Mind-Wander Skill
Autonomous background reasoning agent. Runs locally on Qwen3.5-9B, consumes zero Anthropic tokens, and elevates findings to your context only when genuinely novel.
How it works
ON_YOUR_MIND.md → Qwen3.5 wander agent (every 30min)
open questions ↓ tools: query_graph, search_web,
tangents ↓ read_file, sandbox_run,
hypotheses ↓ check_dead_ends, record_dead_end, elevate()
↓
novelty gate (strict)
↙ ↘
MENTAL_EXPLORATION.md DEAD_ENDS.md + wander graph
(elevated findings) (closed threads, never in your context)
↓
memwatchd detects write
↓
graph-rag memory (your context)
Prerequisites
- Qwen3.5-9B-Q8 pulled to Ollama:
ollama pull qwen3.5-wander-q8(or use install script) - FalkorDB running (shared with graph-rag-memory skill if installed)
- Perplexity API key (optional but recommended for web search)
- graph-rag-memory skill installed (recommended — shares FalkorDB and Ollama)
Quick start
# Install and set up
bash mind-wander/scripts/install.sh
# Write your first open question
echo "## What is the best approach to X?" >> ON_YOUR_MIND.md
# Run manually
python3 mind-wander/run.py --verbose
# Check findings
cat MENTAL_EXPLORATION.md
cat DEAD_ENDS.md
# Status
python3 mind-wander/run.py --status
The ON_YOUR_MIND.md anchor file
Create ON_YOUR_MIND.md in your workspace root with questions and tangents.
The agent picks ONE per session. Format freely — the agent reads it as-is.
# On My Mind
## Open Questions
- Does X actually work better than Y in production?
- Is there a paper on Z that I haven't found yet?
## Tangents
- The implementation of A might connect to B in an interesting way
Mark completed items with ## ✅ COMPLETED so the agent skips them.
The novelty gate
- Restatement of known facts → discarded, nothing written
- New external finding intersecting open question → elevate()
- Empirical sandbox result that changes understanding → elevate()
- Definitively closed thread (≥2 targeted searches) → record_dead_end()
Tools available to the wander agent
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
query_graph | Search primary FalkorDB graph for related facts |
search_web | Perplexity AI web search |
read_file | Read workspace .md files |
list_files | List workspace .md files |
sandbox_run | Run Python snippets (numpy/scipy, no network, 30s limit) |
check_dead_ends | Check wander graph for previously closed threads |
record_dead_end | Record a closed thread (lower bar than elevate) |
elevate | Write finding to MENTAL_EXPLORATION.md (strict gate) |
Configuration
Edit mind-wander/mind_wander_config.py:
WANDER_MODEL = "qwen3.5-wander-q8" # or q4 for lighter
WANDER_OLLAMA = "http://172.18.0.1:11436"
MAX_TOOL_CALLS = 20
COOLDOWN_HOURS = 3 # min hours before revisiting same anchor item
Output files
| File | Contents | In graph-rag? |
|---|---|---|
MENTAL_EXPLORATION.md | Elevated findings | ✅ via memwatchd |
DEAD_ENDS.md | Closed threads summary | ❌ never |
completions/wander/ | Full session JSON | ❌ training data only |
Research context
This skill produced the first novel finding in its 10-minute test run:
"Cross-space routing (routing in nomic-space, retrieving in arctic/bge-m3 space)
matches same-space baseline accuracy — suggesting domain routing is robust to
embedding space discontinuities." See NOVELTY_LOG.md for tracked findings.
See references/research.md for theoretical foundations and references/setup.md
for detailed installation instructions.