Work profiles: choose how fak approaches implementation

Work profiles are implementation policy for the owned fak agent loop. They answer “how strongly should the agent challenge avoidable complexity?” Response profiles answer a different question: “how compact should the final prose be?” You can select either axis independently, and explicitly disable either one.

fak agent profiles
fak agent --work-profile ponytail:medium --output-style caveman:low --offline

The default is ponytail:medium; every fak-owned agent loop therefore receives the medium simplicity policy unless the operator overrides it. Disable it explicitly with --work-profile standard.

Low, medium, or high?

Selection	Best for	What changes
ponytail:low	Existing projects where you want a light simplicity check	Briefly checks whether existing code, configuration, or deletion is enough.
ponytail:medium	Most feature and maintenance work	Walks a simplicity ladder and stops at the first complete, correct option.
ponytail:high	Complexity-sensitive or dependency-sensitive work	Actively demands justification before new machinery or abstractions.

Friendly names expand to attributed canonical names, for example ponytail:medium becomes ponytail:native:medium. native means the instruction bytes are fak-authored and safety-hardened, inspired by the pinned Ponytail study. It does not claim to be Ponytail’s original prompt. ponytail:original:* is reserved and fails closed until a pinned, attributed adapter is implemented.

What a work profile may not change

Intensity controls only how aggressively the agent searches for a smaller correct implementation. It never permits the agent to:

• drop explicit user scope or repository instructions;
• weaken policy, security, correctness, compatibility, or migrations;
• skip tests, diagnostics, uncertainty reporting, or required proof;
• call fewer lines or fewer dependencies a success when the task is incomplete.

Precedence is fixed:

system policy and explicit user requirements
> repository instructions
> work profile
> response profile

Mix and match

# Simpler implementation decisions, normal explanatory output
fak agent --work-profile ponytail:medium --output-style full --offline

# Light simplicity pressure, highly compressed response
fak agent --work-profile ponytail:low --output-style caveman:high --offline

# Disable both axes
fak agent --work-profile standard --output-style full --offline

The selected family, implementation, intensity, and fragment digest are captured independently in the owned system-block readout. Both overlays live after the stable resident cache prefix; changing a profile does not rewrite the resident policy bytes.

Current boundary and troubleshooting

This release drives the in-process fak agent system block. It does not yet prove activation in an external Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or other fak guard harness; that witnessed transport is #6787.

• invalid --work-profile: run fak agent profiles; unsupported and original forms fail closed.
• Too much implementation pressure: move from high to medium or low; use standard to disable.
• Output is still verbose: work policy does not change prose; choose --output-style separately.
• Concern that a requirement was removed: that violates the profile contract, regardless of intensity. Preserve the requirement and use the repository’s normal tests/evidence gate.