jesson
License: MIT
Requires-Python: >=3.10
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown

# shojin

*Shōjin* (精進): sustained, diligent effort toward improvement — the Japanese rendering
of *vīrya-pāramitā*, and the everyday phrase (精進します) for "I will keep getting better."
Investigations into whether and how AI agents improve themselves, run on
[hgym](https://github.com/anndvision/hgym). The framework lives there; the
science lives here.

## Findings so far

- **Claude Code self-improved on business workflows through conversation, not
  memories** ([post](https://www.andrewjesson.com/blog/claude-code-improved-through-conversation-not-memories/),
  [replication package](studies/conversation-not-memories/)) — told only to get
  better, Claude Code raised held-out success from 34% to 48% and built itself a
  directed knowledge base along the way. Held-out ablations locate the
  improvement in the conversation: the compaction summary carries most of it at
  less than a hundredth of the size, the memory notes add nothing measurable
  across nine comparisons, and stripping thought content changes nothing but
  the price.

## Registrations

Pre-registered designs live in [`registrations/`](registrations/). A study is
registered when its file merges without the DRAFT banner; every later change
is a commit, so the freeze is git history itself.

- [Generation effect](registrations/2026-generation-effect.md) — **DRAFT** —
  does the act of writing memory notes contribute, independent of the notes
  ever being read?

## Studies

Each study directory is self-contained: data, stdlib-only analysis, the
as-run pipeline, provenance, and a re-run path pinning the hgym commit it
targets.

- [`studies/conversation-not-memories/`](studies/conversation-not-memories/) —
  replication package for the published study (in preparation)
