Form factor
The engine, and the three seams around it.
hillclimb is a CLI that drives coding agents in headless mode. The engine itself is the loop
that runs, scores, journals and selects, and it has three seams. A SearchPolicy decides what
to try next: the engine hands it a read-only view of the search and gets back one action. An
Agent executes that action by running one headless subagent per operator call. A
DataStore holds the records the loop writes and every view reads back: the journal, status and
the stop/prune queue. Files in a folder by default, or a SQLite database if you prefer that.
simple and detailed are the same diagram at two levels of detail — the buttons above the drawing switch between them
Search policies
What to try next: greedy, openevolve, the GEPA engine, your own.
Agents
Who writes the code: claude-code, codex, pi, dummy.
The DataStore
Where the records live: files, or one SQLite file.
Contribute one
Each seam is a small protocol. Implement one and it plugs in.
The watch TUI
hillclimb watch is the live view you keep open beside your agent: runs → searches → candidate
trees, with an on-demand candidate detail panel for notes, scores, lineage, output, and the
timestamped operator stream when present.
two searches filling in side by side, candidates landing, the tokens column climbing — recorded from a finished run on the heilbronn-convex-13 demo