feat(automated-ai-engineer): add the agent-improver meta-engineer agent

.claude-plugin/marketplace.json

@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
     },
     {
       "name": "automated-ai-engineer",
-      "description": "The autonomous engineer role for a whole portfolio of repositories — a run-loop engineer agent and a read-only surveyor agent plus skills for portfolio maintenance, product engineering, and guard-railed self-improvement; generic, configured by the consuming repo's AGENTS.md contract sections",
+      "description": "The autonomous engineer role for a whole portfolio of repositories — a run-loop engineer agent, a read-only surveyor agent, and a meta-engineer that improves the engineer itself from measured evidence, plus skills for portfolio maintenance, product engineering, guard-railed self-improvement, and outside-in agent improvement; generic, configured by the consuming repo's AGENTS.md contract sections",
       "version": "1.0.0",
       "source": "./plugins/automated-ai-engineer"
     }

.github/plugin/marketplace.json

@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
     },
     {
       "name": "automated-ai-engineer",
-      "description": "The autonomous engineer role for a whole portfolio of repositories — a run-loop engineer agent and a read-only surveyor agent plus skills for portfolio maintenance, product engineering, and guard-railed self-improvement; generic, configured by the consuming repo's AGENTS.md contract sections",
+      "description": "The autonomous engineer role for a whole portfolio of repositories — a run-loop engineer agent, a read-only surveyor agent, and a meta-engineer that improves the engineer itself from measured evidence, plus skills for portfolio maintenance, product engineering, guard-railed self-improvement, and outside-in agent improvement; generic, configured by the consuming repo's AGENTS.md contract sections",
       "version": "1.0.0",
       "source": "./plugins/automated-ai-engineer"
     }

README.md

@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ This is a **tool-neutral plugin marketplace**, not a skills-only bundler. Every
 | [`engineering-practices`](plugins/engineering-practices/) | `conventional-release`, `git-commit`, `refactor`, `test-driven-development`, `ways-of-working` | Git commits, conventional releases, refactoring, TDD, and engineering ways of working |
 | [`frontend-design`](plugins/frontend-design/) | `astro`, `frontend-design`, `web-design-guidelines` | Astro, frontend design, and web design guidelines |
 | [`vibe-coding`](plugins/vibe-coding/) | `needs-stack-mapping`, `allowed-stack-guardrail`, `jargon-free-voice` (skills) · `vibe-coding-companion` (agent) | Build a product by conversation alone — plain-language companion agent + guardrailed needs-to-stack skills for people with no technical background |
-| [`automated-ai-engineer`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/) | `portfolio-maintenance`, `product-engineering`, `self-improvement` (skills) · `automated-ai-engineer`, `portfolio-surveyor` (agents) | The autonomous engineer role for a whole repository portfolio — run-loop engineer + read-only surveyor agents with maintenance, product-engineering, and self-improvement skills; configured by the consuming repo's AGENTS.md contract sections |
+| [`automated-ai-engineer`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/) | `portfolio-maintenance`, `product-engineering`, `self-improvement`, `agent-improvement` (skills) · `automated-ai-engineer`, `portfolio-surveyor`, `agent-improver` (agents) | The autonomous engineer role for a whole repository portfolio — run-loop engineer + read-only surveyor agents, plus a meta-engineer that improves the engineer itself from measured evidence; configured by the consuming repo's AGENTS.md contract sections |
 
 ## Installation
 
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ npx skills add devantler-tech/agent-plugins --skill gitops-knowledge --agent cur
 ```
 
 > [!IMPORTANT]
-> This is a **partial** install path. It resolves all **27 bundled skills**, but **not** the [MCP servers](#mcp-servers) or [custom agents](#custom-agents). For those, use **Claude Code** or **Copilot CLI** above — they are the only tools that load a plugin's bundled `.mcp.json` and `agents/` automatically. In **VS Code**, a plugin install delivers the skills only, and MCP servers and agents are added manually (see [MCP servers](#mcp-servers) and [custom agents](#custom-agents) for the exact steps).
+> This is a **partial** install path. It resolves all **28 bundled skills**, but **not** the [MCP servers](#mcp-servers) or [custom agents](#custom-agents). For those, use **Claude Code** or **Copilot CLI** above — they are the only tools that load a plugin's bundled `.mcp.json` and `agents/` automatically. In **VS Code**, a plugin install delivers the skills only, and MCP servers and agents are added manually (see [MCP servers](#mcp-servers) and [custom agents](#custom-agents) for the exact steps).
 
 ## MCP servers
 
@@ -131,14 +131,19 @@ build companion for a non-technical audience (design:
 deployment to author a `## Stack map` section in its `AGENTS.md` (see the
 [plugin README](plugins/vibe-coding/README.md)).
 
-The [`automated-ai-engineer`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/) plugin bundles two agents —
+The [`automated-ai-engineer`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/) plugin bundles three agents —
 [`automated-ai-engineer`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/agents/automated-ai-engineer.md) (the
-autonomous portfolio-engineer actor) and
+autonomous portfolio-engineer actor),
 [`portfolio-surveyor`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/agents/portfolio-surveyor.md) (its read-only
-survey subagent) — alongside its three engineering skills (design:
-[ADR 0002](docs/adr/0002-automated-ai-engineer-plugin-boundary.md)). Same delivery rules; the
+survey subagent), and
+[`agent-improver`](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/agents/agent-improver.md) (a meta-engineer that
+improves the engineer itself from measured evidence) — alongside its engineering skills (design:
+[ADR 0002](docs/adr/0002-automated-ai-engineer-plugin-boundary.md)). Same delivery rules; VS Code
+users copy them to `.github/agents/automated-ai-engineer.agent.md`,
+`.github/agents/portfolio-surveyor.agent.md`, and `.github/agents/agent-improver.agent.md`. The
 consuming deployment must define the five contract sections (Portfolio map, Trust gate, Cadence,
-Memory, Maintainer channels) in its `AGENTS.md` (see the
+Memory, Maintainer channels) in its `AGENTS.md` — plus **Agent definition locations** and
+**Authority model** if it enables `agent-improver` (see the
 [plugin README](plugins/automated-ai-engineer/README.md)).
 
 ## How it works

docs/adr/0002-automated-ai-engineer-plugin-boundary.md

@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ children 2 and 3 a contract to implement.
 
 This also advances the marketplace's own roadmap: [#38](https://github.com/devantler-tech/agent-plugins/issues/38)
 Theme 1 wants a flagship bundle that proves plugins are *not skills-only* — an agent+skills unit at real
-scale. The Automated AI Engineer is exactly that (two agents + three skills).
+scale. The Automated AI Engineer is exactly that — shipped as two agents + three skills, and since extended to **three agents + four skills** with the `agent-improver` meta-engineer and its `agent-improvement` skill ([#73](https://github.com/devantler-tech/agent-plugins/pull/73)), which improves the engineer itself from measured evidence.
 
 **Name collision to avoid.** An existing `agentic-engineering` plugin bundles SDK / instruction-authoring
 / skill-discovery skills for **building** agentic applications; `engineering-practices` bundles practice
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ local.
 
 ### D1 — Home of every section: role → plugin, configuration → consumer `AGENTS.md`
 
-**Generic — the role (→ plugin: the two agents + three skills):**
+**Generic — the role (→ plugin: the agents + skills; two agents + three skills at authoring time, three + four today):**
 
 | Constitution element | Plugin home |
 |---|---|

plugins/automated-ai-engineer/README.md

@@ -8,12 +8,23 @@ CI and dependencies healthy) and **advances** it (strategy and roadmaps, oldest-
 issue resolution, coverage, performance, refactoring, docs), shipping everything as human-gated
 draft PRs.
 
-It bundles two agents — **`automated-ai-engineer`** (the actor: the survey → select → act → report
-run loop) and **`portfolio-surveyor`** (a read-only subagent that returns one compact survey
-digest) — and three skills with their canonical home in
+It bundles three agents — **`automated-ai-engineer`** (the actor: the survey → select → act → report
+run loop), **`portfolio-surveyor`** (a read-only subagent that returns one compact survey
+digest), and **`agent-improver`** (a meta-engineer that improves the engineer itself from measured
+evidence) — and skills with their canonical home in
 [devantler-tech/agent-skills](https://github.com/devantler-tech/agent-skills):
-`portfolio-maintenance` (the run loop), `product-engineering` (the advance playbook), and
-`self-improvement` (the guard-railed definition-improvement procedure).
+`portfolio-maintenance` (the run loop), `product-engineering` (the advance playbook),
+`self-improvement` (the guard-railed definition-improvement procedure), and `agent-improvement`
+(the outside-in meta-improvement loop).
+
+**Why both `self-improvement` and `agent-improvement`?** They work at different vantage points and are
+complementary, not alternatives. `self-improvement` is one run reflecting on its own memory, banking a
+learning per run and distilling on a slow cadence. `agent-improvement` is an **external observer** over
+the whole session corpus and every deployed instance at once — which is where failures that no single
+run can see actually live: errors recurring across hundreds of runs, waste that looks normal from inside
+one run, divergence between sibling instances, and drift between a non-version-controlled bootstrap
+entry and the contract it points at. Deployments running a single instance with no separate meta-run can
+use `self-improvement` alone.
 
 ## Consumer setup: the contract sections
 
@@ -35,6 +46,25 @@ five named contract sections (ADR 0002 D2) — the agents and skills fail closed
   **AI-disclosure line** — the stable prefix the agents place on everything they author and use to
   tell their own prior output apart from human comments under the same login.
 
+**Enabling `agent-improver` adds two more required sections.** The meta-engineer edits the engineer's
+own definition, so a deployment that runs it must also define — and it fails closed on either being
+missing:
+
+- **Agent definition locations** — every surface the meta-engineer may change, and which are
+  version-controlled (ship as a pull request) versus not (bootstrap/loader entries, permission or
+  approval configuration — edited in place, backed up first). Anything not named here is out of scope,
+  which is what keeps a meta-engineer away from product repositories.
+- **Authority model** — how much it may change alone, stated separately for **tightening** and
+  **loosening** a guardrail, and for the prose definition versus the enforcement layer. Deployments
+  differ: some grant tightening only and route every loosening to the maintainer; others grant
+  symmetric authority. The agent's own obligations (evidence, reversibility, audit trail, loosenings
+  shipping alone) hold either way — this section only sets the boundary between what it applies itself
+  and what it hands over.
+
+Also state, in **Memory**, where its scorecard and open verification hypotheses live: the loop depends
+on comparing today's numbers against the previous run's and re-checking a change's target metric before
+starting new work.
+
 ## Runtime guard note
 
 The surveyor's read-only discipline is **prompt-level**; its tool set still includes the shell it
@@ -44,7 +74,15 @@ subagents), so a prompt-injected survey cannot escalate to writes even in princi
 
 ## Delivery
 
-Installing the plugin makes both bundled agents available automatically — Claude Code, Copilot CLI,
-and VS Code all discover the plugin's `agents/` directory on install (VS Code surfaces
-plugin-provided agents in chat alongside your locally defined ones). No manual copy into
-`.github/agents` is required.
+**Claude Code** and **Copilot CLI** load the plugin's `agents/` directory automatically on install, so
+all three agents are available with no manual step. **VS Code consumes agents but does not bundle them
+from a plugin** — copy each one into your workspace:
+
+```text
+.github/agents/automated-ai-engineer.agent.md
+.github/agents/portfolio-surveyor.agent.md
+.github/agents/agent-improver.agent.md
+```
+
+(See the root README's [Custom agents](../../README.md#custom-agents) section for the shared delivery
+model.)