clay-borg/evidence/CB-EV-0013-the-inert-clauses.md

# CB-EV-0013 — two inert clauses, and an estimator that was wrong twice

CB-WP-0015 T03. Measured 2026-08-02 at `7e9ab22`+. Pass kind `product`,
tier **S** (chaos d4=2, no override). Declaration 10 of 12.

Per the rule adopted in CB-EV-0012, the cost table quotes **CB-WP-0014's**
figure and declines to quote this pass's own — and §5 records that the
rule, applied here for the first time, **did not hold**: the number moved
15% between the start of this pass and its end.

---

## 1. The machine wanders by 2.5×, and that is the whole story

Before any of this could be measured, the instrument had to survive the
machine. Folding the same log on an unchanged binary, seconds apart:

| leg | observed range, one afternoon |
|---|---|
| 5,000-event fold | 11.2 M – 55.7 M ev/s |
| 100,000-event fold | 9.7 M – 45.9 M ev/s |

**A 5× swing in absolute throughput.** Any single reading of either number
is worthless, and AM-6 already knew this — it takes best-of-3 and says so.
What AM-6's estimator cannot do is survive being turned into a ratio.

## 2. AM-7's scaling clause: three estimators, two of them wrong

`mutation-check` had said the same thing every run since CB-WP-0005: *"no
code computes the ratio of throughput @100k to @5k or compares it to 0.9;
Criterion reports both and nothing relates them."* Worse, the test next to
it is called `replay_100k_events_is_linear_and_fast` and checks the two
sizes **independently** — it computes both numbers, prints both, and never
divides one by the other. **The name asserts the property the body does
not test.**

| estimator | result on an unchanged binary | why it failed |
|---|---|---|
| best-of-5 per leg, then divide (AM-6's) | **0.581 – 1.085** | the legs are measured minutes apart; noise multiplies rather than cancels |
| legs back-to-back inside one sample | medians 1.004 / 0.931 / 0.956 | closer, but a 50 ms leg samples a *point* on the drift rather than averaging it |
| legs interleaved per fold, 10 M events each, median of 9 | **0.987 / 0.991 / 0.989** | drift becomes common-mode and divides out |

The third one holds up under abuse: with eight busy-loops pinned against
eight cores, absolute throughput fell 4× and the **median ratio stayed at
0.989**. Inside a real `make all`, after the build has just hammered every
core, it read **0.965** (worst sample 0.944) — the condition the first
guard failed on, now passing with margin.

**The measured answer is ~0.97–0.99 against a 0.9 floor.** Nothing in
`GroundState` grows with log length, so the fold is O(1) per event by
construction; the residual few percent is cache residency on streaming a
20×-longer `Vec`.

### The guard that was wrong for the same reason the estimator was

The first version declared INDETERMINATE if *any* sample fell on the other
side of the floor — unanimity. Under contention the median read 0.971,
which is a good measurement, and one sample read **0.899** — a thousandth
under — and the guard failed the build. It also fired intermittently
inside `mutation-check`, where this test runs straight after a 50-second
rebuild.

A gate that fails when the machine is busy is a flake, and a flake gets
suppressed rather than fixed. It now requires a **two-thirds majority**
agreeing with the median: the guard keeps its purpose — refusing to read a
coin-flip as a verdict — without treating one outlier as one.

### The mutation, and the control that says AM-7 is not a second AM-6

To make the property false you must make fold cost grow *with history*,
which is precisely boardgame.io's measured defect. Growing the deck by one
card per fold and scanning it drives the ratio to **0.751** — red, tight,
no straddle.

**And the control matters more than the mutation.** AM-6's mutation adds a
*constant* per-event cost. It halves throughput, 28 M → 15 M ev/s, and
leaves this ratio at **0.999× — green**. The two rows catch different
things: a constant slowdown is AM-6's, a history-proportional one is
AM-7's. Without that check, "AM-7 goes red" would have been consistent
with AM-7 being a redundant copy of a row we already had.

## 3. AM-8's N: the spec was right and the runner was wrong

Eight passes of the runner executing each scenario **twice** while the row
said ten. Closing it needed an argument, because *"the spec says ten"* is
not one.

A **deterministic** divergence — a seed threaded wrong, an order-dependent
fold — shows on run 2 exactly as reliably as on run 10. For that class the
double-run is sufficient and eight more runs across 25 scenarios cost 47 s
a build to re-answer an answered question.

**The measurement settled it.** Perturbing the RNG only from its fourth
construction onward, on `gr-r06-round-resolve`:

| | result |
|---|---|
| `cb-sim --runs 2` | **PASS** |
| `cb-sim --runs 10` | FAIL — *"run 1 hash … != run 4 hash … (of 10)"* |

A late-onset divergence is a real class the double-run structurally cannot
see, and it is **deterministic, not probabilistic** — so it can be a
control rather than a coin flip. The spec value stands unamended; what
changed is that it is now enforced, on one scenario in `make am8` (~2 s)
rather than on all 25.

The primary defence against the *probabilistic* class remains the
`HashMap`/`HashSet` deny lint — this row's other clause, already live.
Ten runs are defence in depth against that exclusion failing, which is why
one workload's worth is proportionate rather than 25.

## 4. What the acceptance table now claims

| row | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| AM-7 | PARTIAL 2/3 | **red, 3/3** |
| AM-8 | PARTIAL 1/2 | **red, 2/2** |

**M-D1-MUT: 10 of 14 rows enforced**, from 8. The prediction of record
(≥10 of 14, from ADR-0005's 9-of-12) is **MET** for the first time.

**The denominator did not move, and that was the live risk.** This pass
could have improved its score two ways, and one of them was deleting a
question — amending AM-8's N down to 2, or splitting AM-7's scaling clause
into a fifteenth row. Both were considered and both were refused. The four
rows that remain unenforced are the four that were already unenforceable:
AM-3 blocked on an unbuilt artifact, AM-4c withdrawn and retained on
purpose, AM-5 declared ungated by the spec, AM-10 withdrawn.

### And the run found a third thing, in the instrument itself

The first full `mutation-check` of this pass reported **AM-4a
HARNESS-BROKEN**, and correctly refused to publish any score at all. Its
mutation still pointed at `"shipped-runtime": 250_000` — the target
**ADR-0008 D3 moved to 161,000 in CB-WP-0013**. The find-string had been
stale ever since, because no full mutation-check had been run in between.

Positive control 1 doing exactly its job. But it only *can* do that job on
a full run, and a full run is deliberately not in `make all` — it rebuilds
the workspace once per mutated row. So a mutation can rot for passes at a
time while every build stays green.

The cheap half of that check needs no build at all: does each find-string
still occur in the file it names? That is now a `--self-test` assertion,
and `self-tests` **is** in `make all`. Verified both ways — perturbing the
target by one digit turns it red naming `AM-4a`, restoring it turns it
green.

Two rows were repaired by this pass and a third by the run that measured
it. The AM-4 family has now produced four defects, none of them found by
looking for them.

### The tool now measures a claim it used to assert

`mutation-check`'s clause flags were hand-maintained booleans saying
whether an assertion existed — which is the same shape of claim the tool
was built to stop trusting. A clause may now carry its own verify command
and mutation, and then its `enforced` flag is **measured**; a declaration
that disagrees with its own measurement is refused as HARNESS-BROKEN
rather than reported as either verdict. Two clauses carry one so far, and
they print as `red*`. The rest still print as the author's word, which is
what they always were.

## 5. Cost, and the prediction that came due

| pass | kind | responses | cost | $/response |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CB-WP-0013 | meta | 47 | $8.26 | 0.176 |
| **CB-WP-0014** | product | 48 | **$8.56** | **0.178** |
| CB-WP-0015 | product | *provisional — not quoted, per CB-EV-0012 §5* | | |

### The self-quoting rule is not enough, and this pass is the proof

CB-EV-0012 adopted the rule that an evidence file quotes the **previous**
pass's final cost and never its own, because four passes running had
under-reported themselves mid-flight. This file opened by quoting
CB-WP-0014 at **$7.47 / 34 responses**, which is what `make status` said
at the time. By the time this pass closed, the same tool reported
CB-WP-0014 at **$8.56 / 48** — the figure moved by 15% *after* it was
supposed to be final.

The cause is mechanical: a pass's window runs to the next pass's first
commit, so CB-WP-0014's window was still open until CB-WP-0015 declared.
**"The previous pass's final cost" is not final until the pass after it
starts** — the rule fixed the wrong boundary. Quoting from two passes back
would be safe; that is a change to the rule, and it is recorded here as
owed rather than made silently.

### CB-EV-0009's prediction now has a point on each side

It predicted a pass opening above the SH-1 hard line would cost more than
**0.123 $/response**. For three passes it was untestable because every one
opened below the line.

| pass | SH-1 at open | $/response |
|---|---|---|
| CB-WP-0014 | above the 300,000 hard line (347,720) | **0.220** |
| CB-WP-0015 | below it (237,533, after a compaction) | **0.111** |

Both fall on the predicted side, and the second is the **control the last
report said was missing**. That is a real strengthening — but it is n=2,
the two passes differ in tier, kind and subject, and the compaction that
supplied the control is also the thing that makes the passes different.
Consistent with the prediction; not yet a demonstration of it.

**Meta budget: 26% `[OVER]`** the soft 25%, on CB-WP-0013's $8.26 sitting
in a trailing three with two product passes. No product work was displaced
and ADR-0006 D2 exempts instrument repair anyway.

## 6. Open

- **AM-4b's scope defect (408,237 uncounted lines)** and its unmeasured
  proc-macro share. Unchanged from CB-EV-0012 §3.
- **INTENT stage 1: one human verification** — `cb-play --serve 0`, open
  the URL, confirm the table reads and a drag works. Unchanged.
- **`python3` as a toolchain dependency was never argued.**
- **AM-4a still cannot survive stage 2** — 1,741,979 against 161,000.
- **ADR-0007 D3's acquisition rule** remains unratified, having now
  decided two dependency questions.
- **AM-3 stays blocked** on an artifact nobody has built, and it is now
  one of only four unenforced rows rather than one of six.
- **`cb-cost --self-test` failed once and passed on re-run**, on
  *"pass_costs windows sum to the unwindowed total"*, inside a `make all`
  during this session. The obvious hypothesis is that it reads the session
  transcript while this session is appending to it — a self-test racing
  the file it measures. **That is a hypothesis, not a finding: it has not
  been reproduced or instrumented.** Recorded because an intermittent
  positive control is worth more attention than a failing one, and because
  a flake in the tool that prices every pass would be quietly corrosive.
- **The self-quoting rule fixed the wrong boundary.** §5. Quoting two
  passes back would be safe; the change is owed, not made here.
- **Chaos: 10 of 12 declarations, 1 override.**