item 31 scored: KV-memory flat (39.5 vs 39.1, p=1.0); all gates unmoved at -10 — vanishing-gradient init confound recorded; -3 rerun is the loose thread

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

results-loop/PROTOCOL_UNIFIED.md

@@ -1022,3 +1022,19 @@ for the item-20 depth gate (where the oracle headroom actually is).
     tf-only), reinforcing the training-signal attribution: clean TF
     transition gradients are the active ingredient.
     Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_x_kvmem.sh.
+
+--- Outcome, item 31 (scored 2026-07-17 ~21:20; rc pending job end).
+k=0 sanity exact. Matched 2:0 = 39.5 vs the by-construction ablation
+39.1 — FLAT (paired 6-5, p=1.0). Forensics: ALL 17 gates unmoved at
+-10.00 (+-0.01); value heads learned content behind the closed gate
+(weight norms 1.2-3.6) but the channel never opened. CONFOUND,
+recorded honestly: the silent-start init (-10) puts the gate gradient
+in a vanishing regime (both the memory's influence and the gate's
+gradient scale with e^-10 ~ 5e-5), so "optimizer declined the read
+path" and "optimizer couldn't reach it" are NOT separated by this
+run; a gate-init -3 rerun (~1.5h) would separate them. Also noted:
+output CE was near-saturated (~0.05-0.11) — little gradient pressure
+to explore any new channel; a headroom-bearing task would be a fairer
+test. Verdict as registered: within +-5 -> no evidence that a native
+attention read path breaches the consumption wall, with the init
+confound flagged as the one loose thread.