Glass Box Evolution

Evolution You Can git blame

Unlike 'Black Box' optimization (DSPy, TextGrad) which produces opaque prompt blobs, Glass Box Evolution ensures every optimization step is human-readable, auditable, and revertible. We treat Prompt Evolution as Version Control—breeding racehorses, not compiling assembly.

Core Philosophy

In the 2025 MAS landscape, "Auto-Optimization" tools often result in:

Opaque Artifacts: "Why is the prompt doing this?"
Regression Risks: Hard to rollback specific behavioral changes
Loss of Intent: The "Why" is lost in the optimization

Glass Box Evolution proposes: Treat Prompt Evolution as Version Control.

Key Concepts

Feedback Synthesizer: An agent that reads execution logs and proposes semantic updates
Git Integration: Every change is a commit with clear rationale
Human-in-the-Loop: Humans review and merge "Pull Requests" from the synthesizer

Methodology

Log-to-Diff Engine for execution traces
Genetic Branching for strategy testing
Provenance Tracking linking versions to failures

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Citation

@misc{wiest2025glassbox,
  title = {Glass Box Evolution: Auditable Prompt Optimization with Git},
  author = {Wiest, Stefan},
  year = {2025},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stefanwiest.de/research/papers/glass-box-evolution/}},
  note = {Research Preview}
}