Firing Cadence (refire:)

Source: hooks/ways/meta/knowledge/authoring/refire/refire.md

Frontmatter

Field	Value
description	setting a way's firing cadence with the refire field — how soon a way re-discloses after it fires, as a fraction of the context window or a named preset
vocabulary	refire cadence redisclose re-disclosure half-life preset once rare normal frequent refire_presets window fraction fire-bearing
refire	0.15
scope	agent, subagent

Fire-bearing ways (ways with description + vocabulary that participate in semantic matching) should carry a refire: field. This controls re-disclosure — how quickly the way becomes eligible to fire again after a fire. Per ADR-126 the value is a fraction of the session's context window, resolved at fire time against the model's actual window (so way files stay portable across model generations and frameworks).

Two forms are accepted:

refire: 0.15         # direct: half-life = 15% of session window

refire: normal       # preset: resolved via config.refire_presets

• Numeric form (0.0 – 1.0+) pins the cadence to today's model. Use when you want precise control or when the intent is model-specific.
• Preset form (string name) looks up the project's refire_presets config section. Built-in defaults: once (1.0), rare (0.4), normal (0.15), frequent (0.05). Use for portability — re-tuning happens globally via one config edit.

Common choices (numeric ↔ preset, matching the built-in defaults):

Intent	Numeric	Preset
Static-heavy payloads (heuristic tables, long checklists)	0.4	rare
Load-bearing guidance (typical case, ~3 fires per session)	0.15	normal
Procedural event handlers (fires often relative to session)	0.05	frequent
Disclose once per session	1.0	once

Numeric values between these presets are fine — for example, the 14 ways migrated from the PR #70 1M-Opus narrow-tune (ADR-126) sit at refire: 0.2 (between normal and rare), deliberately pinned to today's model.

Missing refire: on a fire-bearing way means the firing gate refuses it, so it never reaches the agent; only a Task dispatch to a subagent bypasses the gate. ways author lint reports it as an error. Use refire: once for a way that should fire once per session. Check files and trigger: attend handlers are exempt (checks ride on parent way firing; attend handlers are signal-triggered).

The legacy curve: block (ADR-123) is no longer part of the schema. Writing curve: in new ways will trigger a lint UNKNOWN/foreign-field warning.

See Also

• knowledge/authoring(meta) — parent: way format and the other frontmatter fields