jspace/results-loop/PROTOCOL_UNIFIED.md

# Pre-registered protocol: unified adapter eval (written before any test numbers)

Date: 2026-07-13, after val@499, before step-799 completion. No test-set
number for the unified adapter exists at time of writing.

1. **Primary loop depth: k=2, for both tasks.** Chosen on val CE with the
   tie-breaking rule: prefer the SMALLEST k whose hard-cell val CE is within
   0.01 nats of the best k. (Current val: MBPP hard k2−k4 = 0.004, GSM hard
   k2−k4 = 0.006 → both ties → k=2.) The full k-curve is secondary/descriptive.
2. **Checkpoint selection criterion (scalar, fixed now):** mean of the two
   hard-cell val CEs at k=2, tasks weighted equally:
   crit = (gsm_hard_k2 + mbpp_hard_k2)/2. Lowest crit among saved checkpoints
   wins. (At writing: step 499, crit = (0.475+0.205)/2 = 0.340.)
3. **Primary endpoints:** (a) MBPP test pass@1 hard-bucket at k=2 vs k=0;
   (b) GSM8K test accuracy hard-bucket at k=2 vs k=0. McNemar, paired by item.
   Overall accuracy is secondary (known to be underpowered at n=250/256).
4. **Same-harness rule:** all k, INCLUDING k=0 baselines, measured by the
   prompt-only fast-path scripts (`generate_frozen_prompt`; k=0 = plain
   cached generate inside the same function). No numbers carried over from
   the full-position-loop harness.
5. **Known missing control (not covered by this run):** a same-size,
   no-recurrence adapter (h -> h + MLP(h) at the L13->L14 boundary, no loop,
   no band re-run) trained on identical data/objective. Until it exists,
   "the loop does the work (vs. 1.6M new weights anywhere doing it)" is NOT
   established. Queued as the next training run. Note the k=0 column is
   gated off by construction and is a sanity check only — it is not this
   control.
6. **Symmetric interference check (missing):** dedicated GSM8K prompt-only
   adapter as the reference for "unified costs GSM nothing". Queued. Until
   then the no-interference claim is one-directional (MBPP side only).
7. **Band-location ablation (pre-registered 2026-07-13, before any arm ran).**
   Arms, all else identical (adapter size/init, data, curriculum, k, scripts;
   MBPP): early L2-12, mid-narrow L17-27, late L24-34 (width-matched, 11
   layers); shifted L6-22 (width-matched to the original 17). Reference:
   workspace L14-30 (already run, 3 seeds). Prediction: workspace-centered
   arms (L14-30, L17-27) exceed early/late on hard-bucket pass@1 at k=2-4 by
   a wide margin; shifted intermediate. Falsification: near-parity across
   arms demotes the lens claim from "locates where to loop" to "convenient
   discovery tool"; to be reported either way. Primary readout: hard-bucket
   pass@1 at k=4, e400 checkpoints throughout.
8. **Language commitments for the writeup:** the k0->k1 CE collapse (e.g.
   4.36->0.18) is format/template learning expected from any trained adapter
   and must not be quoted as evidence of routing/planning; informative
   comparisons are within k>=1 cells only. Depth ordering k2 vs k4 deltas
   (0.001-0.006 nats) are inside checkpoint jitter and must be described as
   "k>=2 fits hard items equally well; k=1 slightly worse."

9. **Anchor/entrance sweep (pre-registered 2026-07-14 ~03:00, before any arm
   ran).** Arms: bands (13,30), (12,30), (11,30) — injection point shifted
   up from L14 at fixed tap L30; plus tap-23 = (14,23). All E2B/MBPP, same
   recipe, e400, primary readout hard-bucket pass@1 at k=4. Competing
   predictions: (a) "L14 special" (last full-attention KV-computing layer,
   lens boundary) → anchor-13 drops; (b) "KV-channel count" (anchors 11-13
   add 1-3 extra KV-recomputing attention channels) → holds or improves.
   Body-length confound noted: earlier anchors lengthen the loop body; if
   results shift, run matched-length control (12,28) before interpreting.

10. **L9 discriminator arm (pre-registered 2026-07-14 ~10:00, before running).**
    Band (9,30): anchor at L9 — the only other full-attention, KV-computing
    layer below the boundary — deep in the lens's sensor regime, tap fixed at
    L30. Separates the two cliff explanations: (a) "lens boundary" predicts
    catastrophic (like anchors 11-13: 25-34% overall); (b) "full-attention
    KV-layer entry" predicts partial recovery (clearly above the L11-13
    trend, i.e. >40% overall or hard >25%). Registered prediction: (a) —
    the sensor-region content dominates; layer type does not rescue it.
    Same recipe/checkpoint/eval as the anchor sweep (250 items, ks 0,2,4).

---

# Outcomes vs pre-registrations (scored 2026-07-14, after all arms completed)

1. **k=2 primary depth** — held. All primary comparisons reported at k=2;
   k-curves descriptive. k≥2 plateau confirmed (k=8 gen-eval flat).
2. **Checkpoint criterion** — applied as written for the unified adapter.
   Separately reported: val-CE is a poor proxy for generation accuracy;
   later arms therefore pre-committed to fixed steps (e400) instead.
3. **Primary endpoints (unified adapter, k=2 vs k=0)** — (a) MBPP hard
   3.6% → 28.6% (direction as predicted); (b) GSM hard 0% → 6.3%, overall
   10.5% → 9.0% (no overall win — the math boundary result). Both reported.
4. **Same-harness rule** — held throughout (all final tables fast-path,
   k=0 included).
5. **Missing weights control** — run: trained FF adapter = 17.9% hard,
   exactly the untrained-loop level. Loop-vs-weights gap established.
6. **Symmetric interference check** — run (dedicated GSM adapter);
   mixed-task training regressed both tasks; reported as negative result.
7. **Band-location ablation** — prediction CONFIRMED with a caveat:
   L14-30 hard 43.6% ≫ early L2-12 (23.6%, overall destroyed 22.8%) and
   shifted L6-22 (21.8%, overall 29.0%). Caveat discovered: L17-27 and
   L24-34 are structurally null (KV sharing; k>0 ≡ k=0 bit-identical), so
   the "mid-narrow beats late" half of the prediction was untestable at
   E2B; the 12B replication (no shared KV) carries that weight instead.
8. **Language commitments** — honored in PAPER.md (k0→k1 CE collapse not
   cited as planning evidence; k2-vs-k4 nats described as jitter).
9. **Anchor/entrance sweep** — prediction (a) "L14 special" CONFIRMED:
   anchor-13 hard 17.9%/overall 34.4%; 12: 28.6%/30.8%; 11: 25.0%/25.2%;
   monotone collapse below the boundary. Tap-23 arm died in training
   (never rerun); exits 27/30/32/34 within seed noise, so exit choice is
   free. Matched-length control not needed (results did not shift with
   body length in the informative direction).
10. **L9 discriminator** — registered prediction (a) CONFIRMED: band
    (9,30) overall 14.0-21.4%, hard ≤21.4% — catastrophic, like anchors
    11-13, despite L9 being a full-attention KV-computing layer. The lens
    boundary, not layer type, gates the retrofit.

11. **Recurrent-regime arm (pre-registered 2026-07-15, before training).**
    Huginn-style retrofit on the frozen E2B band: RecurrentAdapter
    (learned A,B init α·I/(1−α)·I + zero-init MLP), h0 = norm-scaled
    noise, log-uniform random depth k∈[1,16], bptt=4, same data/steps/
    checkpoint rule (e400 primary) as all merge arms. Eval ks 0,2,4,8,16,32
    on the 250-item MBPP set. Competing predictions: (a) "amortization is
    intrinsic to frozen-band retrofits" → performance plateaus by k≈4 at
    or below the merge arm's level, no depth-monotone gain; (b) "fixed-
    point behavior was an artifact of our fixed-shallow-k training"
    (Huginn regime transfers) → monotone hard-bucket improvement past k=8
    and reduced noise-seed sensitivity after training. Secondary readout:
    path independence (two noise seeds → output agreement rate) at e400.
    Known risk, stated in advance: 600 steps may be far too little for
    this regime (McLeish et al. use ~50B tokens); a null here bounds the
    cheap-retrofit budget only, not the regime.

12. **Parcae-constrained recurrent arm (pre-registered 2026-07-15, before
    training; Prairie et al. 2026 parameterization).** Same as item 11 but
    A = exp(−Δt·exp(a)) diagonal → ρ(A) < 1 by construction; init exactly
    the α=0.3 merge (verified bit-equal at init). ρ(A) logged every 10
    steps in BOTH arms. Theory-derived predictions, stated in advance:
    (a) contraction ⇒ fixed point is a function of e ⇒ the Parcae arm
    SATURATES in k (no depth-monotone gain) and its converged performance
    is amortizable — if so, our deflationary result is a corollary of
    ρ<1, and our observed k≈3–4 convergence is the geometric rate 0.3^k;
    (b) the UNCONSTRAINED item-11 arm either drifts toward ρ≥1 (watch the
    ρ log: divergent runs should show ρ≥1 before loss spikes) or, if it
    gains monotone depth-performance, does so with ρ near 1 — the edge of
    stability is where genuine iteration must live. Either outcome
    formalizes "the anchor coefficient is the stability dial" as
    "the anchor coefficient is the spectral radius".

13. **Per-depth adapter arm + free-ACT probe (pre-registered 2026-07-15,
    before training).** (a) PerDepthAdapter: one merge adapter per
    iteration (n=4, Bae-style depth-wise relaxation at the entrance;
    breaks time-invariance — LTV, no fixed-point guarantee), standard
    curriculum, e400, eval ks 0,2,4,8. Prediction: lands at or below the
    distill/rung-2 amortization ceiling (~46% hard) because depth-indexed
    weights add content, not state-evolution; exceeding it would show
    per-iteration expressivity was binding and amend the deflationary
    claim. Depths >4 reuse adapter 4 (stated: k=8 cell is then
    fixed-point-like by construction). (b) Free-ACT probe on the standard
    merge arm: record per-item convergence depth (cos>0.9995) at k=8 cap.
    Predictions: accuracy unchanged vs fixed k (post-convergence no-ops);
    mean k_conv ≈ 3; hard-labeled items converge SLOWER than easy ones
    (adaptive compute allocates like ACT without any learned halting
    parameter).

--- Outcome, item 11 (scored 2026-07-15, k=16/32 cells cancelled by
decision after k<=8): PREDICTION (a) SUBSTANTIALLY CONFIRMED, with one
twist. The unconstrained arm left contraction immediately (rho(A):
0.3 -> 3.4 by step 100, plateau ~4.5) yet trained smoothly — per-iteration
norm-matching converts magnitude explosion into directional churn, so
"rho>=1 => divergence" becomes "rho>=1 => divergence OR stationary churn"
under a norm projection. Consequences as predicted: substrate damage
(easy 98.4 -> ~69% at all k>0, far exceeding any contractive arm's tax),
val CE flat k=1..16 (stationary, not progressive), hard bucket at
merge level (35.7/39.3/42.9% at k=2/4/8 — a one-item-per-depth-doubling
crawl that at k=8 reaches what the contractive merge reaches at k=4,
never approaching the amortization ceiling from above). 4x parameters
bought nothing. Depth-monotone computation did not emerge at this budget.

14. **Tied-alpha arm (pre-registered 2026-07-15, before training).**
    TiedAlphaAdapter: x = (1−a)⊙e + a⊙ŝ + MLP([e;ŝ]), a = σ(â) per-dim
    learned, init a=0.3 everywhere (bit-equal to MergeAdapter at step 0,
    verified). B tied to (1−a): convex combination keeps the LTI fixed
    point on the e–ŝ segment (substrate-anchored by construction),
    ρ = max(a) < 1 guaranteed, +d≈1.5K params. Standard curriculum,
    s0 = band(e), e400, eval ks 0,2,4,8 on 250 items. This is the one
    untested cell combining parcae's learnable decay with the merge's
    anchoring. Predictions: (a) substrate fidelity preserved (easy ≈
    merge's 88%, unlike both rec arms' ~70%) because anchoring, not
    ρ, controls fidelity; (b) hard-bucket at merge level (no significant
    gain — per-dim constant α is not where capability lives, per the
    adaptive-α E2B result); (c) learned a drifts slightly DOWN from 0.3
    (as in parcae). If (a) holds while rec arms failed it, the
    fixed-point-location dial is causally isolated: same learnable-decay
    freedom, only the tie to (1−a) differs from parcae.

--- Outcome, item 12 (scored 2026-07-15): prediction (a) CONFIRMED in its
dynamics half, REFUTED in its fidelity half — and the refutation is the
finding. Dynamics: rho stayed in (0,1) throughout (0.300 -> 0.292, the
optimizer drifting MORE contractive when confined to the stable region);
loss trajectory as good as or better than the unconstrained arm at every
checkpoint (the rec arm's flight to rho~4.5 was epiphenomenal — all fit
lives in the MLP); eval saturates completely (hard 42.9/42.9/39.3/39.3/
39.3 at k=2/4/8/16/32, easy flat ~71%). Fidelity: easy items were NOT
preserved (71% vs the merge's 88.5%) despite guaranteed contraction —
substrate fidelity is controlled by fixed-point LOCATION (anchored B +
curriculum), not by rho. Conclusion: stability and fidelity are
independent dials (fig_phase.png); the Parcae constraint delivers exactly
what it promises (robust training, convergence, certified tail gradients)
and exactly nothing more. Item 14 (tied-alpha) is the causal isolation of
the fidelity dial.

15. **Fidelity factorial + capacity control + seed (pre-registered
    2026-07-15 ~03:15, before any of these arms ran; overnight batch).**
    The fidelity loss of both rec arms (easy 88.5 -> ~71%) confounds three
    deltas from the winning merge: (i) learned B, (ii) random-depth
    training instead of the difficulty->depth curriculum, (iii) noise s0.
    Item 14 (tied-alpha) tests (i) with anchoring. New single-variable
    cells, everything else = standard merge recipe (fixed B, band(e) s0,
    curriculum, e400, eval ks 0,2,4,8 on 250 items):
      a. merge+randk  — only (ii) changed (log-uniform k in [1,16], bptt 4).
      b. merge+noises0 — only (iii) changed.
      c. merge h=2048 — capacity control for the per-depth arm (6.4M
         shared vs 6.4M depth-indexed): if per-depth beats the ceiling
         but h2048 does not, time-variation (not capacity) is credited;
         if both do, it was capacity all along.
      d. parcae seed 1 — robustness of the fidelity refutation.
    Predictions: (a) and (b) each cost a few points of easy at most
    (anchored fixed point dominates); neither reproduces the ~17-point
    drop — the culprit is the learned/free B (with item 14 as the
    positive control). h2048 stays at the ceiling (hard <=46%), fidelity
    intact. parcae s1 reproduces easy ~71% within seed noise.

--- Outcome, item 13a (scored 2026-07-15): prediction CONFIRMED — per-depth
lands below/at the ceiling, never above. Detail is instructive: fidelity
preserved throughout (easy 88.5/89.3/86.9 at k=2/4/8 — anchored B), but
hard-bucket content is DEPTH-STRANDED: 17.9% at k=2 (adapters 3-4, which
hold the hard-trained content, never execute), 35.7% at k=4, 42.9% at k=8
— where depths 5-8 reuse adapter 4, i.e. the architecture reverts to
shared-map iteration and the fixed-point mechanism collects the remaining
gain. Time-variation adds a fragility (content unavailable except at its
training depth) and no capability; map-sharing is load-bearing for the
anytime-usable gain. Depth-4 adapter overfit visible in val (hard k4 CE
0.188@99 -> 0.371@599) — LTV concentrates small-pool overfitting into
single depths.

--- Outcome, item 13b (scored 2026-07-15): accuracy prediction CONFIRMED
(k=8 halt run 52.0/90.2/42.9 = plateau level); convergence predictions
REFUTED. Per-item state-cosine (thresh 0.9995, k=8 cap): k_conv
distribution 4:3, 5:57, 6:47, 7:17, never-within-8:126 — mean ~7, and NO
difficulty gradient (easy 7.01 vs hard 7.00). The earlier "bit-exact by
k~3-4" was the single dynamics-probe example, not the population: outputs
plateau by k~2-4 while the state keeps drifting at 1e-3..1e-4 cosine
scale; the fixed point is an OUTPUT-stable orbit (suffix layers + decode
wash out residual state motion), not a literal state fixed point for most
prompts. Free-ACT via state-cosine therefore yields no early exit at this
threshold, and no ACT-like difficulty allocation falls out for free —
output-level halting signals would be needed. Paper's dynamics claims
softened accordingly.

--- Outcome, item 14 (scored 2026-07-15): ALL THREE PREDICTIONS CONFIRMED.
(a) Fidelity fully preserved: easy 93.4/91.0/90.2 at k=2/4/8 (merge:
92.6/88.5; parcae with identical decay freedom but untied B: ~71%) —
the free B is causally isolated as the fidelity culprit, the anchoring
tie as the protection. (b) Hard at merge level exactly (35.7/42.9/39.3 =
merge's k-curve within noise); no gain from the freedom. (c) Learned a
essentially unmoved: mean 0.298, range [0.285, 0.310], 0/1536 dims moved
>0.05 from init — the anchor coefficient is not a useful learnable DOF;
hand-tuned 0.3 was already optimal. Recipe consequence: fixed-alpha
anchored merge is the recommended design; learnable-alpha safe but
pointless, learnable-B harmful, per-depth strands the gain.

16. **Code→GSM8K cross-task transfer (pre-registered 2026-07-15 ~14:10,
    before running).** The MBPP-trained loop adapter (adapter_code, s0) and
    the noise-s0 variant evaluated on GSM8K test (n=256, prompt-only loop,
    same harness as eval_gsmonly). Extends the transfer-distance ladder
    (HumanEval tie -> LCB trained-hurts) across tasks. Predictions:
    (a) hard-bucket gain ~0 (plan content is task-local; GSM8K needs
    evolving state, not static plans); (b) easy items damaged at k>0
    (~93 -> 50-70%), comparable to or worse than the GSM-trained merge —
    substrate damage on GSM8K is perturbation-driven and content-agnostic;
    (c) overall at k>0 below k=0 (no rescue). If instead hard gains
    appear (>5 points), plan-shaped content is partially task-general —
    would weaken the task-local claim from LCB.

--- Amendment to item 15 (2026-07-15 ~13:15): noise-s0 arm EXCEEDED
prediction (b) upward: hard 50.0/53.6/50.0 at k=2/4/8 with easy 88-90%
— nominally the best hard cells of the project (merge best 46.4; seed
mean 37.5±5.5). Paired vs tied-alpha (only same-day per-item baseline):
discordants 5-1/3-0/3-0 in noise-s0's favor, each k p≈0.22-0.25 at n=28
— consistent direction, not individually significant. Denoising
interpretation: training the loop to reach the fixed point from noise
regularizes the content. SEED ARMS QUEUED (s1, s2, same recipe/eval,
pre-registered here): if seed-mean hard(k=4) > 46.4 (the merge's best
single cell), the recommended recipe gains noise-s0; if seed mean falls
back into 37-46, it was a lucky seed.

--- Outcome, item 15c (h2048 capacity control, scored 2026-07-15): the
per-depth exoneration is CLEAN — shared 6.4M params reach hard 42.9/53.6/
50.0 at k=2/4/8 vs per-depth's 17.9/35.7/42.9 at the same capacity;
time-variation is strictly worse than weight-sharing at matched params.
Fidelity prediction confirmed and exceeded (easy 95.1% at k=2 — best
looped fidelity of the project; 90.2% at k=4/8). Ceiling prediction
(hard <= 46%) REFUTED UPWARD like noise-s0: k=4/8 at 53.6/50.0. Two
independent variations (noise s0, 4x MLP) now sit at 50-54% where the
original merge reached 46.4 — suggests 46.4 was an UNDER-estimate of the
recipe family's level, not a ceiling it defined. The distill-parity
deflation claim is unaffected statistically (53.6 vs 45.7 at hard n=28
is within noise) but the language "every regime tops out at the same
ceiling" should become "at the same level within noise" — pending the
noise-s0 seed arms.

--- Outcome, item 15d (parcae seed 1, scored 2026-07-15): CONFIRMED —
the fidelity refutation replicates. easy 70.5/73.0/72.1 at k=2/4/8
(seed 0: 72.1/71.3/70.5); hard 32.1/39.3/35.7 (seed 0: 42.9/42.9/39.3,
ordinary seed spread at n=28). Two-seed conclusion: contraction-with-
free-B loses ~17 points of easy items regardless of seed; the phase
diagram's Parcae point is solid.

--- Outcome, item 16 (code->GSM8K transfer, scored 2026-07-15): ALL THREE
PREDICTIONS CONFIRMED, emphatically. MBPP-trained loop on GSM8K: hard
0.8-1.6% at every k (prediction a: ~0 gain — plan content is task-local);
easy 93.1 -> 27.6-44.8% (prediction b: damaged, in fact WORSE than the
GSM-trained merge's 48%); overall strictly below k=0 at every k>0
(prediction c). noise-s0 variant identical (easy 34.5, hard 1.6). The
transfer-distance ladder ends cleanly: near (HumanEval) tie, far-code
(LCB) trained-hurts, cross-task (GSM8K) trained-content actively toxic
while gaining nothing. Task-locality of the learned content is now a
three-point monotone result.

--- Closure of the item-15b/15c "ceiling nudged upward" question
(2026-07-15, after ns seeds): LUCKY SEED, per the pre-registered rule.
noise-s0 hard(k=4) across seeds: 53.6 / 39.3 / 35.7 -> seed mean 42.9,
inside the 37-46 band. Fidelity across seeds intact (easy 90.2-94.3 —
the factorial conclusion is seed-robust); the 50-54% cells (ns seed 0,
h2048 single seed) were upper-tail draws of the same distribution the
merge's 46.4 came from. No recipe amendment; the abstract's original
"same level within noise" framing stands; single-cell records are not
levels — only seed means are.

17. **GSM-only, current recipe (pre-registered 2026-07-15 ~20:45, before
    running).** train_merge_unified.py --tasks gsm: MergeAdapter, prompt-
    only loop, curriculum, GSM8K data ONLY — removes the mixed-task
    interference confound from the adapter_uni run, completing the
    "winning recipe trained on GSM" question. Eval: prompt-only, n=256,
    ks 0,1,2,4, e400. Predictions: (a) hard <= 10% at every k (supervision
    density is structural: ~3 answer tokens; the recipe's dense-output
    ingredient cannot exist here); (b) easy damaged at k>0 (to 40-70%);
    (c) overall never beats k=0. If hard exceeds 15% or overall beats
    k=0, task interference in the mixed run was masking a real GSM
    capability — would reopen the GSM chapter.

    Scope note (item 17): the design-space arms of items 11-15 are NOT
    crossed with GSM8K, deliberately. Exclusion by dominance: fidelity-
    failing regimes (rec, parcae) cannot improve on a task MORE fidelity-
    fragile than MBPP; architecture-failing (per-depth) and equivalent
    (tied-alpha -> merge) and k-placement-only (randk) and same-family
    (noise-s0, h2048) variants have no mechanism by which task change
    could invert their MBPP verdict. Only the recipe family's best member
    (this item) is informative on GSM8K.

--- Outcome, item 17 (GSM-only, current recipe, scored 2026-07-15):
predictions (a) and (b) CONFIRMED, (c) nominally exceeded but not
meaningfully. hard 8.7/5.5/4.7% at k=1/2/4 (below the 10% bar; nowhere
near the 15% reopen threshold); easy 93.1 -> 48-52% at k>0; overall
11.7/10.9/10.2 vs k0's 10.5 — the k=1 cell is +1.2 points nominal
(~3 items at n=256, not significant), the rest below. Removing the
mixed-task interference bought ~2 points over adapter_uni (9.4 -> 11.7
at k=1) — interference was real but marginal, not masking a capability.
The GSM8K chapter is closed: the recipe family's best member, trained
on GSM alone in the correct regime, delivers no usable gain and the
standard fidelity damage; combined with the scope note, the boundary
claim (structural: supervision density + state-evolution bottleneck)
is fully supported.

18. **E1: learned per-prompt halting gate (pre-registered 2026-07-16
    ~00:20, before any arm runs; PLAN_SELFPACED.md).** HaltingMergeAdapter:
    frozen-recipe merge + ACT-style halting head on the last prompt
    position's workspace state; soft state-mixture training, CE + lambda *
    E[iters], penalty warmup at step 100; NO difficulty curriculum (mixed
    batches — the gate must discover the allocation). k_max=4, e400/e600
    checkpoints, deploy = sequential halting at 0.5 cumulative mass,
    generation via frozen-prompt at per-item k*. Arms: lambda in
    {0, 1e-3, 1e-2}, seed 0. Eval: 250 items, vs anchors k=0 (0.488),
    uniform merge k=4 (0.512/0.885/0.464), probe-gate E0 (0.520/0.975/0.286).
    Predictions: (a) some lambda gives overall >= 0.512 at mean E[k] <=
    2.4 (60% of uniform-4); (b) easy >= 0.95 at that lambda; (c) k*-vs-hard
    point-biserial r > 0.3; (d) hard >= 0.286 (beats E0's frozen probe).
    Collapse (E[k] pinned at 1 or 4 for all lambda) falsifies E1 and
    triggers the plan's kill criterion. lambda=0 control isolates whether
    the CE gradient alone moves the gate (expected: barely — penalty
    provides the pressure).

    Item 18 amendment (2026-07-16 ~23:45, before results): arms run on a
    rented 4xH100 node in parallel instead of the Spark queue; a fourth
    arm (lambda=1e-3, seed 1) is added for immediate seed replication of
    the expected-winner penalty. Spark's queued gate jobs will be dropped
    to avoid duplication. Everything else per registration.

--- Outcome, item 18 (scored 2026-07-16 ~00:40): predictions (b), (c)
REFUTED, (a) marginal miss, (d) trivial pass. All arms converge to
UNIFORM depth (lambda 0/1e-3/1e-2 -> E[k] 4/2-or-4/1; the two 1e-3 seeds
picked different plateaus — degenerate penalty landscape), r = 0.000
everywhere. Mechanism identified and consistent with prior findings:
teacher-forced CE is depth-flat (stationarity), so CE provides no
per-item depth gradient; the penalty alone cannot teach selectivity.
The state DOES carry the signal (E0 probe: train acc 1.0) — the failure
is the training signal, not the representation. E1-as-designed is dead;
kill criterion NOT fully triggered (E2 untested, and the mechanism
points at a repair).

19. **E1b: label-supervised halting head (pre-registered 2026-07-16
    ~00:45, before running).** Freeze the curriculum merge (adapter_code
    s0); train ONLY the halting head (BCE): target halt=0 at iterations
    below the label's depth (easy->1, hard->4, per STaR label), halt=1 at
    or above it. 300 steps, mixed batches, head-only params. Eval: gated
    eval as item 18, n=250. Predictions: (a) r(k*, hard) > 0.5 (the head
    is a trained difficulty classifier now); (b) easy >= 95% at k*=1
    (near-E0's 97.5); (c) hard >= 35.7% (>= best uniform arm, via better
    recall than E0's frozen probe: more than 18/28 hard items routed
    deep); (d) overall >= 52.0 at E[k] <= 2.2. If (c) fails while (a,b)
    hold, halting-head recall saturates at probe level and gate quality,
    not gate training, is the binding constraint.

--- Outcome, item 19 / E1b (scored 2026-07-16 ~01:15): prediction (c)
CONFIRMED (hard 39.3 >= 35.7 at mean k* 2.18), (a) FAILED at r=0.217
(selectivity real — hard routed 2x deeper than easy (2.18 vs 1.08), the
program's first nonzero gate correlation — but weak at deploy), (b,d)
FAILED for a traced design reason: halted_k_per_item lacked k*=0, so easy
items were forced through >=1 iteration and landed on the merge's WORST
easy depth (k=1: 85.2%); E0's 97.5% came precisely from k=0 routing.
E1c amendment (pre-registered before running, same session): pre-loop
halt consult on s_0 enabling k*=0; targets easy->0, hard->4; threshold
0.5 unchanged (calibration deferred unless E1c misses). Predictions:
easy >= 95%, hard >= 35.7%, r >= 0.4, overall >= 51.2 at E[k] <= 1.5.

--- Outcome, item 19 / E1c (scored 2026-07-16 ~01:50, Spark re-run):
prediction (b) CONFIRMED — easy 95.9% with mean k*=0.11 (the k=0 routing
fix worked perfectly for easy items); (a) FAILED (r=0.220, unchanged);
(c) FAILED HARD — hard 21.4% at mean k*=1.5: with the pre-loop halt
consult, weakly-discriminated hard items now exit at k*=0/1 where before
they got >=1 iteration; the recall problem became more expensive, not
better. (d) FAILED (overall 50.0 at E[k]=0.74). Net Pareto: E1c =
(50.0 overall, 95.9 easy, 21.4 hard, 0.74 mean iters — 82% compute
saved); E0 probe-gate = (52.0, 97.5, 28.6, ~2.2) still dominates on
accuracy. The learned-head line has ONE identified un-tried knob:
deploy-threshold calibration on val for hard-recall (the 0.5 threshold
is arbitrary; raising it routes more items deep, trading easy tax for
hard recall — a tunable curve E0 cannot offer). E1 arc summary for
PLAN_SELFPACED: gating machinery works end-to-end, easy-item protection
and compute savings are demonstrated and cheap; difficulty-selective
DEPTH allocation remains unsolved at 3K-param-head scale — binding
constraint is classifier quality on the k=0/s0 state, exactly where E0
started. Next per plan: threshold sweep (cheap) before any E2.

20. **E1 threshold curve + oracle bound (pre-registered 2026-07-16 ~02:15,
    before running).** Phase 1: record E1c head's halt probabilities per
    test item (one GPU pass). Phase 2: per-item outcomes for the frozen
    curriculum merge at k=0/1/2/4 (four generation sweeps, tag merge_lut —
    doubles as the reusable gate-evaluation lookup table and supplies the
    long-missing per-item logs for the canonical merge). Phase 3 (offline):
    gated accuracy at thresholds .3-.99 by composing k*(theta) with the
    lookup; plus the ORACLE gate (best k per item) = the ceiling any gate
    can reach with this merge. Predictions: (a) some theta gives hard >=
    32% with easy >= 93% and E[k] <= 2.2 (dominating E0 on compute at
    comparable accuracy); (b) the curve is monotone in theta; (c) oracle
    overall >= 55% — if so, gate-quality headroom is large and further
    gate work is justified; if oracle < 53%, gating this merge is nearly
    saturated and the program pivots to E2 or closes.

--- Outcome, item 20 (scored 2026-07-16 ~02:35): (b) CONFIRMED — clean
monotone threshold curve (hard 7->50%, easy 96.7->87.7%, E[k] 0.43->2.63
across theta .3->.99). (a) FAILED — no theta reaches easy>=93 AND
hard>=32; at matched easy the E0 frozen probe dominates the entire
learned-head curve: the BCE-trained 3K head is strictly worse than the
class-balanced logistic probe it was meant to replace. (c) CONFIRMED,
emphatically: ORACLE gate = 59.6 overall / easy 100% / hard 64.3% at
E[k]=0.24. Key insight: hard items are DEPTH-DIVERSE — 18/28 solvable at
some k in {0,1,2,4} but no single k solves more than 13; a third of the
hard bucket lives in per-item depth selection. Program continues per
rule; binding constraint quantified: gate quality is worth ~9.6 overall
points (50.0 deployed vs 59.6 oracle). Also noted: the LUT re-run of the
canonical merge shows small systematic drift vs the Jul-13 eval (k4 hard
46.4 identical, k1/k2 hard 3 items lower) — the LUT (per-item, single
harness run) is now the canonical reference. Next candidates, in cost
order: (i) deploy E0's probe AS the gate against the LUT (free,
offline); (ii) stronger classifier (multi-position features, more data,
calibrated threshold); (iii) oracle-gap error analysis on the hard items
no fixed k solves but some k does.

21. **E2 stage A: dense short-CoT supervision through the carry
    whiteboard, GSM8K (pre-registered 2026-07-16 ~02:55, before running;
    PLAN_SELFPACED E2 / the hybrid from the internalization discussion).**
    Prep: harvest TERSE verified CoTs ("at most 3 short steps", answer-
    verified, STaR filter) for GSM train. Arms: (A) carry regime
    (k=2 prefill, pauses easy p=2 / hard p=6) trained with CE on
    scratchpad+answer (~30-60 dense tokens — the ingredient every latent
    GSM arm lacked); (B) CONTROL: identical supervision, feedforward
    adapter, no recurrence. Eval: GSM test 256, grid 0:0 (base), 2:2,
    2:6; e400 checkpoints. Predictions: (a) arm A beats every previous
    GSM arm's overall (>12.1%) — dense supervision is the binding fix;
    (b) the A-vs-B delta isolates the whiteboard: if A > B by >=3 points
    overall, recurrence adds value beyond visible-scratchpad training;
    if A ~= B, the scratchpad text alone carries it (deflation, GSM
    edition); (c) easy-bucket damage smaller than answer-only carry's
    (83->45%) because training and deployment output formats now match.
    Honest note: arm outputs are VISIBLE tokens (~40) — this is the
    budget-CoT-with-loop hybrid, a scope change from latent planning,
    run at Nils's explicit direction ("do gsm8k and such").

--- Outcome, item 21 (scored 2026-07-16 ~06:30). Harvest: 427 verified
terse CoTs (292 hard, 135 easy; 73.5% yield, ~3 min). Grid (n=256,
base 10.9/93.1/0.8/0.0 overall/easy/hard/drop):
  arm A carry  2:2  53.9  (82.8 / 60.6 / 37.0)
  arm A carry  2:6  57.4  (72.4 / 63.8 / 45.0)
  control FF   2:2  49.6  (79.3 / 59.8 / 28.0)
  control FF   2:6  54.7  (82.8 / 66.9 / 31.0)
(a) CONFIRMED, dramatically: best cell 57.4% vs the previous best GSM
arm's 12.1% — a 5x jump to full-CoT territory (~53%) at ~1/4 the
visible tokens. Dense verified supervision was indeed the binding
constraint; the supervision-density theory of the GSM failure is now
POSITIVELY confirmed, not just by absence. (b) MIXED: A-vs-B delta
+4.3 at p=2 (clears the >=3 bar), +2.7 at p=6 (misses); hard/easy
shuffle within noise between arms, BUT the whiteboard shows a
consistent, specific signature: DROP items (unreachable by the base
model even with full CoT at labeling) — A beats B by +9 and +14 points
there in the two cells. Interpretation: scratchpad supervision carries
the bulk; the carry chain specifically extends reach into previously
unreachable problems. McNemar (scored 2026-07-16 morning): overall
A-vs-B not significant in either cell (2:2 discordants 34-23 p=0.185;
2:6 33-26 p=0.435), but the pre-identified drop-bucket signature IS:
2:6 drop discordants 20-6, exact McNemar p=0.0094 (survives
Bonferroni x4 = 0.038); 2:2 drop 16-7, p=0.093 (same direction,
marginal). Verdict: the whiteboard's edge is real and specific to
extending reach into drop items, not a general lift over matched
supervision. (c) CONFIRMED: easy damage
much reduced vs answer-only carry (83->72-83 vs 83->45). Ladder gate:
technically met at p=2; decision on stage B/A2/E2-N deferred to the
morning review with the p-values in hand — the drop-bucket signature,
if it survives pairing, is the strongest argument for continuing.

22. **E2-L rung B: internalization ladder, front-first step deletion
    (pre-registered 2026-07-16 ~10:40, before running; Nils chose stage B
    over A2/E2-N at the morning review. Gate state: pre-registered +3
    overall met on points (+4.3 at p=2); paired McNemar overall ns, but
    the drop-bucket signature significant, 2:6 p=0.0094).** Design:
    delete the first d scratchpad lines of each verified terse CoT
    (d=1,2,3 — front-first: the deleted computation must ride the
    pause-chain before the visible remainder), each deleted step replaced
    by 10 pauses (median step = 10 tokens, compute-matched); unparseable
    cots (14/427 without exactly one Answer line) pass through intact.
    Step-count distribution 1/2/3/4/5+: 11/164/196/27/15 — so d=3 is
    effectively rung C (pauses only) for ~87% of items. Each rung
    warm-starts from the previous (d=1 from rung-A e400), brief retrain:
    200 steps, LR 3e-4 cosine, seed 0. Eval: GSM test n=256, cells 0:0
    (k=0 sanity, expect ~base 10.9), 2:(2+10d), 2:(6+10d); e200
    checkpoints; per-item logs kept so rung-vs-rung McNemar is offline.
    Known approximation, stated in advance: items with fewer than d
    steps train at smaller effective p than the eval cell
    (ndel=min(d,n_steps)). Predictions: (a) d=1 best cell within 5
    points of rung A's 57.4 — one step fits the recurrence budget (the
    drop-bucket reach evidence says the whiteboard already carries
    step-sized computation); (b) monotone decline across d; (c) at d=3
    accuracy stays above BOTH base (10.9) and cold answer-only carry
    (9.4) — curriculum beats cold training even where the ladder breaks.
    Deliverable: the break rung = first d whose best cell falls >=5
    points below the previous rung's best — the measured capacity of
    this recurrence budget to absorb computation. Job:
    scripts/jobs/zzz_m_gsm_rungb.sh (single submit, ~3x(40min train +
    eval) on the Spark).

--- Outcome, item 22 (scored 2026-07-16 ~15:30). k=0 sanity row
reproduced base exactly in all three rung evals (10.9/93.1/0.8/0.0).
Ladder (best cell overall, n=256): rung A 57.4 -> d=1 31.6 (2:12) ->
d=2 18.4 (2:26) -> d=3 19.1 (2:32). (a) FAILED, decisively: the break
rung is d=1 — deleting ONE compute-matched step costs 25.8 points
(easy 83->62, hard 64->36, drop 45->17); the recurrence cannot absorb
even one step's computation at this budget/recipe. (b) monotone
through d=2, then a plateau (d=2 18.4 -> d=3 19.1, within n=256
noise): the decay bottoms out ABOVE the floor rather than collapsing
to it. (c) CONFIRMED: d=3 (pause-only for ~87% of items) = 19.1 vs
base 10.9 — paired McNemar 33-12 discordants, p=0.0025 — and vs cold
answer-only carry 9.4: the curriculum-reached latent loop DOUBLES the
cold-trained equivalent. Composition of the d=3 edge: easy is
DAMAGED (58.6 vs 93.1 base) while hard (18.9 vs 0.8) and drop (8.0
vs 0.0) are lifted — the latent loop trades easy-bucket reliability
for reach, echoing item 21's drop-bucket signature in latent form.
Deliverable: measured capacity of this recurrence budget = a plateau
at ~19% overall / ~2x the cold floor; the visible scratchpad carried
the other ~38 points. Val-loss note: hard val rose with d (0.36 ->
0.56 -> 0.59) while easy fell (d=3 0.13, mostly answer-line targets)
— CE fit does not track eval accuracy at deep rungs. Interpretation
for the plan: rung C' (no pauses) is moot as a capability claim — C
already plateaued at 19; the E2-L line's value is now the 2x-over-cold
curriculum effect + the reach trade, not scratchpad-free parity. Next
knobs if the line continues: longer per-rung retraining, finer
deletion schedule (fractional rungs), or E2-N noise-hardening stacked
on the rungs.

23. **E2-L d=1 capacity-ceiling controls (pre-registered 2026-07-16
    ~15:55, before running; Nils: "run that one control").** Item 22's
    break-at-d=1 has two untested confounds; one arm each, single-knob
    changes from item 22's d=1 (both warm-start rung-A e400, seed 0):
    arm A "x600" = 600 steps instead of 200 (3x training; tests the
    brief-retrain objection — note d=1 val had plateaued at 0.36, so
    prediction is NO recovery); arm B "pp30" = 30 pauses per deleted
    step instead of 10 (3x latent bandwidth, same 200 steps; tests
    whether inert-pause capacity, not training, binds). Eval n=256:
    arm A cells 0:0, 2:12, 2:16 (e600); arm B cells 0:0, 2:32, 2:36
    (e200). Decision rule, stated in advance: item 22 d=1 best = 31.6;
    a control within +-5 points confirms the ceiling on that axis;
    >=+5 (>36.6) reopens the ladder on that knob (longer schedules or
    wider pause-chains); if BOTH land within +-5, the d=1 ceiling is
    confirmed structural and the ladder chapter closes as scored.
    Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_n_rungb_ctrl.sh.
    AMENDMENT (2026-07-16 ~19:05, mid-run, Nils's call): arm A's eval
    skipped to save ~50min GPU — the verdict was already decided by
    training evidence (train loss memorized to 0.02-0.10 by step 200;
    val easy 0.386->0.397->0.426, hard 0.357->0.376->0.421 across
    e200/e400/e600 — monotone UP, textbook overfit, no recovery; k=0
    sanity row reproduced base before the kill). Arm A scored from the
    val trajectory: training time is NOT the binding constraint. Arm B
    (pp30) runs in full as registered.

--- Outcome, item 23 (scored 2026-07-16 ~23:55; rc=0). k=0 sanity rows
reproduced base in both arms' evals (arm A's before its eval was
skipped). Arm A (x600): scored from val trajectory per amendment — no
recovery, mild overfit; training-time axis CONFIRMS the ceiling. Arm B
(pp30): best cell 29.3 (2:36; 28.5 at 2:32) vs item-22 d=1's 31.6 —
WITHIN the +-5 band, slightly below: 3x latent positions bought
nothing (hard 33.9/36.2 vs 36.2; drop 14 vs 17; easy 51.7-55.2 vs
62.1). Decision rule: BOTH axes confirm -> the d=1 break is
STRUCTURAL. Neither longer training nor a longer pause-chain lets
this carry absorb one scratchpad step; the binding constraint is the
carried state itself (its per-position expressivity/fidelity, not its
compute budget). Converging evidence from the same evening's
microscopy (probe_discount*/probe_gsm*): the board natively carries
plans ("Multiply", "subtract"), coarse magnitudes ("sixty/eighty"),
and completion-state ("plus" kept alive at the 430 divergence — carry
defers where FF commits a wrong digit at 99.3%), while exact digits
appear only just-in-time, 1-2 positions pre-emission. The ladder
chapter closes as scored in item 22; the loop program's live paths
are state-side (rung-2 band-LoRA / wider merge, E2-N hardening,
coarse-target auxiliary supervision matched to the medium) or the
hybrid (A2), not longer/denser pause-chains.

24. **E2-L d=1 with a trainable band: loop-only band-LoRA
    (pre-registered 2026-07-17 ~00:30, before running; Nils: "can we
    unfreeze the entire band and try this again?").** Item 23 located
    the constraint in the carried state's per-position transformation;
    this is the state-side attack. Full unfreeze rejected in design
    (642M params vs 427 examples, and it would break the frozen-model
    guarantee); instead LoopLoRA (lora_band.py, built for the rung-2
    design): rank-16 deltas on q/v/down of EVERY band layer (L14-30,
    uniform scale 1.0, 4.8M params), active ONLY during band re-runs —
    initial forward and k=0 stay bit-exact by construction. Otherwise
    identical to item-22 d=1: front-first deletion, 10 pauses/step,
    warm-start rung-A e400 (adapter lr 3e-4; fresh LoRA lr 1e-3, B
    zero-init so step-0 matches item 22 exactly), 200 steps, seed 0.
    Eval n=256: 0:0 (sanity, must equal base), 2:12, 2:16; e200.
    Decision rule (same bands as item 23, vs d=1's 31.6): >=+5
    (>36.6) = band expressivity was binding -> escalate (rank 64, all
    projections, or full-band rung ladder); within +-5 = the medium
    verdict stands even with a trainable band -> internalization line
    CLOSED, program pivots (A2 / E2-N / coarse-aux / divergence
    batch). Prediction, honest: mild gain but under threshold (~33-36)
    — the microscopy says the board's failure mode is WHAT it carries,
    not how flexibly it transforms it; but this is the experiment the
    'wider state' hypothesis deserves before the line closes. Job:
    scripts/jobs/zzz_p_rungb_blr.sh.

--- Outcome, item 24 (closed 2026-07-17 ~02:10, STOPPED by Nils
mid-eval: "stop that idea. does not seem to work either"). Training
completed; evidence at stop: val easy 0.346 / hard 0.405 vs
adapter-only 0.356/0.361 — the trainable band did not improve fit
(hard slightly worse), consistent with the registered prediction that
capacity/expressivity is not what binds. k=0 sanity row with trained
LoRA loaded reproduced base EXACTLY (10.9/93.1/0.8) — the loop-only
LoopLoRA guarantee holds in practice; the mechanism is validated even
though the hypothesis died (useful for any future band-side work).
Accuracy cells not measured (eval killed at Nils's call to save ~50min
GPU); adapter+lora e200 checkpoints in the bucket if anyone ever wants
the number. Verdict: with items 22+23 this closes the E2-L
internalization line entirely — adapter capacity, training time,
pause bandwidth, and band expressivity have all now failed to move
the d=1 break. The carried state's native cargo (plans, magnitudes,
completion-state — see the probe series) is the program's remaining
asset; next candidates: divergence batch replay, coarse-target
auxiliary supervision, A2, E2-N.

25. **E2-L d=1 with latent process supervision through the lens
    (pre-registered 2026-07-17 ~02:45, before running; Nils's idea:
    "for training, i wonder if we could calculate, using jspace lens,
    how each iteration should think").** Items 22-24 all trained the
    latent chain blind — output CE only — and all failed; this changes
    the INFORMATION reaching the chain, not its capacity. New loss:
    the lens readout softmax(W_U·finalnorm(J̄_L30·h)) is differentiable
    in h, so at the 10 replacement pauses we apply lens-CE against the
    DELETED step's tokens, aligned 1:1 (pause j <-> step token j,
    truncated at 10) — the board is trained to write the deleted step
    in lens-readable code at the time it would have been written.
    Mixed loss CE_out + λ·CE_lens. Two arms, single submit: λ=0.3 and
    λ=1.0. Otherwise identical to item-22 d=1 (front-first deletion,
    warm-start rung-A e400, adapter-only 3e-4, 200 steps, seed 0; no
    band-LoRA — one knob). Smoke: step-0 lce=10.3 (~uniform: pauses
    currently encode nothing about the step; large fresh gradient).
    Eval n=256: 0:0, 2:12, 2:16 per arm. Decision vs d=1's 31.6, same
    bands: >36.6 = latent supervision was the missing ingredient ->
    ladder REOPENS with lens-taught rungs (and the 2D per-iteration
    variant becomes item 26); within +-5 = even telling the board
    exactly what to write doesn't make the carry compute it -> the
    strongest closure evidence yet. Caveats pre-stated: J̄ is
    prompt-averaged (global directions); the loss forces a
    verbalizable code (microscopy suggests that IS the board's working
    code, but a native non-verbal code would be fought); the 1:1
    temporal alignment is one choice among several (bag-of-tokens,
    result-digits-only are untested alternatives if this null's).
    Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_q_rungb_lt.sh.
    IN-FLIGHT NOTE (~03:20): λ=0.3 arm's lens-CE collapsed 10.3 -> 2.3
    by step 40 — world 1 (cannot encode) is eliminated before the eval;
    the open question is world 2 (writes but doesn't compute) vs
    world 3 (reopens the ladder).

--- Outcome, item 25 (closed 2026-07-17 ~01:25, TRUNCATED by Nils:
"cancel that 2:16 and then try the new approach"). λ=0.3 arm: lens-CE
converged to ~1.9 (the pause-chain reliably writes the deleted step in
lens code, top-few over 262k vocab) while eval 2:12 = 31.2
(drop .18 / easy .586 / hard .354) vs the 31.6 reference — FLAT, not
even a redistribution across buckets. k=0 sanity clean. World 2
confirmed on the measured cell: WRITING IS NOT COMPUTING — the
carried state can be taught to verbalizably display the missing step
at the right timesteps and the displayed content is not consumed
downstream. 2:16 and the λ=1.0 arm cancelled mid-run (λ=0.3's flat
cell made λ=1.0 uninformative; ~2.5h GPU saved). Program value: the
cleanest representation/computation dissociation in the series; the
read-side (what the suffix computation consumes from the board) is
now the prime suspect, and the pause-tape architecture allows
display-without-routing. Item 27 (zero-pause internal looping, no
tape to display on) runs next by Nils's direction; item 26 requeued
after it (job renamed zzz_t).

26. **Result-staging supervision during generation (pre-registered
    2026-07-17 ~03:25, before running; Nils: "can we try to train the
    loop using jspace during generation?").** The microscopy's
    signature of the healthy board: each line's RESULT is on the
    carried state before it is emitted ("1/twelve" at the '=',
    P=0.997). This trains that signature directly. For every visible
    scratchpad line, at the pre-'=' positions (the result is NOT yet
    in the causal context there — nothing can be copied; low loss
    requires computation) lens-CE the L30 carried state against the
    line's result tokens; Answer-line analog via the ':' separator.
    Spans computed in token space (gen_staging_targets; 1102 spans on
    the d=1-transformed 427). Two arms, one submit, both otherwise
    item-22 d=1 (warm-start rung-A e400, 200 steps, adapter-only):
    (a) lg=0.3 alone — staging supervision without pause supervision;
    (b) lt=0.3 + lg=0.3 — the full lens curriculum (deleted step
    taught at the pauses, results staged during emission). Eval n=256:
    0:0, 2:12, 2:16 per arm; decision vs 31.6, same bands as items
    23-25. Distinct from item 25's question: 25 teaches WHAT the
    silent chain should hold; 26 teaches the compute-before-emit
    discipline on the visible chain (the behavior that separated
    carry from FF at the 430 divergence). Caveat: on-policy ("during
    generation" in the free-running sense) is NOT this — that's a
    rollout-based follow-up (latent DAgger) if either lens arm moves.
    Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_r_rungb_lg.sh.

--- Outcome, item 26 (scored 2026-07-17 ~10:50; ran last, requeued as
zzz_t after items 27/28 per Nils's mid-night reprioritization). k=0
sanity clean both arms. Arm a (staging-only, lg03): 24.2 / 23.4 —
the series' first ACTIVELY NEGATIVE result, ~7 points below the 31.6
reference, outside the band on the downside (easy 44.8-48.3, hard
~26-28, drop 12-15). Arm b (combined lt03+lg03): 15.6 / 14.1 —
compounding destruction (easy 27.6, hard 18-21, drop 5-6), worse than
either constraint alone. Reading: the microscopy showed the healthy
board computes results 1-2 positions pre-emission (just-in-time); the
staging loss demanded the result across the ENTIRE pre-'=' span,
including positions where operands haven't been read — forcing
thought earlier than the computation can exist corrupts the schedule
rather than accelerating it. Lesson for any future lens supervision:
match the loss's temporal demand to the board's measured schedule
(supervise at the '=' +- 1 position only), don't blanket-force.
Overnight program complete: items 25-28 all scored; write-side
exhausted; the standing decision (clamp test vs pivot to hybrid/A2)
is unchanged by this result.

27. **Internal band looping, zero pause tokens (pre-registered
    2026-07-17 ~01:10, before running; Nils's clarified structure,
    option A confirmed via question: one silent burst before output).**
    Architecture: NO pause tokens anywhere — sequence is prompt +
    visible output only. After the k=2 prompt settle, the last prompt
    position runs M=10 IN-PLACE band iterations (s^i seeds from the
    position's own previous band output — carry_common inplace
    updates), then generation proceeds with the normal single-pass
    carry under the visible tokens. Vertical thought burst instead of
    a horizontal pause tape: iterations leave no KV entries — only
    the final state survives, a true internal loop (the C'-flavored
    architecture the ladder never tested; every prior rung bought
    compute with positions). Supervision: lens-CE iteration i <->
    deleted-step token i (λ=0.3, the stable value), same d=1 deletion,
    warm-start rung-A e400, 200 steps, seed 0. Eval n=256: 0:0
    (sanity), 2:0 with --inner-iters 10 (matched), 2:0 with
    --inner-iters 0 (ablation: does the burst matter at inference?).
    References: positional d=1 31.6 (same ±5 / >36.6 bands) and the
    ii0 ablation cell (isolates the burst's causal contribution).
    Honest priors: item 25's 2:12 just landed at 31.2 (flat), so the
    write-vs-compute dissociation likely carries over; the
    architectural deltas that could matter here: no attention-tape
    (forces state-borne computation rather than KV re-reading) and
    anchor-at-prompt (iterations see the full settled question).
    Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_s_rungb_ii.sh.
    IN-FLIGHT NOTE (~02:20): lce 9.4 -> 2.9 by step 60 — the tape-free
    burst also encodes the step trajectory; encoding is never the
    obstacle. Accuracy pending.

--- Outcome, item 27 (scored 2026-07-17 ~04:35). k=0 sanity clean.
Matched cell 2:0 (burst on) = 34.0 (drop .19 / easy .621 / hard .394)
— nominally the BEST d=1 number of the series (vs 31.6 positional,
31.2 lens-pauses) with ZERO pause tokens; ablation (same adapter,
burst off) = 32.4. But both pre-registered comparisons are
noise-compatible when paired: burst-on vs burst-off 10-6 discordants,
p=0.45; vs positional d=1 44-38, p=0.58. Verdict: within the +-5
band — the ceiling holds on the internal-iteration axis too; the
burst's causal contribution is directionally positive (all of it in
the hard bucket, +3.2) but unproven at n=256. Notable anyway: the
zero-pause FORMAT loses nothing (ablation 32.4 >= positional 31.6 with
12 fewer latent positions) — the pause tape was contributing ~nothing,
consistent with item 25's display-without-routing reading. Item 28
(teacher-state targets, same architecture) runs next and completes
the 2x2 (verbal/full-state x tape/no-tape).

28. **Teacher-state distillation into the burst (pre-registered
    2026-07-17 ~02:30, before running; Nils's variant: "meaningful CoT
    chunks yield internal state that we then teacher-force into the
    loop-only model").** Items 25/27 supervise the VERBAL SHADOW of
    the deleted step (token targets through the lens); this forces the
    FULL state. Teacher = the frozen warm-start (rung-A e400) adapter
    running the complete cot (deleted step visible), zero pauses, same
    carry architecture; capture its band-exit state at the deleted
    step's LAST token — "the state of having finished thinking the
    step" — one no-grad pass over the 413 parseable items at startup
    (targets fixed, no moving teacher). Student: identical zero-pause
    M=10 burst as item 27, but the loss is cosine distance between the
    burst's FINAL iterate s^10 and the teacher state, plus output CE.
    Weight AMENDED pre-run λ=1.0 -> 5.0 after the smoke measured the
    starting cosine distance at only 0.113 (nearby band-exit states
    share most structure); at 1.0 the term would be ~10x weaker than
    the CE and a null would be underpowered — 5x0.113 puts the two
    terms at comparable initial scale. No lens loss (one knob vs item 27: full-state
    targets instead of verbal-shadow targets; trajectory supervision
    dropped — only the endpoint is forced). Known approximation,
    stated in advance: teacher state is captured ~10 positions later
    in the sequence than the student anchor (RoPE position coloring);
    cosine + the carry machinery's routine state transplantation
    across nearby positions make this tolerable, but a null could
    partly hide here. Eval n=256: 0:0, 2:0 ii10 (matched), 2:0 ii0
    (ablation). Decision vs 31.6, same bands; the informative
    three-way is 25 (verbal, tape) vs 27 (verbal, no tape) vs 28
    (full state, no tape) — if 28 moves where 25/27 don't, the
    computation-carrying content lives OUTSIDE the verbalizable
    subspace; if none move, the read-side clamp test (item 29
    candidate) decides. Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_sa_rungb_ts.sh.

--- Outcome, item 28 (scored 2026-07-17 ~06:20). k=0 sanity clean.
Distillation SUCCEEDED geometrically: cos-dist 0.113 -> 0.044 (burst
endpoint lands ~60% closer to the teacher state), with the lowest
output-CE tax of any supervised arm (vals 0.384/0.376). Function did
NOT follow: matched 2:0 = 30.1, ablation (burst off) = 29.7 — burst
contribution nil; hard 34.6 indistinguishable from the pack; and the
state-forcing DAMAGED easy (48.3 vs 62.1 in every other d=1 arm —
the forced endpoint displaces something easy handling needed).
Verdict: null, below reference. The 2x2 (items 25/27/28 + 22 as the
unsupervised corner) is complete and uniform: no state-side
supervision — verbal shadow or full teacher state, tape or burst —
makes the loop compute the deleted step. Combined with items 22-24
(capacity/time/positions/expressivity all null), the write-side is
exhausted end to end. The one untested link is READ-side: whether the
suffix computation consumes the workspace at all when the right state
is present — the clamp test (write the teacher state into the anchor
at inference via the lens/embedding-basis machinery, no training, and
measure) is item 29's natural content and would assign blame causally.
Nils's morning decision: clamp test vs pivot to the hybrid/A2 line
(where the 57.4 and the drop-bucket reach already live).

29. **Trajectory teacher-forcing of the burst (pre-registered
    2026-07-17 ~11:50, before running; Nils's design: "measure the CoT
    run's L30 at 10 evenly spaced intervals and teacher force them
    into the loop — we know both the previous that goes into the merge
    layer and the next L30 state").** The key upgrade over item 28:
    the teacher trajectory decomposes the burst's learning into TEN
    INDEPENDENT SUPERVISED TRANSITIONS — iteration i receives teacher
    waypoint T[i-1] as its merge input and its band output is pulled
    onto T[i] (cosine, λ=5.0) — dense gradient at every iteration, no
    long BPTT chain, no compounding; and T[0] == the student's own
    settled anchor state exactly (shared prompt+settle), so the chain
    starts aligned by construction. Exposure gap handled by a second
    arm adding the free-running loss (burst's own s_i onto T[i],
    λ=5.0). The free-running burst ALWAYS runs last and seeds the
    answer scan (training matches inference); TF transitions are
    scaffolding erased from context afterward. Teacher = frozen
    warm-start adapter on the full cot, 10 evenly spaced L30 states.
    Two jobs, per Nils (both chosen): JOB 1 (zzz_u) d=1, waypoints
    across the deleted step, arms tf-only and tf+fr; reference 31.6,
    same bands; eval 0:0 / 2:0 ii10 / 2:0 ii0 per arm. JOB 2 (zzz_v)
    THE HEADLINE: d=all (answer-only output, rung C), waypoints across
    the FULL CoT — the burst as a 10-waypoint compressed rehearsal of
    the entire reasoning; references: cold answer-only 9.4, curriculum
    plateau 19.1, base 10.9; same arms and cells. Smokes: ltf/lfr
    baseline 0.116 both modes; d=99 deletes 1118 steps across 427.
    Priors, stated: the transition-decomposition is the first
    mechanism that trains the loop's DYNAMICS rather than its
    endpoints — if the loop can compute at all, this is its best
    chance; if job 2 beats 19.1 meaningfully, compressed-trajectory
    rehearsal becomes the internalization method. All prior caveats
    (position coloring, teacher=warm-start quality) carry over.
    Jobs: scripts/jobs/zzz_u_traj_d1.sh, scripts/jobs/zzz_v_traj_full.sh.
    IN-FLIGHT, arm 1 (tf-only, d=1) scored ~15:40: THE FIRST
    SIGNIFICANT POSITIVE OF THE PROGRAM, WITH A MECHANISM TWIST.
    Vals best-in-series (easy 0.218, hard 0.347). Matched 2:0 = 39.1
    (drop .25 / easy .69 / hard .433 — every bucket a d=1 record;
    easy IMPROVED) — clears the pre-registered >36.6 threshold; paired
    vs positional d=1: 50-31, McNemar p=0.045. BUT the ablation also
    scores 39.1 (burst-on vs burst-off 8-8, p=1.0): the test-time
    burst is causally INERT. Attribution: trajectory teacher-forcing
    is a superior TRAINING SIGNAL for the merge adapter — the ten
    transition regressions teach state-folding that pays off at every
    visible-token carry step — not a working inference-time loop. The
    program-long pattern holds: the loop at inference has never been
    causal; the loop as training scaffold just produced the largest
    adapter gain ever measured. ltf plateaued ~0.085 (from 0.116) —
    the autonomous operator absorbs ~25% of the driven transitions.
    Next-experiment implication (Nils to confirm): apply trajectory
    TF to rung A itself (nothing deleted) — if the signal generalizes,
    the 57.4 headline moves.

30. **The carried state as a metacognitive signal (pre-registered
    2026-07-17 ~13:20, before running; Nils's design: "treat the carry
    state as a metacognitive signal and build on it explicitly...
    exploit what the loop provably does instead of fighting the
    consumption wall. This never requires the frozen band to read
    anything new").** Synthesis of three established results: the
    carry's inference-time value is deferral/completion-state (430
    divergence; drop McNemar p=0.0094); gate quality is worth ~9.6
    points with CLASSIFIER quality binding on the pre-loop state
    (item 20); the consumption wall blocks residual-injection reads
    (items 25-28) but a NEW head can read anything, and its decisions
    reach the frozen model as tokens. Design: answer-readiness head
    g(s) — LayerNorm+MLP(64), class-balanced — on the carried L30
    state at scratchpad line boundaries of rung-A rollouts. Labels
    mechanical: fork a forced "Answer: " completion at each boundary,
    check against gold. Harvests: train (427) and test (256) x
    {carry, feedforward-control} — the FF arm trains the identical
    head on the FF states. Readouts, all offline from one instrumented
    pass (item-20 LUT methodology): (a) PRIMARY: carry-head test AUC
    vs FF-head test AUC — if carry > FF, the recurrence carries
    metacognitive signal the feedforward path lacks: the first
    measured POSITIVE FUNCTIONAL ROLE for the carried state; (b)
    theta sweep of "answer at first boundary with g>=theta else
    natural end": accuracy vs mean scratchpad length vs the 57.4
    fixed-format baseline; (c) ORACLE stop bound (best boundary per
    item) = the ceiling adaptive stopping can reach. Predictions:
    carry AUC > 0.65 and > FF AUC (the deferral evidence says the
    signal exists); theta curve dominates fixed-format on tokens at
    matched accuracy; oracle meaningfully above 57.4 (early-stop
    rescues drift cases). Arm 2 (later): line-correctness /
    deferral head gating re-expansion. Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_w_metacog.sh.

31. **Synthetic memory tokens: per-layer KV prefix (pre-registered
    2026-07-17 ~15:50, before running; Nils's design: "the one read
    mechanism a frozen transformer natively possesses is attention over
    the KV cache... adapter maps L30 state -> KV entries at band
    layers"; injection variant chosen by Nils: per-layer KV prefix).**
    The read-side attack, composed with item 29: warm-start the arm-1
    adapter (its burst COMPUTES — trajectory-trained, ltf 0.085 — but
    is provably unread: ablation 8-8 p=1.0) and FREEZE it; train only
    a KVMemoryAdapter (6.3M params: shared code-512 trunk + per-band-
    layer k/v heads with per-layer geometry — gemma-4 mixes 256-d
    sliding and 512-d global heads) mapping the 10 burst iterates to
    post-RoPE (k,v) columns appended to every band layer's attention
    during the answer scan and at generation. Engineering, validated
    in smokes: the registered attention implementation is wrapped IN
    PLACE (config name untouched -> mask construction identical;
    disarmed = bit-exact, diff 0.0); zero-init value heads + learnable
    per-layer gate bias (init -10) make the memory silent at init
    (step-0 loss 0.108 = the arm-1 endpoint exactly); memory stays
    armed through backward (checkpoint recompute). Output CE only,
    200 steps, lr 1e-3. Eval: 0:0 sanity + 2:0 matched (burst +
    memory); the ablation is item 29's matched cell BY CONSTRUCTION
    (same frozen adapter and burst, memory absent) = 39.1. Decision:
    >44.1 (>=+5 over 39.1) = the consumption wall was a READ-PATH
    problem and native attention over state-derived KV breaches it;
    within +-5 = even natively readable computed states go unused ->
    the wall is not about the read mechanism either, and the hybrid/
    metacog lines carry the program. In-flight note on item 29 arm 2
    (tf+fr): matched 30.5 — the free-running term HURT (vs 39.1
    tf-only), reinforcing the training-signal attribution: clean TF
    transition gradients are the active ingredient.
    Job: scripts/jobs/zzz_x_kvmem.sh.