> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.adaline.ai/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Trigger a Cycle

> Choose the prompt, focus behavior, thoroughness, and reviewers for a new Improve cycle

Trigger an Improve cycle when you want Adaline to propose a prompt change from production evidence. A cycle runs in the background and moves to **Pending review** only after it has produced reviewable evidence.

The best cycles start with a clear pattern: a Behavior, trace set, evaluator failure, or dataset gap.

![Improve wizard with prompt, focus, behavior targeting, thoroughness, and notification controls](https://mintcdn.com/adaline/o8h3k4eQQbaIV193/images/platform-v2/improve/cycle-wizard.png?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=o8h3k4eQQbaIV193\&q=85\&s=d37a5e572497afb59783e2930e6dfde7)

**1. Open Improve**

Open a project, then select **Improve**.

**2. Choose the prompt**

Click **Start improvement** and select the prompt Adaline should improve.

**3. Add a focus**

Describe the change you want. Name the failure mode, audience, policy, output format, tool behavior, or runtime tradeoff.

**4. Target behaviors**

Select one or more Behaviors when you want the cycle to focus on known production patterns.

**5. Pick thoroughness**

Choose **Quick**, **Standard**, or **Thorough** based on risk and urgency.

**6. Start the cycle**

Add reviewers to notify, then click **Start cycle**.

## Choose thoroughness

| Preset | Use it when | Tradeoff |
| - | - | - |
| **Quick** | The issue is narrow and already well covered. | Faster run, less exploration. |
| **Standard** | You need the normal balance of speed and evidence. | Best default for most prompt fixes. |
| **Thorough** | The issue is high-impact, ambiguous, or safety-sensitive. | Longer run with broader evidence and candidate search. |

Actual runtime depends on prompt size, trace volume, dataset size, evaluator cost, provider latency, and candidate count.

> [!NOTE]
>
> Unless your billing plan includes cycle runs, Improve cycles are charged per run. The free plan does not include cycle runs. Typical cycle costs are about USD 2 - USD 5 per run, depending on the run configuration and usage.

## Readiness checks

The run button may be disabled when Adaline does not have enough evidence. Common causes:

* The prompt has not produced production traces.
* Behaviors are not yet clustered for the prompt.
* No useful evaluation or dataset coverage exists for the target issue. This coverage is optional, but weak coverage makes the review decision less confident.
* The selected Behavior does not map cleanly to the selected prompt.

Fix this by sending traffic, improving instrumentation metadata, adding representative cases, or choosing a narrower Behavior.

## After starting

The cycle appears under **In progress** while Adaline analyzes Behaviors, inspects evaluators, prepares datasets, explores candidates, and builds the review packet. You can leave the page while the run continues.

Use the cycle list by status:

| View | Use it for |
| - | - |
| **In progress** | Running cycles and evidence-generation stages. Open one to inspect progress or failures. |
| **Pending review** | Completed cycles waiting for a release decision. Review these first. |
| **History** | Approved, edited, rejected, failed, or canceled cycles. Use this for audit and release review. |

If the cycle fails, open the failed run and read the failure reason. Do not treat a failed cycle as a product decision; it usually means the run lacked evidence, scoring coverage, or a valid prompt diff.

> [card] [Review a Cycle](https://www.adaline.ai/docs/improve/review-a-cycle.md)
>
> Inspect the completed evidence packet and make a release decision.

> [card] [Synthetic Datasets](https://www.adaline.ai/docs/improve/synthetic-datasets.md)
>
> Improve validation coverage before rerunning weak cycles.


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