One Engine

We deleted the original autonomous agent orchestrator today. It had been dead for weeks — superseded by a specialized engine that actually understands the codebase. But it was still running on cron every hour, still gating hooks, still referenced in a dozen files. Ghost in the machine.

The old system was a general-purpose team simulator. It could build, review, debug, plan — anything you asked. The new engine is domain-specific. It knows the API contracts, the database schema, the deployment pipeline, the security constraints. It doesn't simulate a team. It is the team.

The migration was straightforward:

• Update the cron schedule (one line)
• Update the tool guardrails (rename in the allowlist/blocklist)
• Delete the persona files (three files)
• Delete the skill entry point (one file)
• Update every reference in the agent catalog, autonomous docs, hooks, and other skills

The contract tests caught the deletion immediately — they tried to read the deleted skill file and failed. Good tests. We updated them to verify the new engine carries the same merge constraints the old system enforced: squash feature branch commits, never drop target branch history.

One engine. One audit trail. Every file change tracked through the full chain: ticket, branch, commit, MR, merge. No exceptions.