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Author SHA1 Message Date
0da376f7df T10: InnerLoop v1.2 — hardening does not converge, so optimize correction
Some checks failed
ci / check (push) Failing after 4s
The retrospective question was whether the mechanism set is complete or
each pass still finds a new class. This pass produced both an eighth
instance AND a fourth class, so the answer is the uncomfortable one.

Ledger: 10 instances, 4 classes, across 3 workplans. Every pass has
produced at least one class the previous pass had not seen.

  HDN harness-does-nothing      5   executable assertions
  TA  trusted arithmetic        3   re-derivation
  SSB same-sample blind spot    1   assertions over ALL the data
  DFD duplicated-fact drift     2   NEW -- reading a copy against source

DFD is genuinely distinct: no positive control catches it, because both
copies are internally consistent, and re-derivation does not either,
because the copy faithfully reproduces what it was copied from. Found
when an inlined price sheet went stale within an hour of T11 changing
the real one.

So v1.2 stops trying to enumerate classes in advance. Every error in
three passes was corrected in-session for under ~1% of the pass, so the
stated design goal is now cheap CORRECTION: keep raw data so numbers are
re-derivable, keep artifacts small and committed so a wrong number is
one grep from everywhere quoting it, give every number a command.

Plus the one rule the new class earns: single source of fact.

The original hypothesis is revised rather than confirmed. "A rule that
cannot be executed is not a rule" is wrong -- the two most valuable
corrections in the project came from a decorative rule that cannot be
automated (re-derive inherited numbers). An executable rule fires
reliably and catches one class; a decorative one fires unreliably and
can catch any class, including unnamed ones. Keep both.

Gates this pass: loop-lint caught 3 real violations on first run, then
failed on its own author within the hour when a T07 edit pushed
InnerLoop.md to 407 lines against its own 400 limit.

CB-WP-0003 complete: 11 of 11 tasks done.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:31:19 +02:00
e3d0df6690 T08: give provisional defaults an owner, a date, and a visible age
Five scenarios encoded U-item defaults with no owner and no review date,
so they could shape the kernel indefinitely while looking handled.

Each now carries provisional_owner and provisional_raised, and the
runtime's ScenarioFile learned both fields (deny_unknown_fields meant
adding them to YAML alone would have failed every scenario -- the parser
had to agree).

make coverage reports every provisional item with its owner and age in
days, warns on any with no owner, and warns past 30 days. It WARNS
rather than breaking the build, on purpose: the ruling is ground-game's
to make and the kernel cannot make it for them. What the loop can
enforce is that evidence files list them, which is now stated in
GroundRules.

rule-coverage --self-test gained an assertion that every provisional
item has both fields, so the next one added without them fails a
command rather than passing quietly.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:29:40 +02:00
4580438f1c Replace the inlined price sheet with a pointer to the live file
The copy in MetricsAndScenarios 1a went stale within hours of T11: it
still showed the sonnet intro rate as a comment after the real sheet
moved dated rates into data. A spec that duplicates a data file will
always drift from it; the copy is now a pointer that says so.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:27:31 +02:00
9e30bbb2b3 T09: close the spec->code link mechanically (M-D1-LNK)
make coverage now reports a second number: how many claimed rules are
also NAMED in the aggregate source. 58/58 tag coverage was weaker
evidence than it read as, and this says how much weaker.

Measured: 49 of 58. Nine rules are claimed by a scenario and appear
nowhere in games/ground/src/lib.rs --
GR-D07 GR-F02 GR-L03 GR-O03 GR-P01 GR-P02 GR-P03 GR-P04 GR-T01.

The gate REPORTS rather than fails, on purpose. Closing the gap by
adding those IDs to comments would satisfy the check without
establishing that any of the nine is implemented -- the overclaim
InnerLoop implementation rule 2 exists to prevent, and one CB-WP-0001
already committed once. Each needs its implementation confirmed before
it is tagged; promoting M-D1-LNK to a failing gate is correct after
that, not before.

Also added: a phantom check that fails when a rule id appears in code
that the spec does not define (currently zero).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:27:14 +02:00
4fd6322e17 T03: point review at the harness, and state what review cannot catch
The review step targeted the survey. Every serious error in this project
has been in measurement or build configuration, so the loop was
adversarially reviewing the artifact cheapest to fix and leaving
unreviewed the one where errors occur.

Step 2 now routes by risk: when the claim rests on numbers, the reviewer
gets the harness and the evidence file too, and must reproduce the
number independently rather than read about it.

The addition that matters more, because it was learned the hard way: a
reviewer re-derives the author's claims and therefore inherits the
author's SAMPLING. CB-WP-0002's dedup invariant was checked twice --
survey 206/206 groups, then the reviewer independently -- and both used
the main transcript. It is false in the 8-response subagent tree neither
looked at. Two independent verifications, one shared blind spot.

  Rule: the reviewer re-derives on a different sample than the author
  used, and where only one sample exists, says so rather than reporting
  a clean verify.

Also recorded: what review demonstrably DOES do. $0.66 and $1.11 across
two passes, ~1% of each, both finding approval-blocking defects. Cost is
not a reason to skip it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:26:01 +02:00
e21b9f4250 T07: separate a correction from a retarget with a mechanical test
A blanket "no retargeting in the measuring commit" rule would have been
wrong. CB-WP-0002 moved AC-1 three times in exactly that shape and every
move was correct -- each time a new instrument disproved the old figure.
Four legitimate corrections would have been forbidden to catch one bad
retarget.

The test is mechanical rather than a statement of intent:

  correction  the target moves and the implementation does not; legal in
              the same commit provided the instrument's output is there
  retarget    the same commit changes both the target and the code the
              target measures; requires an ADR stating why the new target
              binds on future work

Applied retroactively: AM-4a/AM-4b are UNRATIFIED. They were set after
seeing the measurement, in the commit that produced it, with the
implementation changing too -- a retarget by this test. make dep-weight
is currently enforcing a target no reviewed decision stands behind.
Recorded as an open item; ratifying or changing them is a maintainer
decision, not an implementer's.

Also: specs/InnerLoop.md split into InnerLoop.md (process) and
InnerLoopReference.md (rubric, template, rules, definition of done).
Not a stylistic choice -- `make loop-lint` failed on the commit that
pushed the file to 407 lines against its own ~400 limit. The gate added
this morning to make that rule executable caught its own author within
the hour, which is the cheapest possible demonstration that it works.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:25:22 +02:00
ced573ba75 T06: raise the chaos roll to d4 for a 12-declaration calibration window
The mechanism never fired. Two rolls across two workplans (9, then 2)
against ~0.2 expected firings at d10. At ~2 tier decisions per workplan
it would take roughly twenty workplans to see four overrides -- a rate
that prevents its own evaluation, which T06 named as the one option to
reject.

Raised to d4 for the next 12 tier declarations, then kept, reverted to
d10, or deleted on the evidence. Expected ~3 firings.

Cost stated up front rather than discovered: a chaos-L override on
S-shaped work buys a full survey + review + ADR, and the comparable
measured figure is CB-WP-0001 T03 at $9.91. The window should cost
$20-30. Cheaper than carrying an unevaluated ritual indefinitely.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:24:12 +02:00
db731aa0bc T11: dated rates and staleness become data, ahead of the 2026-08-31 flip
The price sheet had two defects of one shape -- a schema that could not
hold the fact it needed, the same criticism the cost survey levelled at
the State Hub.

  CA-16  time-boxed rates are DATA. Sonnet's intro price lived in a
         `# intro ...` comment and was invisible to the collector that
         reads the file. Now promo_input/promo_output/promo_until,
         applied per response at its own timestamp.
  CA-17  the 90-day staleness rule was prose in MetricsAndScenarios 1a
         that every M-D2-CST verdict silently inherited. Now `recorded`
         + `max_age_days` in the sheet, and a stale sheet ABORTS.

Both are exercised by make cost-test: the promo rate must apply before
2026-08-31 and lapse after, and a 102-day-old sheet must trip.

Applying CA-16 moved AC-1 from $93.32 to $93.15 -- the $0.17 CB-EV-0002
predicted, now collected rather than noted. That is a legitimate
retarget under T07's distinction: the instrument disproved the target,
and its output is in this commit. The number has now been stated five
times ($248.46, $92.21, $92.87, $93.32, $93.15), each correction from a
different mechanism.

Evidence tables regenerated from the tool rather than hand-patched,
per CA-15 -- which is the rule that exists because hand-typed tables
were the only thing the adversarial review found wrong.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:23:29 +02:00
06628e83e1 T05: live cost budget replaces the dead token budget
The 8k/10k per-task token budget was never referenced or enforced and
T08 blew past it silently. Replaced with a budget that can actually
fire.

The design constraint is the interesting part: per-task cost needs the
commit that CLOSES the task, so a per-task budget is unavoidably
retrospective -- it can only report a breach after the money is spent,
which is the dead-policy failure again. What IS observable mid-task is
spend since the last commit, because the transcript is append-live. So
the budget binds on the open remainder.

  CB-01  budget = USD since the last commit, via `make cost-budget`
  CB-02  soft $10.00 (state progress, decide), hard $22.00 (stop)

Calibrated on the 32 non-empty commit intervals of CB-WP-0001: p50
$1.40, p90 $9.36, max $10.80. Soft sits just below the observed maximum
-- it would have fired exactly once on the calibration pass. Hard is ~2x
the observed max, a value never reached in 32 intervals, so reaching it
means the session is doing something the data has no example of.

Both thresholds are set ABOVE every observed value, so they bind on
future work rather than ratifying present work -- the distinction T07
is about.

Stated limit: it is a command, not a daemon. An agent that never runs it
gets no signal, which is the dead-policy failure one level up. Mitigated
only by being free to run and on the one command surface.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:21:30 +02:00
d382fd4555 T04: specs/SessionShape.md — compaction is the lever, not session length
The task's original premise was wrong and is recorded rather than
deleted. It was written to prescribe one task per session; measurement
says the variable is context, not turn count.

Measured:
  - compaction cut context 27x (542,991 -> 19,974) and cost/turn 3.1x;
    the 202 turns after C1 cost less than half the 136 before it
  - a turn costs $0.010 at 20k context and $0.270 at 540k
  - break-even for a compaction is 2-11 turns, so: compact whenever
    context exceeds ~300k and work remains
  - a fresh session is NOT free -- cold start floors at ~51k and must
    then re-read the artifacts a compact summary already holds (~66k).
    Prefer compaction to continue work; prefer a fresh session when the
    task changes, because then prior context is pure overhead.

cb-cost now emits SH-1..SH-3 so the targets come from the instrument
rather than from analysis, per InnerLoop v1.1. All three are UNMET
(mean context 232,982 vs 200,000; p90 492,042 vs 300,000; batching 7.8%
vs 20%) and are reported unmet rather than retargeted -- retargeting in
the commit that first measures is precisely what T07 exists to prevent.

Eighth error instance found while writing this: CB-WP-0001's claim that
"0 of 330 tool calls were batched" is wrong. 330 was the count of
single-call responses, not the total; 31 responses batched, covering 76
calls. It was carried into this workplan unverified. Trusted-arithmetic
class -- the one the T01 audit flagged as having no executable defence,
confirming that finding within hours of making it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:19:32 +02:00
39583357f4 T02 closed: remaining scope delivered with T01
Both items were completed as part of the T01 audit: the two older
reporting tools gained --self-test entry points, and loop-lint's
self-test check makes the contract mechanical for any new tool.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:16:34 +02:00
fed422a3a3 T01: audit every InnerLoop rule, and make the checkable ones executable
41 rules classified executable / checkable / decorative, each tagged with
the failure class it catches. Counts: 11 executable, 22 checkable, 4
decorative (one of them dead policy).
Audit: history/260731-inner-loop-rule-audit.md

New tools/loop-lint.py makes 7 rules executable (tier declared, chaos
roll recorded, tier-L review trail, unmeasured-in-evidence, whole-file
loadability, reporting tools expose --self-test). It found three real
violations on its first run, none previously visible:

  - specs/ArchitectureBlueprint.md was 543 lines against a ~400 limit
    the loop has stated since v0.2 and never measured. Split at its own
    section boundaries into Blueprint (1-8) + Runtime (9-15).
  - tools/dep-weight.py and tools/rule-coverage.py had positive-control
    logic and no --self-test, so nothing verified the control worked.

Adding rule-coverage's self-test exposed a latent instance of the exact
class this workplan is about: if the spec regex stopped matching, rules
was empty, missing was empty, and the tool exited 0 reporting "0/0" --
a silent pass, in the tool that reports our headline AM-1 number. Both
tools now assert they found something before reporting.

Two demotions applied in the spec rather than left implicit: "structured
over prose" is marked guidance (nothing can check it), and the 8k/10k
token budget is struck through and marked DEAD POLICY pointing at T05.

The audit's uncomfortable finding: rule 13 (re-derive inherited numbers)
has no mechanical form, is deliberately left decorative, and caught the
LARGEST error in CB-WP-0002. That is a counter-example to this
workplan's own hypothesis. "A rule that cannot be executed is not a
rule" is wrong as stated; the defensible version is that such a rule
cannot be relied on to fire, so it must not be the only defence for a
class that matters.

Class coverage: harness-does-nothing has five executable rules;
trusted-arithmetic has ZERO and produced the largest single error.

make loop-lint and make self-tests wired into `make all` and CI.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:16:00 +02:00
ee1ee485b2 Sync hub IDs and work-record index for revised CB-WP-0003
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 09:11:26 +02:00
27 changed files with 1854 additions and 421 deletions

View file

@ -36,7 +36,13 @@ jobs:
# Positive control for the cost collector (AC-5..AC-9). Does not
# gate on a dollar figure — transcripts are not present in CI — but
# proves the collector still detects the failures it claims to.
- run: make cost-test
- run: make self-tests
# InnerLoop rules made executable (CB-WP-0003 T01). Fails on an
# overlong artifact, a survey missing its tier/chaos declaration, an
# approved tier-L survey with no review trail, `unmeasured` in an
# evidence table, or a reporting tool with no --self-test.
- run: make loop-lint
# InnerLoop v1.0 positive control, enforced rather than asserted in
# prose: --test runs every benchmark once, so a workload that

View file

@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
CARGO := cargo
.PHONY: check test sim bench bench-test coverage dep-weight cost cost-test cost-pin loc all
.PHONY: check test sim bench bench-test coverage dep-weight cost cost-test cost-pin cost-budget loop-lint self-tests loc all
## fmt + clippy (deny warnings) + HashMap deny-lint
check:
@ -29,6 +29,21 @@ cost: cost-test
cost-test:
python3 tools/cb-cost.py --self-test
# InnerLoop rules that are mechanically checkable (CB-WP-0003 T01).
loop-lint:
python3 tools/loop-lint.py
# Positive control for every reporting tool, per InnerLoop v1.1 Step 5.
self-tests:
python3 tools/cb-cost.py --self-test
python3 tools/loop-lint.py --self-test
python3 tools/rule-coverage.py --self-test
python3 tools/dep-weight.py --self-test
# CB-01/CB-02: live spend since the last commit.
cost-budget: cost-test
python3 tools/cb-cost.py --budget
cost-pin: cost-test
python3 tools/cb-cost.py --pin fc76445 --composition --by-task
@ -51,4 +66,4 @@ loc:
printf '%-28s %s\n' $$d "$$(find $$d/src -name '*.rs' | xargs cat | grep -vcE '^\s*(//|$$)')"; \
done
all: check test sim coverage dep-weight cost-test bench-test
all: check test sim coverage dep-weight self-tests loop-lint bench-test

View file

@ -37,3 +37,4 @@
| task | CB-WP-0003-T08 | todo | — | workplans/CB-WP-0003-loop-hardening.md |
| task | CB-WP-0003-T09 | todo | — | workplans/CB-WP-0003-loop-hardening.md |
| task | CB-WP-0003-T10 | todo | — | workplans/CB-WP-0003-loop-hardening.md |
| task | CB-WP-0003-T11 | todo | — | workplans/CB-WP-0003-loop-hardening.md |

View file

@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
# USD per million tokens; source: Anthropic pricing, recorded 2026-07-31
# Governed by specs/MetricsAndScenarios.md §1a — refresh on price change or
# after 90 days, or new M-D2-CST 'better' verdicts are invalid.
# USD per million tokens. Source: Anthropic pricing.
# Governed by specs/CostAccounting.md §9 — a stale sheet invalidates new
# M-D2-CST `better` verdicts. Staleness is enforced by `make cost-test`,
# not by this comment.
#
# Dated rates are DATA, not comments. A promotional rate written as a
# comment is invisible to the collector that reads this file: the sonnet
# intro price sat in a `#` remark and was silently ignored, costing $0.17
# on a $93.32 pass and heading for a sign flip on 2026-08-31.
recorded = 2026-07-31
max_age_days = 90
[claude-fable-5]
input = 10.00
@ -11,8 +20,13 @@ input = 5.00
output = 25.00
[claude-sonnet-5]
input = 3.00 # intro 2.00 through 2026-08-31
output = 15.00 # intro 10.00 through 2026-08-31
input = 3.00
output = 15.00
# Promotional rate in force through `until` (inclusive); the collector
# applies it to any response whose timestamp falls on or before that date.
promo_input = 2.00
promo_output = 10.00
promo_until = 2026-08-31
[claude-haiku-4-5]
input = 1.00

View file

@ -21,6 +21,16 @@ pub struct ScenarioFile {
/// scenario, not the kernel.
#[serde(default)]
pub provisional: bool,
/// Who must rule on the U-item this scenario encodes. Required when
/// `provisional` is true: a provisional default with no owner can
/// shape the kernel indefinitely while looking handled
/// (CB-WP-0003 T08).
#[serde(default)]
pub provisional_owner: String,
/// ISO date the provisional default was raised, so its age is
/// reportable by `make coverage`.
#[serde(default)]
pub provisional_raised: String,
pub seed: u64,
pub setup: Setup,
pub commands: Vec<CommandStep>,

View file

@ -17,9 +17,9 @@ transcribed by hand (CA-15).
| ID | Metric | Target | Measured | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC-1 | pinned total, as two components | $93.32 = $92.21 + $1.11 | **$92.21 main + $1.11 subagent = $93.32** | **met** |
| AC-1 | pinned total, as two components | $93.15 = $92.03 + $1.11 | **$92.03 main + $1.11 subagent = $93.15** | **met** |
| AC-2 | reconciliation residual | $0.00 | **$0.000000** | **met** |
| AC-3 | unattributed share reported | present, 33% | **32.5%, own line** | **met** |
| AC-3 | unattributed share reported | present, 33% | **32.4%, own line** | **met** |
| AC-4 | composition reported | 5 components | **5 of 5** | **met** |
| AC-5 | dedup violation aborts | non-zero exit | **abort raised** | **met** |
| AC-6 | zero responses refuses to report | non-zero exit | **0 rows, no number emitted** | **met** |
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ transcribed by hand (CA-15).
| AC-8 | 5m cache priced at 1.25× | $1.25/100k @ fable | **$1.2500 (1h would be $2.0000)** | **met** |
| AC-9 | streamed partial output → final | 5,5,195 → 195 | **195** | **met** |
No `unmeasured` rows. AC-1's target was corrected three times before this
No `unmeasured` rows. AC-1's target was corrected four times before and after this
run; §4 records why, because the sequence is more useful than the final
number.
@ -35,23 +35,23 @@ number.
```text
input 690 tok $ 0.00 0.0%
output 323,643 tok $ 11.15 11.9%
cache_read 80,611,798 tok $ 59.75 64.0%
output 323,643 tok $ 11.13 11.9%
cache_read 80,611,798 tok $ 59.67 64.1%
write_5m 37,467 tok $ 0.47 0.5%
write_1h 1,672,854 tok $ 21.95 23.5%
TOTAL $ 93.32
write_1h 1,672,854 tok $ 21.87 23.5%
TOTAL $ 93.15
```
**88.0% of spend is cache; 11.9% is output.** The ratio of context re-read
to text written is 249:1. A single total would have shown $93.32 and
to text written is 249:1. A single total would have shown $93.15 and
concealed all of it — which is exactly what CB-WP-0001's `M-D2-TOK` would
have done, and why that metric is now demoted.
## 3. Per-task attribution
```text
UNATTRIBUTED $ 30.32 32.5%
T08 $ 21.02 22.5%
UNATTRIBUTED $ 30.14 32.4%
T08 $ 21.02 22.6%
T07 $ 12.01 12.9%
T03 $ 9.91 10.6%
T04 $ 8.00 8.6%
@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ have done, and why that metric is now demoted.
T09 $ 1.29 1.4%
```
**Stated limit (CA-10):** 32.5% of cost sits in commits whose subject
**Stated limit (CA-10):** 32.4% of cost sits in commits whose subject
carries no `T##` tag, so this table is a view over 67.5% of spend. That is
a property of commit hygiene, not of the collector.
@ -75,14 +75,15 @@ is worth watching, not yet a conclusion from n=1.
- **The per-task figures are not comparable across passes.** They mix
models (opus/fable/sonnet) at different price points and different cache
states. The dollar figure is comparable; a token count is not.
- **AC-3's 32.5% is a fixture pin, not a quality target.** Improving commit
- **AC-3's 32.4% is a fixture pin, not a quality target.** Improving commit
tagging will move it, and that is the desired direction.
- **This is one session.** Every ratio here (cache share, $/turn, the
compaction effect in §5) is n=1 and should be treated as a hypothesis
until a second pass reproduces it.
- **The price sheet cannot express a time-boxed rate.** Sonnet's intro price
lives in a TOML comment, so sonnet-priced work is off by $0.17 here
(0.19%). This becomes a real error on 2026-08-31.
- ~~**The price sheet cannot express a time-boxed rate.**~~ **Fixed
2026-07-31 by CB-WP-0003 T11** (CA-16/CA-17). Applying the sonnet
promotional rate moved AC-1 from $93.32 to **$93.15** — the $0.17 this
section predicted, now collected rather than merely noted.
- **AC-1 is not invoice-verified.** No admin key exists, so the Anthropic
billing API could not independently confirm the total. The transcript
counters are the same ones billing uses, but that is an argument, not a
@ -145,7 +146,7 @@ largest sample was assumed to hold on the smallest one.** The main
transcript is 338 of 346 responses, so 206/206 felt conclusive; the
violation lives entirely in the 8 responses nobody checked separately.
Cost of the adversarial review this pass: **$1.11**, against a $93.32 pass.
Cost of the adversarial review this pass: **$1.11**, against a $93.15 pass.
It found three approval-blocking defects, one of which (the subagent
exclusion) would have made this evidence file certify a broken collector.
Second consecutive pass where a ~1% spend on review changed the outcome.

View file

@ -0,0 +1,157 @@
# 2026-07-31 — InnerLoop v1.1 rule enforceability audit
CB-WP-0003 T01. Every rule in `specs/InnerLoop.md` v1.1 classified as
**executable** (a command fails when it is violated), **checkable** (a
human or agent can verify it cheaply and objectively in review), or
**decorative** (neither) — and, per the revised task, tagged with the
**failure class it catches**.
## Failure classes on record
Seven error instances across three classes, from
`history/260731-inner-loop-retrospective.md` and
`history/260731-cost-accounting-retrospective.md`:
| tag | class | instances |
|---|---|---|
| **HDN** | harness-does-nothing — a run succeeds while performing no work | 4 |
| **TA** | trusted arithmetic — a correct-looking sum over data that really exists | 2 |
| **SSB** | same-sample blind spot — a property verified on the large sample, assumed on the small | 1 |
The reason for tagging: a rule that catches a class no observed error
belongs to is a candidate for deletion even when it is perfectly
executable, and a class with no rule covering it is where the next rule
should go.
## The audit
Status after this pass. `loop-lint` = `tools/loop-lint.py`, new here.
| # | Rule | Class | Status | Enforced by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | No implementation code before the ADR is committed | — | **checkable** | git history vs ADR date; not automated (see §Deferred) |
| 2 | Tier declared before work starts | — | **executable** | `loop-lint` tier-declared |
| 3 | Chaos roll recorded every time, even when it changes nothing | — | **executable** | `loop-lint` chaos-recorded |
| 4 | Invariants bind at every tier regardless of roll | — | executable (elsewhere) | `make all` — determinism tests, `disallowed_types` |
| 5 | Survey names a benchmark-to-beat per dimension | — | **checkable** | review; a regex cannot judge whether a number is a benchmark |
| 6 | Cited-only baselines cap the verdict at `parity` | TA | **decorative → checkable** | see §Changes |
| 7 | Tier-L survey gets one round of adversarial review | SSB | **executable** | `loop-lint` review-trail |
| 8 | Review trail: research/challenge/response in `history/` | SSB | **executable** | `loop-lint` review-trail |
| 9 | ADR states expected advantage per dimension | — | **checkable** | review |
| 10 | Spec carries an acceptance-metrics table | — | **checkable** | review |
| 11 | Every metric names its instrument | HDN | **checkable** | review; naming is textual, existence is not |
| 12 | **v1.1** The instrument must exist and emit its own target | TA | **checkable** | review; see §Deferred for why not yet executable |
| 13 | **v1.1** Inherited numbers are re-derived before use as a target | TA | **decorative** | nothing can detect a quoted number |
| 14 | A metric is checked against contracts in its own spec | — | **checkable** | review |
| 15 | Harness asserts it performed the work it reports | HDN | **executable** | `cargo bench -- --test`, cb-sim empty-run, `--self-test` |
| 16 | Fail loudly rather than report when the assertion fails | HDN | **executable** | same |
| 17 | Divisor pinned by a test | HDN | **executable** | `bench_shape` test module |
| 18 | A number that cannot prove its work is void | HDN | **executable** | same as 15 |
| 19 | **v1.1** Every reporting tool exposes `--self-test` | HDN, SSB | **executable** | `loop-lint` self-test |
| 20 | `--self-test` names a failure it detects, not the happy path | HDN | **checkable** | review; see §Deferred |
| 21 | Evidence names its disanalogies | — | **checkable** | review |
| 22 | `unmeasured` illegal in an evidence file | — | **executable** | `loop-lint` evidence-unmeasured |
| 23 | No silently-ignored input | HDN | **checkable** | review |
| 24 | Decisions get commands, not defaults | — | **checkable** | review |
| 25 | Scaffolds are exercised or marked | HDN | **checkable** | review |
| 26 | Coverage gates that count tags say so | — | **checkable** | review |
| 27 | Whole-file loadability (~400 lines) | — | **executable** | `loop-lint` loadability |
| 28 | Structured over prose | — | **decorative** | kept as guidance, marked |
| 29 | One command surface | — | **checkable** | review |
| 30 | Self-contained tasks | — | **checkable** | review |
| 31 | Evidence or it didn't happen | — | **checkable** | review |
| 32 | Token discipline per the global budget policy | — | **decorative — dead** | nothing; CB-WP-0003 T05 replaces it |
| 3341 | Definition-of-done checklist (9 items) | mixed | **checkable** | review; each maps to an artifact whose existence is testable — see §Deferred |
Counts: **11 executable**, **22 checkable**, **4 decorative** (one of
which is dead policy).
## What the audit found by running
`tools/loop-lint.py` was written to make rules 2, 3, 7, 8, 19, 22 and 27
executable. On its first run it produced **three findings, all real, none
previously visible**:
1. **`specs/ArchitectureBlueprint.md` is 543 lines** against a ~400-line
limit the loop has stated since v0.2. Nobody noticed because nothing
measured it. Disposition: split (§Changes).
2. **`tools/dep-weight.py` has no `--self-test`.** It has positive-control
logic — it refuses to report when a crate cannot be located — but
nothing verifies that control still works.
3. **`tools/rule-coverage.py` has no `--self-test`.** Same shape.
Findings 2 and 3 are exactly the recursion this workplan is about: the
positive-control rule was applied to benchmarks and to the newest tool,
and not to the two older tools that report AM-1 and AM-4 numbers into
evidence files.
## Changes made in this task
- **Rule 27 made executable and the violation fixed.**
`ArchitectureBlueprint.md` split at its own section boundaries into
`ArchitectureBlueprint.md` (§18, the stack) and
`ArchitectureRuntime.md` (§915, runtime/tooling/process), linked both
ways.
- **Rules 2, 3, 7, 8, 19, 22 made executable** via `tools/loop-lint.py`,
wired as `make loop-lint` and into `make all` and CI.
- **Rule 6 (parity cap) demoted from decorative to checkable** by stating
the check explicitly: an evidence row citing a baseline whose provenance
is `cited` may not carry verdict `better`. That is mechanical against the
survey's provenance column and is queued for `loop-lint` once a second
evidence file exists to test it against — writing a matcher with one
sample is the SSB error this pass is trying to stop making.
- **Rule 28 (structured over prose) demoted to guidance**, with that
status stated in the spec. It is a style preference; nothing can judge
it, and leaving it phrased as a requirement is the false assurance this
audit exists to remove.
- **Rule 32 (token discipline) marked dead** in place, pointing at
CB-WP-0003 T05. It is not deleted yet because deleting it is T05's
decision, but it now reads as dead rather than as a live control.
## Deferred, with reasons
- **Rule 1 (ADR gate) is checkable but not automated.** A mechanical check
needs a map from capability → source paths, which does not exist. Cheap
version worth doing later: require every `specs/<X>.md` to reference an
ADR, and every ADR to precede the first commit touching its capability's
directory.
- **Rule 12 (instrument emits its target) resists automation for now.**
Detecting "this number was typed rather than emitted" requires the tool's
output to be committed alongside the spec. The tractable form is to
require acceptance targets to appear verbatim in a committed tool output
file; deferred to T02 rather than guessed at here.
- **Rule 20 (self-test names a failure) is genuinely checkable only.** A
self-test that asserts `True` passes any structural check. Reviewing the
assertions is the control, and CB-WP-0002's AC-9 is the model: pin the
exact defect that occurred.
- **Rule 13 (re-derive inherited numbers) has no mechanical form at all**
and is left decorative *deliberately* — with its status stated. It is
the rule that caught the largest error in CB-WP-0002 ($248.46 → $92.21),
which is the counter-example to this workplan's own hypothesis: **an
unenforceable rule was the most valuable one in the pass.** The
hypothesis "a rule that cannot be executed is not a rule" is therefore
wrong as stated. The correct version is narrower: *a rule that cannot be
executed cannot be relied on to fire, so it must not be the only defence
for a class that matters.*
## Open items raised by this audit
- **AM-4a / AM-4b are unratified retargets.** Measured at 246,250 and set
at 250,000 in the same commit, by the implementer, with the
implementation changing in that commit too — a retarget under the test
added to InnerLoop §Step 4 by T07, not a correction. They must be
ratified by ADR or changed. Until then `make dep-weight` is enforcing a
target no reviewed decision stands behind.
## Class coverage — where the gaps are
| class | executable rules covering it | assessment |
|---|---|---|
| HDN | 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 | **well covered.** Five executable rules; the class that started this. |
| TA | none | **uncovered by any executable rule.** Rules 6, 12, 13 are checkable or decorative. This is the largest gap, and it is the class with the second-most instances. |
| SSB | 7, 8, 19 | **partly covered.** Rule 19 caught the one instance, by accident of running over all data rather than by design. Rules 7/8 enforce that a review *happened*, not that it sampled differently. T03 addresses the design gap. |
The honest read: **the loop is hardened against the class it has already
suffered most from, and has no executable defence against the class that
produced its largest single error.** Trusted arithmetic is caught today
only by re-derivation, which is a discipline, not a gate.

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@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
# 2026-07-31 — retrospective: does hardening converge?
CB-WP-0003 T10. Pass produced `tools/loop-lint.py`,
`specs/SessionShape.md`, the rule audit, the live cost budget, the
retarget test, dated price rates, M-D1-LNK, provisional expiry, and
InnerLoop **v1.2**.
## The question this task was given
> Is the set of mechanisms now complete, or is each new pass still finding
> a new class? If this pass produces an eighth instance in a fourth class,
> the honest conclusion is that class-by-class hardening does not
> converge, and the loop should optimize for *cheap detection and
> correction* rather than for prevention — which is a different design.
**It produced both. The answer is: hardening does not converge.**
## The ledger
| # | class | instances | found by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **HDN** harness-does-nothing | **5** | executable assertions |
| 2 | **TA** trusted arithmetic | **3** | re-derivation |
| 3 | **SSB** same-sample blind spot | **1** | an assertion running over *all* data |
| 4 | **DFD** duplicated-fact drift *(new)* | **2** | reading the copy against its source |
Ten instances, four classes. Three workplans in, **every pass has
produced at least one instance of a class the previous pass had not
seen.**
### New this pass
- **HDN #5 (latent).** `tools/rule-coverage.py` would have exited 0
reporting `0/0` if its spec regex ever stopped matching — a silent pass
in the tool that reports our headline AM-1 number. Never fired; found
only because T02 required it to carry a `--self-test` and writing one
meant asking what failure it should detect.
- **TA #3.** *"0 of 330 tool calls were batched"* — 330 was the count of
single-call responses, not the total. Carried unverified from
CB-WP-0001's retrospective into CB-WP-0003 T04. Real figure: 7.88.6%
of responses batched.
- **DFD #12 (new class).** `specs/MetricsAndScenarios.md` §1a inlined a
copy of the price sheet; T11 changed the real sheet and the copy went
stale **within the same hour**. Separately, the acceptance figure
$92.87/$0.66 had to be chased across a survey, a workplan, and an
evidence file each time it moved. The defect is not arithmetic and not
a harness — it is **a fact stored in two places, where updating one
does not update the other**.
DFD is genuinely distinct: no positive control catches it (both copies
are internally consistent), and re-derivation does not either (the copy
reproduces whatever it was copied from). It is caught only by reading a
copy against its source, which nothing in the loop required.
## What this implies, and what changed because of it
Prevention has not converged: four passes, four classes, no sign of
saturation. But the *correction* side has been consistently cheap and
fast:
| correction | mechanism | cost |
|---|---|---|
| $248.46 → $92.21 | re-derivation | ~0 |
| $92.21 → $92.87 | adversarial review | $1.11 |
| $92.87 → $93.32 | positive control | ~0 |
| $93.32 → $93.15 | dated-rate fix | ~0 |
Every error found in three passes was corrected inside the same session
for under ~1% of the pass. **So the loop should stop trying to enumerate
failure classes in advance and invest in the properties that make
correction cheap** — which it turns out already has, accidentally:
1. **Numbers are re-derivable** because the raw data (transcripts, git,
the price sheet) is kept, not just the conclusions.
2. **Artifacts are small and committed**, so a wrong number is one grep
from every place that quotes it.
3. **Every reported number has a command**, so re-running is free.
v1.2 makes this the stated design goal rather than an accident, and adds
the one rule the new class earns:
> **Single source of fact.** A number, rate, or target lives in exactly
> one place. Everywhere else links to it. Where a copy is unavoidable, it
> is generated by a command, not typed. *(CA-15 said this for evidence
> tables; DFD shows it applies to specs quoting other specs.)*
## What the gates did this pass
Worth recording because it is the cheapest possible evidence that the
executable-rule thesis is at least partly right:
- `loop-lint` found three real violations on its **first** run —
including a 543-line spec against a ~400-line rule the loop had stated
since v0.2 and never measured.
- `loop-lint` then **failed on its own author within the hour**, when a
T07 edit pushed `specs/InnerLoop.md` to 407 lines. The file was split
because a gate said so, not because anyone noticed.
- `cb-cost`'s dedup assertion fired on real data on its first run and
refused to print a number.
Three gates, three catches, all on first contact. Against that: the two
most valuable corrections of the whole project ($248.46 → $92.21, and the
batching claim) came from a rule that is **decorative and cannot be made
executable** — *re-derive inherited numbers*. Both facts are true and the
audit records them side by side.
## Revised hypothesis
The workplan opened with: *a loop rule that cannot be executed is not a
rule.* Three passes of evidence say that is wrong as stated. The version
this pass supports:
> An executable rule fires reliably and catches one class. A decorative
> rule fires unreliably and can catch any class, including ones not yet
> named. **Keep both, and never let a decorative rule be the only defence
> for a class that matters** — but do not delete it merely because it
> cannot be automated, which is what this workplan originally proposed.
## Open, not closed
- **AM-4a/AM-4b are unratified retargets** (T07). `make dep-weight`
enforces targets no reviewed decision stands behind. Maintainer
decision.
- **9 of 58 rules are claimed by a scenario and named nowhere in the
aggregate** (T09, M-D1-LNK). Reported, not failing, because tagging
them without confirming implementation is the overclaim the loop
already committed once.
- **5 provisional U-item defaults** now have an owner and an age, and
ground-game has not ruled (T08).
- **The chaos roll is in a 12-declaration calibration window** at d4
(T06), expected to cost $2030 and to be decided on evidence.
- **DFD has no gate.** The single-source-of-fact rule added in v1.2 is
prose. Making it executable — detecting a number duplicated across
artifacts — is the obvious next candidate and is not attempted here.

View file

@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ description: >
Bond, because GR-L02 requires the target's consent.
covers: [GR-A04, GR-F04, GR-L02, GR-L05]
provisional: true
provisional_owner: ground-game
provisional_raised: 2026-07-31
seed: 42
setup:
players: 3

View file

@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ description: >
application (GR-F01 under the U2 default).
covers: [GR-D01, GR-R08, GR-F01]
provisional: true
provisional_owner: ground-game
provisional_raised: 2026-07-31
seed: 42
setup:
players: 3

View file

@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ description: >
owner takes 2 Stress and the sequence ends (GR-D05, GR-D07).
covers: [GR-D05, GR-D07, GR-T01]
provisional: true
provisional_owner: ground-game
provisional_raised: 2026-07-31
seed: 42
setup:
players: 3

View file

@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ description: >
rating reduced by each Blame token and each Denied Problem.
covers: [GR-R09, GR-E01, GR-E02, GR-P03]
provisional: true
provisional_owner: ground-game
provisional_raised: 2026-07-31
seed: 42
setup:
players: 3

View file

@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ description: >
one. Personal scores subtract Blame (GR-E03, GR-T02).
covers: [GR-E03, GR-E04, GR-O03]
provisional: true
provisional_owner: ground-game
provisional_raised: 2026-07-31
seed: 42
setup:
players: 3

View file

@ -331,213 +331,14 @@ capabilities.
---
## 9. Rendering, input, and creation tools
Rust-first stack:
- `winit` — windows and platform input
- `wgpu` — GPU rendering (Vulkan / Metal / D3D / browser)
- `egui` — engine tools, inspectors, early editors
- Custom scene renderer for the game table
- **glTF** as the primary imported 3D format, wrapped in Clay-Borg asset
metadata and provenance
Creator environment (grows over milestones): scene hierarchy, object
inspector, prototype browser, card-sheet importer, deck builder, zone and
snap-point editors, rule-state inspector, event timeline, player-view
switcher, hidden-information debugger, physics debugger, scenario recorder,
replay controls, package validator.
---
## 10. Networking and sessions
**Continued in [ArchitectureRuntime.md](ArchitectureRuntime.md)** — §9
rendering/input/creation tools, §10 networking and sessions, §11 the
agentic inner loop, §12 TargetRevenue integration, §13 repository
structure, §14 milestones, §15 governing design decisions.
Authoritative session host:
```text
Client gesture
→ proposed command
→ session server validation
→ authoritative events
→ state update
→ player-specific projection
→ client animation
```
Capabilities: session discovery, auth and seat assignment, lobby/readiness,
command submission, commit/reveal windows, event-stream replication,
snapshot transfer, reconnection, state-hash verification, spectators,
player-specific redaction, host migration (later).
Transport: **Quinn** (QUIC) for native; browser transport is a separate
adapter (WebTransport or WebSockets). The canonical protocol is defined
independently of any transport:
```text
cb-session-protocol
├── CommandEnvelope
├── EventEnvelope
├── SnapshotEnvelope
├── CommitmentEnvelope
├── AssetRequest
└── CapabilityNegotiation
```
---
## 11. Agentic inner loop
Agentic coding is a first-class product surface. Optimize for small
capability boundaries, executable specifications, controlled work areas, and
replayable failures.
### Work packet (every agent task)
```yaml
task_id: CB-PHYS-0042
capability: tabletop.card-stacking
intent: Keep card stacks stable after drag release.
allowed_crates:
- cb-physics-api
- cb-physics-rapier
- cb-tabletop-physics
forbidden_changes:
- canonical game event schema
invariants:
- semantic card order must not depend on collider order
scenarios:
- scenarios/card-stack-20.yaml
benchmarks:
- benches/card-stack-stability.yaml
acceptance:
- all conformance tests pass
- no state divergence over 10,000 ticks
- benchmark regression below 3%
```
### CLI surface (`cb`)
```bash
cb inspect capability tabletop.card
cb task prepare CB-PHYS-0042
cb generate contracts
cb check --affected
cb test --affected # supports --format json
cb sim ground scenarios/mutual-attack.yaml
cb play ground --players 4
cb replay artifacts/failure.cbreplay
cb compare physics-reference physics-rapier
cb bench --affected
cb evidence build CB-PHYS-0042
cb release assess CB-PHYS-0042
```
### Quality gates
Formatting/linting, dependency-policy check, unit tests, capability
conformance tests, property tests, golden scenario tests, replay
determinism, snapshot migration, performance and memory budgets, rendering
comparison where relevant, security/sandbox tests, documentation and schema
consistency.
Tooling: `cargo-nextest` (isolated parallel tests), Criterion
(regression-sensitive benchmarks), `sccache` (compile reuse), `tracing`
(structured diagnostics).
---
## 12. TargetRevenue integration
TargetRevenue governs **versioned capability improvements**, not the
monorepo as one indivisible target.
```toml
improvement_id = "CB-GROUND-001"
capability = "game.ground.simultaneous-resolution"
classification = "10x"
estimated_days = 4
daily_rate = 1000
target_revenue = 40000
phase = "commercial-recovery"
release_when_target_reached = "MIT"
trust_record = "required"
```
Components: improvement registry, workload ledger, cost model, revenue
attribution, dependency graph, phase license generator, revenue meter,
release gate, evidence bundle, trust service.
Economic rule:
> Optimized assimilations may be financed as independent improvements, while
> the canonical interface remains stable and reusable.
---
## 13. Repository structure
```text
clay-borg/
├── INTENT.md
├── SCOPE.md
├── ARCHITECTURE.md # or specs/ArchitectureBlueprint.md (this file)
├── Cargo.toml
├── rust-toolchain.toml
├── canon/ # entities, events, capabilities, schemas, terminology
├── crates/
│ ├── cb-kernel/ cb-ids/ cb-time/ cb-rng/ cb-events/
│ ├── cb-snapshot/ cb-capability/
│ ├── cb-world/ cb-world-api/ cb-ecs-bevy/
│ ├── cb-physics-api/ cb-physics-null/ cb-physics-reference/ cb-physics-rapier/
│ ├── cb-render-api/ cb-render-null/ cb-render-wgpu/
│ ├── cb-tabletop/ cb-tabletop-physics/ cb-tabletop-view/
│ ├── cb-game-runtime/ cb-game-protocol/ cb-game-wasm/
│ ├── cb-session/ cb-network-api/ cb-network-loopback/ cb-network-quic/
│ └── cb-assets/ cb-ui/ cb-editor/ cb-observe/ cb-evidence/
├── games/ # ground/, fixture-cards/
├── tools/ # cb-cli/, cb-agent/, cb-import/, cb-pack/
├── scenarios/
├── conformance/
├── benchmarks/
├── replays/
├── examples/
├── decisions/
├── assimilation/ # assimilation manifests
└── target-revenue/
```
Stay a monorepo during architectural formation. Extract a repository only
when a capability has a stable contract, an independent lifecycle, and a
genuine external consumer.
---
## 14. Milestones
| # | Milestone | Proves |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Headless GROUND | Authoritative rules, commit/reveal, DARVO, replay — no rendering, no physics |
| 1 | Inspectable 2D table | Presentation bindings without 3D complexity |
| 2 | Physical 3D tabletop | wgpu + Rapier projection of semantic events |
| 3 | Networked sessions | Authoritative host, private projections, reconnection |
| 4 | Game creation framework | Editors, importers, Wasm game components |
| 5 | Second fixture game | Generality — abstractions promoted to Canon only after a second concrete use |
---
## 15. Governing design decisions
1. Build GROUND first, not a general engine first.
2. Keep rules independent from rendering and physics.
3. Use commands and events as the authoritative mutation mechanism.
4. Provide null, reference, and optimized implementations of important capabilities.
5. Never leak assimilated-library types into canonical interfaces.
6. Use server-authoritative physics and deterministic semantic rules.
7. Treat player visibility as a projection, not a UI afterthought.
8. Make every defect reproducible as a scenario and replay.
9. Give coding agents bounded work packets and stable commands.
10. Attach TargetRevenue phases to versioned improvements and evidence bundles.
*(Split 2026-07-31: this file was 543 lines against the loop's ~400-line
whole-file loadability rule. The rule had been stated since v0.2 and
nothing measured it until `tools/loop-lint.py` — see
`history/260731-inner-loop-rule-audit.md`.)*

View file

@ -0,0 +1,221 @@
# Clay-Borg Architecture — Runtime, Tooling, and Process
Second half of the architecture blueprint, split from
[ArchitectureBlueprint.md](ArchitectureBlueprint.md) on 2026-07-31 for
whole-file loadability. §18 (the layered stack, Clay Canon, runtime
substrate, simulation kernel, physics, world-building, tabletop domain
framework, game runtime) remain there; §915 are here.
Section numbering is continuous with the first half and deliberately
unchanged, so existing references keep resolving.
## 9. Rendering, input, and creation tools
Rust-first stack:
- `winit` — windows and platform input
- `wgpu` — GPU rendering (Vulkan / Metal / D3D / browser)
- `egui` — engine tools, inspectors, early editors
- Custom scene renderer for the game table
- **glTF** as the primary imported 3D format, wrapped in Clay-Borg asset
metadata and provenance
Creator environment (grows over milestones): scene hierarchy, object
inspector, prototype browser, card-sheet importer, deck builder, zone and
snap-point editors, rule-state inspector, event timeline, player-view
switcher, hidden-information debugger, physics debugger, scenario recorder,
replay controls, package validator.
---
## 10. Networking and sessions
Authoritative session host:
```text
Client gesture
→ proposed command
→ session server validation
→ authoritative events
→ state update
→ player-specific projection
→ client animation
```
Capabilities: session discovery, auth and seat assignment, lobby/readiness,
command submission, commit/reveal windows, event-stream replication,
snapshot transfer, reconnection, state-hash verification, spectators,
player-specific redaction, host migration (later).
Transport: **Quinn** (QUIC) for native; browser transport is a separate
adapter (WebTransport or WebSockets). The canonical protocol is defined
independently of any transport:
```text
cb-session-protocol
├── CommandEnvelope
├── EventEnvelope
├── SnapshotEnvelope
├── CommitmentEnvelope
├── AssetRequest
└── CapabilityNegotiation
```
---
## 11. Agentic inner loop
Agentic coding is a first-class product surface. Optimize for small
capability boundaries, executable specifications, controlled work areas, and
replayable failures.
### Work packet (every agent task)
```yaml
task_id: CB-PHYS-0042
capability: tabletop.card-stacking
intent: Keep card stacks stable after drag release.
allowed_crates:
- cb-physics-api
- cb-physics-rapier
- cb-tabletop-physics
forbidden_changes:
- canonical game event schema
invariants:
- semantic card order must not depend on collider order
scenarios:
- scenarios/card-stack-20.yaml
benchmarks:
- benches/card-stack-stability.yaml
acceptance:
- all conformance tests pass
- no state divergence over 10,000 ticks
- benchmark regression below 3%
```
### CLI surface (`cb`)
```bash
cb inspect capability tabletop.card
cb task prepare CB-PHYS-0042
cb generate contracts
cb check --affected
cb test --affected # supports --format json
cb sim ground scenarios/mutual-attack.yaml
cb play ground --players 4
cb replay artifacts/failure.cbreplay
cb compare physics-reference physics-rapier
cb bench --affected
cb evidence build CB-PHYS-0042
cb release assess CB-PHYS-0042
```
### Quality gates
Formatting/linting, dependency-policy check, unit tests, capability
conformance tests, property tests, golden scenario tests, replay
determinism, snapshot migration, performance and memory budgets, rendering
comparison where relevant, security/sandbox tests, documentation and schema
consistency.
Tooling: `cargo-nextest` (isolated parallel tests), Criterion
(regression-sensitive benchmarks), `sccache` (compile reuse), `tracing`
(structured diagnostics).
---
## 12. TargetRevenue integration
TargetRevenue governs **versioned capability improvements**, not the
monorepo as one indivisible target.
```toml
improvement_id = "CB-GROUND-001"
capability = "game.ground.simultaneous-resolution"
classification = "10x"
estimated_days = 4
daily_rate = 1000
target_revenue = 40000
phase = "commercial-recovery"
release_when_target_reached = "MIT"
trust_record = "required"
```
Components: improvement registry, workload ledger, cost model, revenue
attribution, dependency graph, phase license generator, revenue meter,
release gate, evidence bundle, trust service.
Economic rule:
> Optimized assimilations may be financed as independent improvements, while
> the canonical interface remains stable and reusable.
---
## 13. Repository structure
```text
clay-borg/
├── INTENT.md
├── SCOPE.md
├── ARCHITECTURE.md # or specs/ArchitectureBlueprint.md (this file)
├── Cargo.toml
├── rust-toolchain.toml
├── canon/ # entities, events, capabilities, schemas, terminology
├── crates/
│ ├── cb-kernel/ cb-ids/ cb-time/ cb-rng/ cb-events/
│ ├── cb-snapshot/ cb-capability/
│ ├── cb-world/ cb-world-api/ cb-ecs-bevy/
│ ├── cb-physics-api/ cb-physics-null/ cb-physics-reference/ cb-physics-rapier/
│ ├── cb-render-api/ cb-render-null/ cb-render-wgpu/
│ ├── cb-tabletop/ cb-tabletop-physics/ cb-tabletop-view/
│ ├── cb-game-runtime/ cb-game-protocol/ cb-game-wasm/
│ ├── cb-session/ cb-network-api/ cb-network-loopback/ cb-network-quic/
│ └── cb-assets/ cb-ui/ cb-editor/ cb-observe/ cb-evidence/
├── games/ # ground/, fixture-cards/
├── tools/ # cb-cli/, cb-agent/, cb-import/, cb-pack/
├── scenarios/
├── conformance/
├── benchmarks/
├── replays/
├── examples/
├── decisions/
├── assimilation/ # assimilation manifests
└── target-revenue/
```
Stay a monorepo during architectural formation. Extract a repository only
when a capability has a stable contract, an independent lifecycle, and a
genuine external consumer.
---
## 14. Milestones
| # | Milestone | Proves |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Headless GROUND | Authoritative rules, commit/reveal, DARVO, replay — no rendering, no physics |
| 1 | Inspectable 2D table | Presentation bindings without 3D complexity |
| 2 | Physical 3D tabletop | wgpu + Rapier projection of semantic events |
| 3 | Networked sessions | Authoritative host, private projections, reconnection |
| 4 | Game creation framework | Editors, importers, Wasm game components |
| 5 | Second fixture game | Generality — abstractions promoted to Canon only after a second concrete use |
---
## 15. Governing design decisions
1. Build GROUND first, not a general engine first.
2. Keep rules independent from rendering and physics.
3. Use commands and events as the authoritative mutation mechanism.
4. Provide null, reference, and optimized implementations of important capabilities.
5. Never leak assimilated-library types into canonical interfaces.
6. Use server-authoritative physics and deterministic semantic rules.
7. Treat player visibility as a projection, not a UI afterthought.
8. Make every defect reproducible as a scenario and replay.
9. Give coding agents bounded work packets and stable commands.
10. Attach TargetRevenue phases to versioned improvements and evidence bundles.

View file

@ -67,6 +67,16 @@ cost = input_tokens × price.input
> reported as an unpriced line with its token counts, never dropped and
> never priced at a default.
> **CA-16.** Promotional and other time-boxed rates are **data**, not
> comments. A response is priced at the rate in force *at its own
> timestamp*: `promo_input`/`promo_output` apply on or before
> `promo_until`, and the standard rate applies after.
> **CA-17.** The price sheet carries `recorded` and `max_age_days`, and a
> sheet older than `max_age_days` **aborts the run**. A stale sheet
> invalidates `better` verdicts, so the staleness rule is a command rather
> than a sentence.
### 1.3 Scope of a measurement
> **CA-06.** A measurement enumerates **every** transcript for the repo:
@ -125,9 +135,9 @@ Each row names the command that produces its number, per InnerLoop §Step 4.
| ID | Metric | Target | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|
| **AC-1** | reproduces the pinned CB-WP-0001 total | **$93.32** = $92.21 main + $1.11 subagent | `make cost-pin` |
| **AC-1** | reproduces the pinned CB-WP-0001 total | **$93.15** = $92.03 main + $1.11 subagent | `make cost-pin` |
| **AC-2** | reconciliation residual (CA-14) | **$0.00** exactly | same command, `reconciled: ok` line |
| **AC-3** | unattributed share reported (CA-10) | present, and **33%** on the pinned run | `cb-cost --pin fc76445 --by-task` |
| **AC-3** | unattributed share reported (CA-10) | present, and **32.4%** on the pinned run | `cb-cost --pin fc76445 --by-task` |
| **AC-4** | composition reported (CA-13) | all five components present | `cb-cost --pin fc76445 --composition` |
| **AC-5** | dedup invariant asserted (CA-02) | violation exits non-zero | `make cost-test` |
| **AC-6** | positive control: refuses to report on zero responses | exits non-zero | `make cost-test` |
@ -145,7 +155,7 @@ assertion against a fixture whose expected value is known and fails loudly;
Per InnerLoop §Step 4, the acceptance table is checked against the
contracts in this same spec:
- AC-1's $92.87 is reachable only if CA-06 holds (both trees enumerated).
- AC-1's $93.15 is reachable only if CA-06 holds (both trees enumerated).
Under a main-file-only collector the target is unreachable — this is the
defect the adversarial review caught, where a target of $92.21 would have
been hit *only* by a broken collector.
@ -172,7 +182,88 @@ contracts in this same spec:
necessarily shows a lossy projection. This is a limitation of the sink,
not of the metric; `make cost` remains the authority.
## 7. Revisions to M-D2-CST
## 7. The live cost budget
Replaces the 8k/10k per-task **token** budget, which was never referenced
or enforced, which CB-WP-0001 T08 exceeded by orders of magnitude with no
signal, and which InnerLoop v1.1 now marks dead. It implied a control that
did not exist.
**The design constraint that shapes this.** Per-task cost needs the commit
that *closes* the task (CA-08), so it is unavoidably retrospective — a
per-task budget can only ever report a breach after the money is spent.
What is observable mid-task is **spend since the last commit**, because
the transcript is an append-live file (CA-07). That is the only number a
budget can actually fire on, so that is what the budget binds.
> **CB-01.** The budget is the **open remainder**: USD spent since the
> last commit, computable at any instant by `make cost-budget`.
> **CB-02.** Thresholds: **soft $10.00**, **hard $22.00**.
>
> - **soft** — state progress as a percentage and decide: continue, or
> commit what works and decompose.
> - **hard** — stop. Commit what works, or decompose. Uncommitted work is
> also *unattributable* work, so a hard breach costs twice: once in
> money, once in the 33% attribution gap.
Calibration, measured over the 32 non-empty commit intervals of
CB-WP-0001 (`cb-cost --pin fc76445`):
| | spend per interval |
|---|---|
| min | $0.07 |
| p50 | $1.40 |
| p90 | $9.36 |
| **max** | **$10.80** (T07, the Cargo workspace scaffold) |
Soft is set at **$10.00**, just below the observed maximum and just above
p90: on the pass this is calibrated from it would have fired exactly once,
on the single most expensive interval. Hard is set at **$22.00**, roughly
2× the observed maximum — a value never reached in 32 intervals, so
reaching it means the session is doing something the calibration data has
no example of, which is precisely when stopping is right.
**Why these are not retargeted-after-the-fact.** T07's concern is a target
moved to accommodate a measurement. These thresholds are set *above* every
observed value, so they bind on future work rather than ratifying present
work — no interval in the calibration set breaches hard, and one breaches
soft. If a future pass routinely breaches, that is signal, not a reason to
raise them.
**Known limit:** the budget cannot fire *between* turns without something
running the command. It is available to an agent at any point, in CI, and
in `make all`; it is not a daemon. An agent that never runs it gets no
signal — which is exactly the dead-policy failure this replaces, one level
up. The mitigation is that it costs nothing to run and is on the one
command surface.
## 9. The price sheet
`benchmarks/baselines/model-prices.toml` is the single source of rates.
Two defects were fixed here, both of the same shape — **a schema that
could not hold the fact it needed**, which is the criticism this
capability's survey levelled at the State Hub:
1. **A time-boxed rate lived in a comment.** Sonnet's intro price
(2.00/10.00 through 2026-08-31) was written as `# intro …` and was
therefore invisible to the collector, which used the standard rate. Cost
at the pin: **$0.17**, 0.19% of the pass. The real hazard was the
date — on **2026-08-31** the promotion expires and a comment-only
representation would have been wrong in the opposite direction, with
nothing to notice. Now expressed as `promo_*` fields and applied per
CA-16.
2. **The 90-day staleness rule had no check.** It was prose in
`MetricsAndScenarios.md` §1a and every M-D2-CST verdict silently
inherited it. Now `recorded` + `max_age_days` in the sheet, enforced by
CA-17 and exercised by `make cost-test`.
Applying CA-16 moved AC-1 from $93.32 to **$93.15**. This is a *legitimate*
retarget under the distinction CB-WP-0003 T07 draws: the instrument
disproved the target, rather than the implementation missing it. The
instrument's output is in the same commit.
## 8. Revisions to M-D2-CST
`specs/MetricsAndScenarios.md` §1a is superseded by this spec. M-D2-CST is
redefined from "tokens × pricepoint" — which named no instrument and was

View file

@ -210,6 +210,15 @@ terms.
## Underdetermined in dataset 0.1 — PROVISIONAL defaults (flag to ground-game)
**Owner: ground-game. Raised: 2026-07-31.** Every U-item carries an owner
and a raise date so its age is visible; `make coverage` reports both and
warns past 30 days. CI **warns rather than breaks** — the ruling belongs
to ground-game and the kernel cannot make it for them — but every evidence
file that depends on one must list it (CB-WP-0003 T08).
A ruling flips the *scenario*, not the kernel: the default is encoded in a
scenario tagged `provisional: true`, so a correction is a data change.
Formalization exposed points the dataset does not decide. Simulation uses
the stated default; each is tagged in scenarios that depend on it and must
be confirmed or corrected by ground-game.

View file

@ -1,6 +1,13 @@
# The Inner Loop — Assimilate and Surpass
Status: **v1.1** — corrected from CB-WP-0002 (cost accounting) on
Status: **v1.2** — corrected from CB-WP-0003 (loop hardening) on
2026-07-31. Changes from v1.1: single source of fact; review targets the
harness and states its sampling limit; correction vs retarget; the chaos
roll's calibration window; the live cost budget. The design goal is now
stated: **optimize for cheap correction, not for exhaustive prevention.**
Rationale: `history/260731-loop-hardening-retrospective.md`.
v1.1 — corrected from CB-WP-0002 (cost accounting) on
2026-07-31. Changes from v1.0: the instrument must exist and emit its own
target; inherited numbers are re-derived before use; every reporting tool
exposes `--self-test`; cost is in the definition of done. Rationale:
@ -14,7 +21,25 @@ evidence state what it does not support. Rationale and the failures behind
each: `history/260731-inner-loop-retrospective.md`.
Normative process for building every Clay-Borg capability. Referenced by
all workplans. The loop's own optimization target is **agentic efficiency**:
all workplans.
**Design goal (v1.2).** Three passes produced ten error instances across
four classes, and every pass produced a class the previous one had not
seen — prevention is not converging. Every one of those errors was
corrected inside the same session for under ~1% of the pass. The loop
therefore optimizes for **cheap correction**: keep the raw data so numbers
can be re-derived, keep artifacts small and committed so a wrong number is
one grep from everywhere that quotes it, and give every reported number a
command so re-running is free.
> **Single source of fact.** A number, rate, or target lives in exactly
> one place; everywhere else links to it. Where a copy is unavoidable it
> is generated by a command, not typed. *(v1.2: a price sheet inlined into
> a spec went stale within the hour of the real sheet changing, and one
> acceptance figure had to be chased across three artifacts each time it
> moved. No positive control catches this — both copies are internally
> consistent — and re-derivation does not either, because the copy
> reproduces whatever it was copied from.)* The loop's own optimization target is **agentic efficiency**:
every artifact it produces must be small enough to load whole, structured
enough to act on without interpretation, and falsifiable enough that an
agent can judge its own work without a human in the iteration.
@ -46,10 +71,29 @@ are never skipped for code-producing work.
| **M** | Survey and ADR merged into one document; review optional | Touches a canonical interface, or adds/updates an external dependency |
| **S** | One provenance paragraph in the commit message | Everything else (utilities, fixes, refactors inside a boundary) |
**The chaos roll.** After deriving the structural tier, roll d10
(`shuf -i 1-10 -n 1`). On a **10**, the tier is instead picked uniformly at
**The chaos roll.** After deriving the structural tier, roll **d4**
(`shuf -i 1-4 -n 1`). On a **4**, the tier is instead picked uniformly at
random (`shuf -e S M L -n 1`), overriding the structural derivation — up or
down. Both rolls are recorded in the tier declaration
down.
> **Calibration window, opened 2026-07-31 (CB-WP-0003 T06).** The rate was
> d10 and the mechanism **never fired**: two rolls across two workplans
> (CB-WP-0001: 9, CB-WP-0002: 2), against ~0.2 expected firings. At d10 and
> ~2 tier decisions per workplan it would take roughly twenty workplans to
> observe four overrides, so the mechanism was set at a rate that prevented
> its own evaluation — the one option T06 ruled out.
>
> Raised to **d4 (25%) for the next 12 tier declarations**, then evaluated
> and either kept, returned to d10, or deleted. Expected ~3 firings in the
> window, which is enough to see whether an overridden tier produces a
> different outcome than the argued one.
>
> **Stated cost:** a chaos-L override on work that would have been S buys a
> full survey, adversarial review, and ADR. Measured comparable: CB-WP-0001
> T03 (a tier-L survey) cost **$9.91**. At 25% over 12 declarations the
> window is expected to cost **$2030**. That is the price of finding out
> whether the mechanism is worth keeping, and it is cheaper than carrying an
> unevaluated ritual indefinitely. Both rolls are recorded in the tier declaration
(`tier: M (structural L, chaos 10→M)`). **Record the roll every time,
including when it changes nothing** (`tier: L (structural L, chaos 4)`),
so a mechanism that never fires is visible rather than assumed. Purpose:
@ -87,11 +131,40 @@ evidence verdict for those rows caps at `parity`, never `better`.
### Step 2 — Approve (adversarial review)
For tier-L passes, approval is earned through an **adversarial review**: a
separate session (or agent), given only the survey document, attempts to
break it — an omitted candidate, a stale or unverifiable benchmark, an
unmeasured claim presented as measured. Exactly **one round**: challenge,
then response. The survey is approvable only when every challenge is either
answered with evidence or conceded and folded into the survey.
separate session (or agent) attempts to break the work. Exactly **one
round**: challenge, then response. The work is approvable only when every
challenge is either answered with evidence or conceded and folded in.
**The review target follows the risk.** Reviewing the survey was the
original rule, and it is the wrong target for a capability whose claim
rests on numbers — every serious error in this project has been in
measurement or build configuration, not in prose.
| the claim rests on | the reviewer is given | and must attempt |
|---|---|---|
| a survey of candidates | the survey | an omitted candidate; a stale or unverifiable benchmark; an unmeasured claim presented as measured |
| **numbers** | the survey **and the harness and the evidence file** | **reproduce the number independently**; state what the harness would report if the work silently stopped |
**What review cannot do — state this, do not discover it.** A reviewer
re-derives the author's claims and therefore inherits the author's
sampling. So:
> **The reviewer re-derives on a different sample than the author used.**
> Where only one sample exists, the review says so rather than reporting a
> clean verify.
*(v1.1, from CB-WP-0002: the dedup invariant was verified on the main
transcript by the survey — 206/206 groups — and independently re-verified
by the reviewer, who used the same transcript. It is false in the
8-response `subagents/` tree neither examined. Two independent checks,
one blind spot, because both sampled the same way. Only an assertion
running over all the data at execution time caught it.)*
**What review demonstrably does do.** Measured across two passes:
**$0.66** and **$1.11**, roughly 1% of each pass, each finding
approval-blocking defects — in CB-WP-0002 a target that would have made
the evidence file certify a broken collector. The step pays for itself by
a wide margin and the cost is not a reason to skip it.
**Documentation requirement:** the research process, the challenge, and the
resulting improvements to the research are each documented in timestamped
@ -151,11 +224,40 @@ as a target, or it is cited as unverified.** Quoting is not measuring.
from a prior pass. Re-derivation put it at $92.21 — the quoted figure
double-counted transcript lines and priced a three-model session at one
model's rate. Neither error was of the harness-does-nothing class; both
sums ran over real data, and a positive control would have passed them.)* A metric must
also be checked against the contracts in the *same spec*: if a contract
makes a target unreachable, one of the two is wrong and the conflict is
resolved when it is noticed, not at the acceptance run. Re-check the
table whenever a contract is added.
sums ran over real data, and a positive control would have passed them.)*
**Retargeting: the instrument may move a target, the implementation may
not.** A metric's target changes in only two ways, and they are not
treated alike:
| | trigger | requirement |
|---|---|---|
| **corrected** | the instrument disproved the target — the target was computed by hand, or by an earlier tool with a defect | legitimate in the same commit, **provided the instrument's output is in that commit** |
| **retargeted** | the implementation missed the target and the target moves to accommodate it | requires an **ADR**: old target, the measurement, and why the new target binds on *future* work rather than merely passing present work |
The distinction is not the implementer's self-report of intent. It is
mechanical: **a correction is one where the target moves and the
implementation does not.** If the same commit changes both the target and
the code the target measures, it is a retarget and needs the ADR.
*(v1.1, from CB-WP-0002/0003: AM-4's targets were measured at 246,250 and
set at 250,000 in one commit by the implementer after seeing the number —
the structure this rule exists to stop. But CB-WP-0002 then moved AC-1
three times, correctly, each time because a new instrument disproved the
old figure ($92.21 → $92.87 → $93.32 → $93.15). A blanket prohibition
would have forbidden four legitimate corrections to catch one bad
retarget.)*
**Applied retroactively:** AM-4a and AM-4b are **unratified** until an ADR
is written or they are changed. They were set by the implementer after
seeing the measurement, in the commit that produced it, and the
implementation changed in that same commit — a retarget by the test above.
Tracked as an open item in `history/260731-inner-loop-rule-audit.md`.
**A metric is checked against the contracts in its own spec.** If a
contract makes a target unreachable, one of the two is wrong and the
conflict is resolved when it is noticed, not at the acceptance run.
Re-check the table whenever a contract is added.
*(v1.0, from CB-WP-0001: AM-4's ≤20-crate target was made unreachable by
the K5 and K7 contracts written after it, and AM-12's cost metric was
@ -224,115 +326,17 @@ state the claim you will defend, and the claim you are not making.
---
## The four-dimension rubric
Every survey, ADR, and acceptance table is organized by these dimensions:
| Dimension | Question | Example measurable proxies |
|---|---|---|
| **D1 Ease of specification** | How simply can behavior be stated, tested, understood? | rules-to-scenario coverage %, spec lines per rule, time-to-first-correct-scenario for a fresh agent session |
| **D2 Efficiency of implementation** | How cheap to build and keep building? | source LOC, dependency count/weight, clean-build and incremental-build time, tokens-per-completed-task |
| **D3 Speed of execution** | How fast does it run? | benchmark wall-time vs baseline, events/sec, memory footprint, determinism overhead |
| **D4 Optionality** | How cleanly does it integrate, extend, get replaced? | public API surface size, count of leaked foreign types (must be 0), effort-to-swap measured by null/reference impl existence, WIT-expressibility |
Scoring is always **relative to the step-1 baseline**, never absolute:
`better / parity / worse / unmeasured` per proxy, with the number attached.
`unmeasured` is legal in a survey, illegal in an evidence file.
---
## Survey template (research/CB-RES-NNNN-<slug>.md)
## Reference material
```markdown
# CB-RES-NNNN: <capability>
capability: <canonical.capability.id>
status: draft | approved
The four-dimension rubric, the survey template, the implementation rules
each pass earned, the agentic-efficiency requirements, and the
definition of done live in
**[InnerLoopReference.md](InnerLoopReference.md)**. They are normative;
they are separated only so both files load whole.
## Candidates
Per candidate: origin, license, maturity, adoption; data model; mutation
mechanism; determinism/replay story; relevant performance (measured if
runnable locally, cited with source otherwise).
## Baselines (benchmark-to-beat)
| Dimension | Baseline holder | Metric | Value | Provenance |
(one row minimum per dimension; provenance = measured / cited / estimated)
## Verdict
Which candidate leads per dimension; what none of them do well
(the surpass opportunity); risks in the baselines themselves.
```
---
## Implementation rules the first pass earned
These are cheap, and each exists because its absence cost something in
CB-WP-0001. See `history/260731-inner-loop-retrospective.md`.
1. **No silently-ignored input.** A field that is parsed and then unused
is a defect, not a stub. Inputs are honoured or rejected with an
error — never dropped. *(A scenario `setup.patch` was parsed and
discarded; every scenario using it would have tested the wrong
initial state while passing.)*
2. **Decisions get commands, not defaults.** A rule that requires a
participant's choice is implemented as a command carrying that
choice. Until it is, **nothing claims coverage of it** — no tag, no
scenario, no acceptance row. Inventing a default to make a rule
"done" is the failure this prevents.
3. **Scaffolds are exercised or marked.** A scaffold's green gates are
not evidence. Any scaffold path no test reaches is marked as
unexercised. *(A compiling, fully-green scaffold shipped a state-hash
that would panic on any state holding a relation.)*
4. **Coverage gates that count tags say so.** A gate comparing rule IDs
against `covers:` lists proves no rule is unclaimed and no claimed
rule is invented. It does **not** prove a scenario exercises what it
names. Wherever such a number is reported, that limit is reported
with it.
---
## Agentic-efficiency requirements
The loop exists to be driven by agents. Therefore:
1. **Whole-file loadability** — every loop artifact stays under ~400 lines;
split before exceeding, link with relative paths.
2. **Structured over prose** — tables and fenced blocks for anything a
later step must parse (baselines, acceptance metrics, evidence rows).
3. **One command surface** — all checks runnable through repo-root
commands (eventually `cb *`; until then, `make`/`cargo` aliases declared
in one place), each supporting deterministic, greppable output.
4. **Self-contained tasks** — a workplan task names its input artifacts and
output artifacts; a fresh session must be able to execute it from the
task text plus linked files alone.
5. **Evidence or it didn't happen** — claims of "better" live in committed
evidence files with numbers, never only in commit messages or chat.
6. **Token discipline** — per the global budget policy, a loop iteration
that exceeds its budget without measurable progress is stopped and
decomposed, not pushed through.
---
## Definition of done — one loop pass
A capability has completed the loop when all of the following are committed:
- [ ] research/CB-RES-NNNN with approved status and full baseline table
- [ ] decisions/ADR-NNNN with per-dimension expected advantage
- [ ] specs/<Capability>.md with acceptance-metrics table
- [ ] passing scenarios covering every numbered spec rule
- [ ] evidence/CB-EV-NNNN with final comparison vs baseline, no `unmeasured`
- [ ] every reported number produced by a harness with a positive
control; any metric that could not be instrumented is recorded as
uncomputable rather than estimated
- [ ] every unmet metric reported as unmet, with attribution and the
options for resolving it — a missed target is an output of the
loop, not a reason to move the target quietly
- [ ] **cost recorded**: `make cost` run for the pass, its composition
(not only its total) in the evidence file, and the per-task figures
pushed to the hub. M-D2-CST is no longer allowed to be
`uncomputable` — the instrument exists
([CostAccounting.md](CostAccounting.md))
- [ ] retrospective note (may be one paragraph appended to the evidence
file): what the loop itself should change
```
*(Split 2026-07-31: this file reached 407 lines against its own ~400-line
loadability rule, and `make loop-lint` — added the same day to make that
rule executable — failed on the commit that pushed it over. The rule
caught its own author within an hour of being written.)*

141
specs/InnerLoopReference.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
# The Inner Loop — Reference
Normative companion to **[InnerLoop.md](InnerLoop.md)**, which holds the
five steps, the tiers, and the chaos roll. Split from it on 2026-07-31 so
both files stay under the loop's own whole-file loadability limit.
Everything here binds exactly as the process document does.
## The four-dimension rubric
Every survey, ADR, and acceptance table is organized by these dimensions:
| Dimension | Question | Example measurable proxies |
|---|---|---|
| **D1 Ease of specification** | How simply can behavior be stated, tested, understood? | rules-to-scenario coverage %, spec lines per rule, time-to-first-correct-scenario for a fresh agent session |
| **D2 Efficiency of implementation** | How cheap to build and keep building? | source LOC, dependency count/weight, clean-build and incremental-build time, tokens-per-completed-task |
| **D3 Speed of execution** | How fast does it run? | benchmark wall-time vs baseline, events/sec, memory footprint, determinism overhead |
| **D4 Optionality** | How cleanly does it integrate, extend, get replaced? | public API surface size, count of leaked foreign types (must be 0), effort-to-swap measured by null/reference impl existence, WIT-expressibility |
Scoring is always **relative to the step-1 baseline**, never absolute:
`better / parity / worse / unmeasured` per proxy, with the number attached.
`unmeasured` is legal in a survey, illegal in an evidence file.
---
## Survey template (research/CB-RES-NNNN-<slug>.md)
```markdown
# CB-RES-NNNN: <capability>
capability: <canonical.capability.id>
status: draft | approved
## Candidates
Per candidate: origin, license, maturity, adoption; data model; mutation
mechanism; determinism/replay story; relevant performance (measured if
runnable locally, cited with source otherwise).
## Baselines (benchmark-to-beat)
| Dimension | Baseline holder | Metric | Value | Provenance |
(one row minimum per dimension; provenance = measured / cited / estimated)
## Verdict
Which candidate leads per dimension; what none of them do well
(the surpass opportunity); risks in the baselines themselves.
```
---
## Implementation rules the first pass earned
These are cheap, and each exists because its absence cost something in
CB-WP-0001. See `history/260731-inner-loop-retrospective.md`.
1. **No silently-ignored input.** A field that is parsed and then unused
is a defect, not a stub. Inputs are honoured or rejected with an
error — never dropped. *(A scenario `setup.patch` was parsed and
discarded; every scenario using it would have tested the wrong
initial state while passing.)*
2. **Decisions get commands, not defaults.** A rule that requires a
participant's choice is implemented as a command carrying that
choice. Until it is, **nothing claims coverage of it** — no tag, no
scenario, no acceptance row. Inventing a default to make a rule
"done" is the failure this prevents.
3. **Scaffolds are exercised or marked.** A scaffold's green gates are
not evidence. Any scaffold path no test reaches is marked as
unexercised. *(A compiling, fully-green scaffold shipped a state-hash
that would panic on any state holding a relation.)*
4. **Coverage gates that count tags say so.** A gate comparing rule IDs
against `covers:` lists proves no rule is unclaimed and no claimed
rule is invented. It does **not** prove a scenario exercises what it
names. Wherever such a number is reported, that limit is reported
with it.
---
## Agentic-efficiency requirements
The loop exists to be driven by agents. Therefore:
1. **Whole-file loadability** — every loop artifact stays under ~400 lines;
split before exceeding, link with relative paths.
2. **Structured over prose** *(guidance, not a requirement — nothing can
check it)* — tables and fenced blocks for anything a later step must
parse (baselines, acceptance metrics, evidence rows).
3. **One command surface** — all checks runnable through repo-root
commands (eventually `cb *`; until then, `make`/`cargo` aliases declared
in one place), each supporting deterministic, greppable output.
4. **Self-contained tasks** — a workplan task names its input artifacts and
output artifacts; a fresh session must be able to execute it from the
task text plus linked files alone.
5. **Evidence or it didn't happen** — claims of "better" live in committed
evidence files with numbers, never only in commit messages or chat.
6. ~~**Token discipline** — per the global budget policy, a loop iteration
that exceeds its budget without measurable progress is stopped and
decomposed, not pushed through.~~ **DEAD POLICY.** The 8k/10k per-task
token budget was never referenced or enforced, and CB-WP-0001 T08
exceeded it by orders of magnitude with no signal. It implies a control
that does not exist. Replacement in USD is CB-WP-0003 T05; until then
this is documentation of a gap, not a rule.
6a. **Live cost budget** *(replaces the above)* — spend since the last
commit, soft **$10.00**, hard **$22.00**, checked by `make cost-budget`.
Calibrated on the 32 commit intervals of CB-WP-0001 (p50 $1.40, p90
$9.36, max $10.80), so both thresholds bind on future work rather than
ratifying past work. Contract: [CostAccounting.md](CostAccounting.md)
§7 (CB-01, CB-02). It fires on the open remainder rather than per task
because per-task cost needs the commit that closes the task, and a
budget that can only report after the money is spent is the dead policy
this replaces.
**Enforcement status.** Rules above that a command can check are enforced
by `make loop-lint`; the full classification of every InnerLoop rule as
executable / checkable / decorative, with the failure class each catches,
is in `history/260731-inner-loop-rule-audit.md`. Rules marked *guidance*
or *dead* say so where they appear, so a reader can tell a requirement
from a preference without consulting the audit.
---
## Definition of done — one loop pass
A capability has completed the loop when all of the following are committed:
- [ ] research/CB-RES-NNNN with approved status and full baseline table
- [ ] decisions/ADR-NNNN with per-dimension expected advantage
- [ ] specs/<Capability>.md with acceptance-metrics table
- [ ] passing scenarios covering every numbered spec rule
- [ ] evidence/CB-EV-NNNN with final comparison vs baseline, no `unmeasured`
- [ ] every reported number produced by a harness with a positive
control; any metric that could not be instrumented is recorded as
uncomputable rather than estimated
- [ ] every unmet metric reported as unmet, with attribution and the
options for resolving it — a missed target is an output of the
loop, not a reason to move the target quietly
- [ ] **cost recorded**: `make cost` run for the pass, its composition
(not only its total) in the evidence file, and the per-task figures
pushed to the hub. M-D2-CST is no longer allowed to be
`uncomputable` — the instrument exists
([CostAccounting.md](CostAccounting.md))
- [ ] retrospective note (may be one paragraph appended to the evidence
file): what the loop itself should change

View file

@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ and add capability-specific rows only when these don't cover the claim.
| ID | Dimension | Metric | Unit | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-D1-COV | D1 | numbered spec rules covered by ≥1 passing scenario | % | adapted:requirements-traceability (per-rule, not per-feature) |
| M-D1-LNK | D1 | claimed rules also **named in the aggregate source** | count | novel — closes the spec→code→scenario chain; instrument: `make coverage` (AM-1b) |
| M-D1-SPL | D1 | spec lines per numbered rule | lines | novel — proxies statement simplicity; gameable, so paired with M-D1-COV |
| M-D2-LOC | D2 | source LOC excluding tests (tokei) | lines | adopted:tokei |
| M-D2-DEP | D2 | transitive dependency count (cargo tree) | crates | adopted:cargo-deny practice |
@ -44,6 +45,32 @@ and add capability-specific rows only when these don't cover the claim.
| M-D4-LEAK | D4 | foreign types in canonical interfaces | count | novel — must be 0; enforced by grep/deny rule, the Clay-Borg hard rule |
| M-D4-SWAP | D4 | capability has null + reference impls passing the same conformance suite | bool | adapted:hexagonal-architecture port testing |
### 1b. The coverage gate's two numbers (M-D1-COV, M-D1-LNK)
M-D1-COV counts tags. It proves no rule is unclaimed and no claimed rule
is invented; it does **not** prove a scenario exercises what it names, and
that limit is printed with the number every time (InnerLoop implementation
rule 4).
**M-D1-LNK** (CB-WP-0003 T09) closes one link of that chain mechanically:
a rule a scenario claims should also appear in the aggregate source, or
the claim rests on a tag and nothing else.
Measured 2026-07-31: **49 of 58** claimed rules are named in
`games/ground/src/lib.rs`. **Unmet**, target 58. The nine unlinked:
```text
GR-D07 GR-F02 GR-L03 GR-O03 GR-P01 GR-P02 GR-P03 GR-P04 GR-T01
```
The gate **reports** this rather than failing, deliberately. Closing the
gap by adding rule IDs to comments would satisfy the check without
establishing that each rule is implemented — which is the overclaim
InnerLoop implementation rule 2 exists to prevent, and which CB-WP-0001
committed once already. Each of the nine needs its implementation
confirmed before it is tagged. Promoting M-D1-LNK to a failing gate is
correct **after** that, not before.
### 1a. Token cost accounting (M-D2-CST)
> **Superseded 2026-07-31 by [CostAccounting.md](CostAccounting.md)**, which
@ -67,27 +94,11 @@ benchmarks/baselines/model-prices.toml # the price sheet, updated when prices
```
```toml
# USD per million tokens; source: Anthropic pricing, recorded 2026-07-31
[claude-fable-5]
input = 10.00
output = 50.00
[claude-opus-5]
input = 5.00
output = 25.00
[claude-sonnet-5]
input = 3.00 # intro 2.00 through 2026-08-31
output = 15.00 # intro 10.00 through 2026-08-31
[claude-haiku-4-5]
input = 1.00
output = 5.00
[cache] # multipliers on the input price
read = 0.1
write_5m = 1.25
write_1h = 2.0
# The live sheet is benchmarks/baselines/model-prices.toml — read it,
# do not copy it. An inlined copy here went stale within hours: it still
# showed the sonnet intro rate as a `#` comment after CB-WP-0003 T11 made
# dated rates into data (promo_input / promo_output / promo_until), and
# added `recorded` + `max_age_days` for the staleness check (CA-16/CA-17).
```
Rules:
@ -108,7 +119,8 @@ Rules:
failed pass scores nothing.
- Prices are `adopted:anthropic-pricing` with a recorded date; a stale sheet
(> 90 days or known price change) invalidates new `better` verdicts on
M-D2-CST until refreshed.
M-D2-CST until refreshed. **Now enforced** — CA-17 aborts the run rather
than leaving this as prose every verdict silently inherited.
Determinism is not a metric but an **invariant**: N replays of the same
seed and command log must produce bit-identical state hashes. Invariant

185
specs/SessionShape.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,185 @@
# Session Shape
Status: **v1.0** — 2026-07-31, from CB-WP-0003 T04.
Instrument: `make cost` ([CostAccounting.md](CostAccounting.md)).
How to shape an agentic session so it does not cost more than the work is
worth. **Every claim here carries the measurement it rests on.** This spec
exists because the numbers were surprising and because the advice this task
was created to give turned out to be wrong.
---
## 1. The cost model
```text
cost ≈ Σ over turns ( context_size × cache_read_rate ) + output + cache writes
```
Measured on the CB-WP-0001 pass: **88.0% of spend is cache, 11.9% is
output**, at 249:1 cache-read tokens to output tokens. Cost is driven by
**how much context is re-read per turn**, not by how much the model writes.
Marginal cost of one turn, at the Opus cache-read rate ($0.50/M):
| context | $/turn |
|---|---|
| 20,000 | $0.010 |
| 50,000 | $0.025 |
| 100,000 | $0.050 |
| 200,000 | $0.100 |
| 400,000 | $0.200 |
| 540,000 | $0.270 |
> **SS-01.** A turn's cost is a function of context size alone, to within
> ~12%. Optimizing output length is not a cost lever; optimizing context is.
## 2. Compaction is the primary control
**The original premise of this spec was wrong and is recorded rather than
deleted.** CB-WP-0003 T04 was written to prescribe *one task per session*,
on the theory that mean context grows with turn count and long sessions are
therefore quadratic. Measured:
| segment | turns | mean context | total | $/turn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| start → compact 1 | 136 | 304,178 | $62.19 | **$0.457** |
| compact 1 → compact 2 | 202 | 193,493 | $30.01 | **$0.149** |
The 202 turns *after* the first compaction cost less than half the 136
before it. Sessions are **bounded-quadratic**: context grows between
compactions and resets at each one.
Compaction events, read from `compactMetadata` in the transcript:
| | pre | post | reduction | duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | 542,991 | 19,974 | **27×** | 151 s |
| C2 | 344,954 | 19,035 | **18×** | 97 s |
> **SS-02.** The failure mode is a long **uncompacted** session, not a long
> session. Turn count is not the variable to control; context is.
### 2.1 When compaction pays
A compaction costs its own summarization call plus one cache
re-establishment. The re-establishment is measurable — the first post-compact
turn wrote 36,149 cache tokens and cost **$0.382**. The summarization call
itself does **not** appear in the transcript's `usage` records, so it is
bounded rather than measured: at worst it is one full read of the
pre-compaction context (543k tokens ≈ $2.72 at the uncached Opus input
rate), at best a cache read of the same (≈ $0.27).
Savings are immediate and permanent: dropping from 543k to 20k context saves
**$0.262 per subsequent turn**.
> **SS-03.** Break-even is **211 turns** depending on where the
> summarization call falls in that range. Any session expecting more than
> ~11 further turns should compact. In practice this means: **compact
> whenever context exceeds ~300k and work remains.**
Measured context distribution across the CB-WP-0001 session shows how much
was spent above that line — p75 was 308,325 and p90 was 481,722, so roughly
a quarter of all turns ran at more than 2× the recommended ceiling.
| percentile | context |
|---|---|
| p50 | 156,771 |
| p75 | 308,325 |
| p90 | 481,722 |
| p99 | 553,252 |
## 3. Fresh session vs compaction
A fresh session is **not** free, and this is the measurement that overturned
the original advice. Cold-start context floors, measured over the first 20
turns of each session:
| session | start type | mean context, first 20 turns | cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| `8cbd5701` | cold (system + CLAUDE.md + orientation) | 50,872 | $2.17 |
| `f1eb1147` | seeded by a compact summary | 65,819 | $1.90 |
A cold session starts ~51k and must then **re-read the committed artifacts**
to become productive — the survey, the spec, the ADR — which is exactly the
context a compaction summary already contains. A compact-seeded session
starts ~66k with that reading already done.
> **SS-04.** Prefer compaction over a fresh session for continuing work.
> A fresh session's lower floor (51k vs 66k) is repaid within the first few
> turns of re-reading artifacts the summary already held.
>
> Prefer a fresh session when the *task changes*, because then the prior
> context is not an asset — it is 66k of irrelevance re-read every turn.
## 4. Batching
> **SS-05.** Independent tool calls in one turn cost nothing extra: a turn
> is billed for its context regardless of how many tool calls it carries.
> Two calls in one turn cost half of two calls in two turns.
Measured batching rate:
| session | responses w/ tool calls | tool calls | responses batching ≥2 | calls in batched turns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `8cbd5701` | 361 | 406 | 31 (8.6%) | 76 (18.7%) |
| `f1eb1147` | 146 | 158 | 12 (8.2%) | 24 (15.2%) |
| pinned at `fc76445`, all transcripts (instrument) | 322 | 362 | 25 (7.8%) | 65 (18.0%) |
**Correction to a prior claim.** CB-WP-0001's retrospective and the first
draft of CB-WP-0003 T04 both stated *"0 of 330 tool calls were batched"*.
That is wrong: 330 was the count of responses making exactly **one** call,
not the total number of calls. The real figure is 7.88.6% of responses and
18.018.7% of calls, depending on the window. The claim was never re-derived before being carried into a
workplan — the failure mode InnerLoop v1.1 rule 13 exists for, and the
**eighth** recorded error instance, in the trusted-arithmetic class that
`history/260731-inner-loop-rule-audit.md` identified as having no
executable defence.
At an 8.6% batching rate there is real headroom, but the saving is bounded:
eliminating every avoidable single-call turn would remove at most a few
percent of turns, worth roughly $24 on a $93 pass. **Batch because it is
free, not because it is the lever.** The lever is §2.
## 5. What this spec does not support
- **n = 2 sessions, one repo, one model mix.** Every ratio here is from
CB-WP-0001/0002 and should be re-measured before being treated as general.
- **The compaction summarization call is bounded, not measured.** SS-03's
211 turn break-even is a range because of it. Narrowing it requires a
cost source that sees non-transcript calls — the billing API (CB-RES-0002
C4), which needs an admin key this machine does not have.
- **Context size is read as `cache_read_input_tokens`**, which is the cached
prefix, not the full prompt. On a cache miss the true context is larger
and the turn costs 10× more. Cache misses were not isolated in this
measurement.
- **No claim about quality.** Compaction discards detail. Every number here
says compaction is cheaper; none says the work is as good. A pass that
compacts and then repeats work it forgot has not saved anything, and this
spec cannot detect that.
## 6. Acceptance metrics
| ID | Metric | Target | Measured (pinned `fc76445`) | Verdict | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SH-1 | mean context per turn | ≤ 200,000 | **232,982** | **unmet** | `make cost-pin` |
| SH-2 | p90 context per turn | ≤ 300,000 | **492,042** | **unmet** | `make cost-pin` |
| SH-3 | batching rate (responses with ≥2 tool calls) | ≥ 20% | **7.8%** | **unmet** | `make cost-pin` |
`cb-cost` emits all three (`session shape` block), so these are ratified
under InnerLoop v1.1 rather than hand-derived. Supporting counts from the
same run: **362 tool calls in 322 responses, 65 of them in batched turns.**
**All three targets are unmet, and that is the finding, not a defect in the
targets.** Per the loop's definition of done, an unmet metric is an output:
- SH-1/SH-2 are unmet because CB-WP-0001 ran 136 turns before its first
compaction. §2 is the remedy and it is now written down.
- SH-3 is set above the measured rate deliberately. Whether 20% is
reachable or arbitrary is unknown until a pass tries; the first pass that
reports it will say. It is the cheapest of the three to move, and the
least valuable — §4 puts the ceiling at $24 on a $93 pass.
Targets are **not** being retargeted to match the measurement. That is the
structure CB-WP-0003 T07 exists to prevent, and doing it here — in the
commit that first measures them — would be the exact defect.

View file

@ -72,16 +72,53 @@ def components(usage):
}
def price_of(prices, model, toks):
def rates_at(prices, model, when=None):
"""Input/output rate in force for `model` at ISO instant `when` (CA-16).
Promotional rates are data, not comments. A response is priced at the
promo rate when its timestamp falls on or before `promo_until`.
"""
pr = prices.get(model)
if not pr:
return None
if "promo_until" in pr and when:
until = pr["promo_until"]
# tomllib returns a datetime.date for a bare TOML date.
if str(when)[:10] <= str(until)[:10]:
return pr["promo_input"], pr["promo_output"]
return pr["input"], pr["output"]
def check_price_sheet_age(prices, today=None):
"""CA-17: a stale sheet invalidates verdicts, so it fails a command."""
import datetime as _dt
recorded = prices.get("recorded")
if recorded is None:
return "price sheet has no `recorded` date"
max_age = prices.get("max_age_days", 90)
today = today or _dt.date.today()
if isinstance(recorded, _dt.datetime):
recorded = recorded.date()
age = (today - recorded).days
if age > max_age:
return (f"price sheet is {age} days old (max {max_age}); refresh "
f"benchmarks/baselines/model-prices.toml or new M-D2-CST "
f"`better` verdicts are invalid")
return None
def price_of(prices, model, toks, when=None):
"""USD for one response. Returns None when the model is unpriced (CA-05)."""
pr = prices.get(model)
if not pr:
return None
rin, rout = rates_at(prices, model, when)
cache = prices["cache"]
unit = pr["input"] / 1e6
unit = rin / 1e6
return (
toks["input"] * unit
+ toks["output"] * pr["output"] / 1e6
+ toks["output"] * rout / 1e6
+ toks["cache_read"] * unit * cache["read"]
+ toks["write_5m"] * unit * cache["write_5m"]
+ toks["write_1h"] * unit * cache["write_1h"]
@ -147,6 +184,14 @@ def read_responses(path, pin=None):
)
toks["output"] = max(t["output"] for t in per_row)
head = rows[0]
# Tool calls are spread across the group's lines, so they are counted
# over the whole group — one response may carry several (SS-05).
tool_calls = sum(
1
for r in rows
for c in (r["message"].get("content") or [])
if c.get("type") == "tool_use"
)
out.append(
{
"request_id": rid,
@ -154,12 +199,33 @@ def read_responses(path, pin=None):
"timestamp": head.get("timestamp") or "",
"session": head.get("sessionId") or os.path.basename(path),
"toks": toks,
"tool_calls": tool_calls,
"subagent": "/subagents/" in path,
}
)
return out
def session_shape(responses):
"""SH-1..SH-3 from specs/SessionShape.md."""
import statistics
ctx = sorted(r["toks"]["cache_read"] for r in responses)
with_tools = [r for r in responses if r["tool_calls"] > 0]
batched = [r for r in with_tools if r["tool_calls"] > 1]
calls = sum(r["tool_calls"] for r in with_tools)
pct = statistics.quantiles(ctx, n=100) if len(ctx) > 1 else [ctx[0]] * 99
return {
"SH-1_mean_context": statistics.mean(ctx) if ctx else 0,
"SH-2_p90_context": pct[89],
"SH-3_batching_rate": (len(batched) / len(with_tools)) if with_tools else 0.0,
"p50_context": pct[49],
"responses_with_tools": len(with_tools),
"tool_calls": calls,
"calls_in_batched_turns": calls - (len(with_tools) - len(batched)),
}
# ------------------------------------------------------------- attribution
@ -252,8 +318,12 @@ def collect(slug, pin_ref=None):
# as though it were an answer.
raise Abort(f"no responses in {len(paths)} transcript(s) — refusing to report")
stale = check_price_sheet_age(prices)
if stale:
raise Abort(stale)
for r in responses:
r["cost"] = price_of(prices, r["model"], r["toks"])
r["cost"] = price_of(prices, r["model"], r["toks"], r["timestamp"])
attribute(responses, commit_index(pin))
@ -269,11 +339,11 @@ def collect(slug, pin_ref=None):
continue
by_task[r["task"]] += r["cost"]
by_model[r["model"]] += r["cost"]
pr = prices[r["model"]]
unit = pr["input"] / 1e6
rin, rout = rates_at(prices, r["model"], r["timestamp"])
unit = rin / 1e6
rates = {
"input": unit,
"output": pr["output"] / 1e6,
"output": rout / 1e6,
"cache_read": unit * cache["read"],
"write_5m": unit * cache["write_5m"],
"write_1h": unit * cache["write_1h"],
@ -293,6 +363,7 @@ def collect(slug, pin_ref=None):
sub = sum(r["cost"] or 0 for r in responses if r["subagent"])
return {
"session_shape": session_shape(responses),
"slug": slug,
"pin": pin,
"responses": len(responses),
@ -344,6 +415,17 @@ def render(rep, by_task=False, composition=False):
f" A per-task table is a view over {100*(1-un/tot):.0f}% of spend."
)
sh = rep["session_shape"]
print("\n session shape (specs/SessionShape.md)")
print(f" SH-1 mean context {sh['SH-1_mean_context']:>12,.0f} tok "
f"[{'ok ' if sh['SH-1_mean_context']<=200_000 else 'FAIL'} target 200,000]")
print(f" SH-2 p90 context {sh['SH-2_p90_context']:>12,.0f} tok "
f"[{'ok ' if sh['SH-2_p90_context']<=300_000 else 'FAIL'} target 300,000]")
print(f" SH-3 batching rate {100*sh['SH-3_batching_rate']:>11.1f}% "
f"[{'ok ' if sh['SH-3_batching_rate']>=0.20 else 'FAIL'} target 20.0%]")
print(f" {sh['tool_calls']} tool calls in {sh['responses_with_tools']} responses; "
f"{sh['calls_in_batched_turns']} in batched turns")
if rep["unpriced"]:
print(f"\n UNPRICED ({len(rep['unpriced'])} responses, model not in sheet):")
for u in rep["unpriced"]:
@ -415,6 +497,27 @@ def self_test():
finally:
os.unlink(partial)
# CA-16: a dated promo rate must apply before its expiry and lapse after.
pr = prices
before = rates_at(pr, "claude-sonnet-5", "2026-07-31T00:00:00Z")
after = rates_at(pr, "claude-sonnet-5", "2026-09-01T00:00:00Z")
check("CA-16 promo rate applies before expiry and lapses after",
before == (2.0, 10.0) and after == (3.0, 15.0),
f"{before} -> {after}")
# CA-17: staleness must actually trip, or the rule is decorative again.
import datetime as _dt
fresh = check_price_sheet_age(pr, _dt.date(2026, 8, 1))
stale = check_price_sheet_age(pr, _dt.date(2026, 11, 10))
check("CA-17 staleness detected past max_age_days",
fresh is None and stale is not None, "fresh ok, 102d trips")
# CB-02: thresholds must be ordered, or the budget silently never fires.
ap_defaults = {"soft": 10.00, "hard": 22.00}
check("CB-02 budget thresholds ordered and positive",
0 < ap_defaults["soft"] < ap_defaults["hard"],
f"soft ${ap_defaults['soft']:.2f} < hard ${ap_defaults['hard']:.2f}")
# AC-6: zero responses must not report $0.00 as an answer.
with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile("w", suffix=".jsonl", delete=False) as fh:
fh.write(json.dumps({"type": "user", "message": {}}) + "\n")
@ -440,12 +543,53 @@ def self_test():
return 0 if ok else 1
def budget(slug, soft, hard):
"""Live cost budget (specs/CostAccounting.md §7).
The per-task figure needs the commit that closes the task, so it can
only ever be retrospective. What IS observable mid-task is spend since
the LAST commit the open remainder because the transcript is an
append-live file. That is the number a budget can actually fire on.
"""
try:
rep = collect(slug, None)
except Abort as e:
print(f"ABORT — {e}", file=sys.stderr)
return 1
open_spend = rep["by_task"].get(OPEN_REMAINDER, 0.0)
head = subprocess.run(
["git", "-C", REPO, "log", "-1", "--format=%h %s"],
capture_output=True, text=True, check=True).stdout.strip()
print("cost budget — spend since the last commit")
print(f" last commit {head}")
print(f" open spend ${open_spend:,.2f}")
print(f" soft / hard ${soft:,.2f} / ${hard:,.2f}")
if open_spend > hard:
print(f"\n HARD BREACH — ${open_spend:,.2f} > ${hard:,.2f}. Commit what "
f"works, or stop and decompose. Uncommitted work is also "
f"unattributable.", file=sys.stderr)
return 1
if open_spend > soft:
print(f"\n soft breach — ${open_spend:,.2f} > ${soft:,.2f}. State progress "
f"as a percentage and decide: continue, or commit and decompose.")
return 0
print("\n within budget")
return 0
def main():
ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
ap.add_argument("--slug", default="-home-worsch-clay-borg")
ap.add_argument("--pin", help="commit-ish or ISO Z instant (CA-07)")
ap.add_argument("--by-task", action="store_true")
ap.add_argument("--composition", action="store_true")
ap.add_argument("--session-shape", action="store_true",
help="SH-1..SH-3 (always shown in the default report)")
ap.add_argument("--budget", action="store_true",
help="CB-01/CB-02: spend since the last commit, live")
ap.add_argument("--soft", type=float, default=10.00)
ap.add_argument("--hard", type=float, default=22.00)
ap.add_argument("--self-test", action="store_true")
ap.add_argument("--json", action="store_true")
args = ap.parse_args()
@ -453,6 +597,9 @@ def main():
if args.self_test:
return self_test()
if args.budget:
return budget(args.slug, args.soft, args.hard)
try:
rep = collect(args.slug, args.pin)
except Abort as e:

View file

@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ that cannot be found is reported and the run exits non-zero rather than
silently under-reporting the total under-reporting is the exact
direction this metric could be gamed.
Usage: python3 tools/dep-weight.py [--json]
Usage: python3 tools/dep-weight.py [--json] [--self-test]
"""
import glob
@ -88,7 +88,50 @@ def source_lines(name, version):
return 0
def self_test():
"""Each assertion pins a failure this tool must detect.
The controls that matter here are: an unlocatable crate must not be
silently counted as zero lines (that under-reports, the direction this
metric could be gamed), and a target breach must fail rather than
merely print.
"""
results = []
def check(name, ok, detail=""):
results.append((name, ok, detail))
# A crate that does not exist must measure zero, so the caller's
# `lines == 0` guard fires rather than silently shrinking the total.
check("unlocatable crate measures zero (so the guard fires)",
source_lines("definitely-not-a-real-crate-xyz", "9.9.9") == 0)
# A crate we do depend on must measure non-zero, or the guard above
# would fire on everything and the tool would never report at all.
real = source_lines("serde", "1")
check("a real vendored crate measures non-zero", real > 0,
f"{real:,} lines")
# Targets must be present and numeric — a missing target would make
# the breach check vacuous.
check("targets defined for every configuration",
set(TARGETS) == set(CONFIGS) and all(
isinstance(v, int) and v > 0 for v in TARGETS.values()),
f"{TARGETS}")
print("dep-weight self-test (positive control)")
ok = True
for name, passed, detail in results:
print(f" [{'ok ' if passed else 'FAIL'}] {name}"
+ (f"{detail}" if detail else ""))
ok &= passed
return 0 if ok else 1
def main():
if "--self-test" in sys.argv:
return self_test()
report = {}
missing = []
for label, args in CONFIGS.items():

266
tools/loop-lint.py Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,266 @@
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Executable checks for specs/InnerLoop.md rules (CB-WP-0003 T01).
The loop's own rules were prose. A rule nobody can run is a suggestion,
and the audit in history/260731-inner-loop-rule-audit.md found several
that were already being violated with no signal. This makes the
mechanically-checkable ones fail a command.
Each check names the InnerLoop rule it enforces. Checks that cannot be
made mechanical are recorded in the audit as `checkable` or `decorative`
and are deliberately absent here see the audit for why.
Positive control (InnerLoop v1.1 §Step 5): --self-test asserts each check
actually detects its failure, using fixtures with known answers. A linter
that passes everything because its matcher is broken is the same defect
class as a benchmark timing rejected work.
Usage:
python3 tools/loop-lint.py # lint the repo
python3 tools/loop-lint.py --self-test # positive control
"""
import os
import re
import sys
REPO = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
LOADABILITY_LIMIT = 400
# Artifact classes the loop produces. history/ is an append-only trail
# (verbatim challenge text is not something to split), so it is exempt.
LOOP_DIRS = ("specs", "research", "decisions", "evidence", "workplans")
class Finding:
def __init__(self, rule, path, detail):
self.rule, self.path, self.detail = rule, path, detail
def __str__(self):
return f" [{self.rule}] {self.path}\n {self.detail}"
def _md_files(root=REPO):
"""Loop artifacts only.
Vendored third-party trees (a baseline harness ships its own
node_modules) are not artifacts this loop produces, and linting them
buries the two real findings under eighteen irrelevant ones.
"""
for d in LOOP_DIRS:
base = os.path.join(root, d)
for dirpath, dirnames, files in os.walk(base):
dirnames[:] = [x for x in dirnames if x != "node_modules"]
for f in sorted(files):
if f.endswith(".md"):
yield os.path.relpath(os.path.join(dirpath, f), root)
def check_loadability(root=REPO):
"""§Agentic-efficiency 1 — every loop artifact stays under ~400 lines."""
out = []
for rel in _md_files(root):
with open(os.path.join(root, rel)) as fh:
n = sum(1 for _ in fh)
if n > LOADABILITY_LIMIT:
out.append(
Finding(
"loadability",
rel,
f"{n} lines exceeds the ~{LOADABILITY_LIMIT}-line limit; "
f"split and link with relative paths",
)
)
return out
def check_evidence_no_unmeasured(root=REPO):
"""§Rubric — `unmeasured` is legal in a survey, illegal in an evidence file."""
out = []
base = os.path.join(root, "evidence")
if not os.path.isdir(base):
return out
for f in sorted(os.listdir(base)):
if not f.endswith(".md"):
continue
rel = os.path.join("evidence", f)
for i, line in enumerate(open(os.path.join(root, rel)), 1):
# A row asserting the verdict, not prose discussing the word.
if re.search(r"\|\s*unmeasured\s*\|", line):
out.append(
Finding("evidence-unmeasured", f"{rel}:{i}",
"verdict `unmeasured` in an evidence table")
)
return out
def check_survey_tier_and_chaos(root=REPO):
"""§Loop tiers — tier declared, and the chaos roll recorded every time."""
out = []
base = os.path.join(root, "research")
if not os.path.isdir(base):
return out
for f in sorted(os.listdir(base)):
if not f.endswith(".md"):
continue
rel = os.path.join("research", f)
text = open(os.path.join(root, rel)).read()
if not re.search(r"^tier:\s*[SML]\b", text, re.M):
out.append(Finding("tier-declared", rel, "no `tier:` declaration"))
elif "chaos" not in text.lower():
out.append(
Finding("chaos-recorded", rel,
"tier declared without the chaos roll; the rule requires "
"recording it even when it changes nothing")
)
return out
def check_review_trail(root=REPO):
"""§Step 2 — a tier-L survey carries research/challenge/response history."""
out = []
base = os.path.join(root, "research")
hist = os.path.join(root, "history")
if not (os.path.isdir(base) and os.path.isdir(hist)):
return out
files = os.listdir(hist)
for f in sorted(os.listdir(base)):
if not f.endswith(".md"):
continue
rel = os.path.join("research", f)
text = open(os.path.join(root, rel)).read()
if not re.search(r"^tier:\s*L\b", text, re.M):
continue
if not re.search(r"^status:\s*approved", text, re.M):
continue
for kind in ("challenge", "response"):
if not any(x.endswith(f"-{kind}.md") and kind in x for x in files):
out.append(
Finding("review-trail", rel,
f"tier-L approved survey with no history/*-{kind}.md")
)
return out
def check_reporting_tools_self_test(root=REPO):
"""§Step 5 v1.1 — every tool that reports a number exposes --self-test."""
out = []
base = os.path.join(root, "tools")
if not os.path.isdir(base):
return out
for f in sorted(os.listdir(base)):
if not f.endswith(".py"):
continue
rel = os.path.join("tools", f)
text = open(os.path.join(root, rel)).read()
if "--self-test" not in text:
out.append(
Finding("self-test", rel,
"reporting tool with no --self-test entry point; "
"nothing verifies its positive control still works")
)
return out
CHECKS = (
check_loadability,
check_evidence_no_unmeasured,
check_survey_tier_and_chaos,
check_review_trail,
check_reporting_tools_self_test,
)
def self_test():
"""Each check must DETECT its failure, not merely run."""
import shutil
import tempfile
results = []
def check(name, ok, detail=""):
results.append((name, ok, detail))
tmp = tempfile.mkdtemp()
try:
for d in LOOP_DIRS + ("tools", "history"):
os.makedirs(os.path.join(tmp, d), exist_ok=True)
# loadability: 401 lines must trip, 400 must not.
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "specs", "Big.md"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("x\n" * (LOADABILITY_LIMIT + 1))
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "specs", "Ok.md"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("x\n" * LOADABILITY_LIMIT)
f = check_loadability(tmp)
check("loadability detects overlong artifact",
len(f) == 1 and "Big.md" in f[0].path,
f"{len(f)} finding(s)")
# evidence: a table verdict trips; the word in prose does not.
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "evidence", "E.md"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("| AC-1 | x | unmeasured |\n"
"the word unmeasured appearing in prose is fine\n")
f = check_evidence_no_unmeasured(tmp)
check("evidence-unmeasured detects a table verdict, not prose",
len(f) == 1, f"{len(f)} finding(s), expected exactly 1")
# tier/chaos: missing tier trips; tier without chaos trips.
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "research", "A.md"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("# survey\nno tier here\n")
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "research", "B.md"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("tier: L (structural L)\n")
f = check_survey_tier_and_chaos(tmp)
rules = sorted(x.rule for x in f)
check("tier/chaos detects both omissions",
rules == ["chaos-recorded", "tier-declared"], f"{rules}")
# self-test: a tool without the flag trips.
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "tools", "silent.py"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("print(42)\n")
f = check_reporting_tools_self_test(tmp)
check("self-test detects a tool lacking --self-test",
len(f) == 1 and "silent.py" in f[0].path, f"{len(f)} finding(s)")
# review trail: approved tier-L survey with no history trips.
with open(os.path.join(tmp, "research", "C.md"), "w") as fh:
fh.write("tier: L (structural L, chaos 3)\nstatus: approved\n")
f = check_review_trail(tmp)
check("review-trail detects a missing challenge/response",
len(f) == 2, f"{len(f)} finding(s), expected 2")
finally:
shutil.rmtree(tmp, ignore_errors=True)
print("loop-lint self-test (positive control)")
ok = True
for name, passed, detail in results:
print(f" [{'ok ' if passed else 'FAIL'}] {name}"
+ (f"{detail}" if detail else ""))
ok &= passed
return 0 if ok else 1
def main():
if "--self-test" in sys.argv:
return self_test()
findings = []
for c in CHECKS:
findings.extend(c())
print("loop-lint — executable InnerLoop rules")
if not findings:
print(" no findings")
return 0
by_rule = {}
for f in findings:
by_rule.setdefault(f.rule, []).append(f)
for rule, fs in sorted(by_rule.items()):
print(f"\n{rule} ({len(fs)}):")
for f in fs:
print(str(f))
print(f"\n{len(findings)} finding(s)")
return 1
if __name__ == "__main__":
sys.exit(main())

View file

@ -5,30 +5,190 @@ Compares the rule IDs declared in specs/GroundRules.md against the
`covers:` lists in scenarios/ground/*.yaml. Exits non-zero when a
scenario claims a rule the spec does not define, so coverage can never
be inflated by a typo'd or invented rule ID.
Stated limit (InnerLoop implementation rule 4): this gate counts tags. It
proves no rule is unclaimed and no claimed rule is invented. It does NOT
prove a scenario exercises the rule it names.
Positive control (InnerLoop v1.1 §Step 5): the run asserts it actually
found rules and scenarios. Before this was added, a broken spec regex
yielded rules=[] and missing=[] and the tool exited 0 reporting "0/0"
the harness-does-nothing class, in the tool that reports our headline
coverage number.
Usage:
python3 tools/rule-coverage.py
python3 tools/rule-coverage.py --self-test
"""
import glob
import re
import sys
spec = open("specs/GroundRules.md").read()
rules = sorted(set(re.findall(r"\*\*(GR-[A-Z]+\d+)", spec)))
RULE_RE = r"\*\*(GR-[A-Z]+\d+)"
COVERS_RE = r"covers: \[(.*?)\]"
AGGREGATE = "games/ground/src/lib.rs"
# CB-WP-0003 T08: a provisional default with no expiry can shape the kernel
# indefinitely while looking handled. CI warns; it does not break the build,
# because the ruling is a ground-game decision we cannot make for them.
PROVISIONAL_WARN_DAYS = 30
ID_RE = r"GR-[A-Z]+\d+"
covered = set()
for path in sorted(glob.glob("scenarios/ground/*.yaml")):
match = re.search(r"covers: \[(.*?)\]", open(path).read(), re.S)
if match:
covered |= {c.strip() for c in match.group(1).split(",") if c.strip()}
known = set(rules)
hit = sorted(known & covered)
missing = [r for r in rules if r not in covered]
invented = sorted(covered - known)
def parse_rules(spec_text):
return sorted(set(re.findall(RULE_RE, spec_text)))
pct = 100 * len(hit) // len(rules) if rules else 0
print(f"AM-1 rule coverage: {len(hit)}/{len(rules)} ({pct}%)")
if missing:
print(" uncovered:", " ".join(missing))
if invented:
print(" ERROR — claimed but not defined in the spec:", " ".join(invented))
sys.exit(1)
sys.exit(0 if not missing else 2)
def parse_code_ids(text):
"""Rule IDs named anywhere in the aggregate source (T09)."""
return set(re.findall(ID_RE, text))
def provisional_items(paths):
"""(path, owner, raised) for every scenario encoding a U-item default."""
out = []
for path in paths:
text = open(path).read()
if not re.search(r"^provisional:\s*true", text, re.M):
continue
owner = re.search(r"^provisional_owner:\s*(\S+)", text, re.M)
raised = re.search(r"^provisional_raised:\s*(\S+)", text, re.M)
out.append((path,
owner.group(1) if owner else None,
raised.group(1) if raised else None))
return out
def parse_covers(text):
match = re.search(COVERS_RE, text, re.S)
if not match:
return set()
return {c.strip() for c in match.group(1).split(",") if c.strip()}
def self_test():
"""Each assertion pins a failure this tool must detect."""
results = []
def check(name, ok, detail=""):
results.append((name, ok, detail))
# The defect that motivated this control: a spec that parses to zero
# rules must not be reportable as coverage.
check("zero rules detected as a failure", parse_rules("no rules here") == [],
"empty spec yields no rules; main() now aborts on this")
# The matcher must actually match the real format.
check("rule matcher works on real spec format",
parse_rules("**GR-R06** something\n**GR-A12** other")
== ["GR-A12", "GR-R06"])
# covers: parsing, including the empty case.
check("covers matcher works", parse_covers("covers: [GR-R06, GR-A12]")
== {"GR-R06", "GR-A12"})
check("missing covers yields empty set", parse_covers("no covers key") == set())
# T09: the spec -> code link must be detectable.
check("code-id matcher finds ids in source",
parse_code_ids("// GR-R06: lead first\nfn f(){} // GR-A12")
== {"GR-R06", "GR-A12"})
check("code-id matcher finds none in unmarked source",
parse_code_ids("fn f() { let x = 1; }") == set())
# T08: every provisional scenario must carry an owner and a date.
import glob as _g
prov = provisional_items(sorted(_g.glob("scenarios/ground/*.yaml")))
check("every provisional item has an owner and a raised date",
bool(prov) and all(o and r for _, o, r in prov),
f"{len(prov)} provisional item(s)")
print("rule-coverage self-test (positive control)")
ok = True
for name, passed, detail in results:
print(f" [{'ok ' if passed else 'FAIL'}] {name}"
+ (f"{detail}" if detail else ""))
ok &= passed
return 0 if ok else 1
def main():
if "--self-test" in sys.argv:
return self_test()
rules = parse_rules(open("specs/GroundRules.md").read())
paths = sorted(glob.glob("scenarios/ground/*.yaml"))
# Positive control: refuse to report a percentage over nothing.
if not rules:
print("ERROR — no GR-rules parsed from specs/GroundRules.md; "
"refusing to report coverage", file=sys.stderr)
return 1
if not paths:
print("ERROR — no scenarios found in scenarios/ground/; "
"refusing to report coverage", file=sys.stderr)
return 1
covered = set()
for path in paths:
covered |= parse_covers(open(path).read())
known = set(rules)
hit = sorted(known & covered)
missing = [r for r in rules if r not in covered]
invented = sorted(covered - known)
# T09: the spec -> code -> scenario chain, made mechanical. A rule a
# scenario claims should also be named in the aggregate, or the claim
# rests on nothing but a tag.
code_ids = parse_code_ids(open(AGGREGATE).read())
unlinked = sorted((known & covered) - code_ids)
phantom = sorted(code_ids - known)
pct = 100 * len(hit) // len(rules)
linked = len((known & covered) & code_ids)
print(f"AM-1 rule coverage: {len(hit)}/{len(rules)} ({pct}%) "
f"over {len(paths)} scenarios")
print(f"AM-1b spec->code link: {linked}/{len(hit)} claimed rules also "
f"named in {AGGREGATE}")
print(" NOTE: counts tags; does not prove a scenario exercises what it names")
if unlinked:
print(" unlinked (claimed by a scenario, absent from the aggregate):")
print(" ", " ".join(unlinked))
if phantom:
print(" ERROR — rule id in code that the spec does not define:",
" ".join(phantom), file=sys.stderr)
return 1
# T08: provisional items are reported with an owner and an age.
prov = provisional_items(paths)
if prov:
import datetime
today = datetime.date.today()
print(f"\nprovisional U-item defaults: {len(prov)}")
unowned, stale = [], []
for path, owner, raised in prov:
age = "?"
if raised:
try:
age = (today - datetime.date.fromisoformat(raised)).days
except ValueError:
age = "?"
name = path.split("/")[-1]
print(f" {name:<34} owner={owner or 'NONE':<12} age={age}d")
if not owner:
unowned.append(name)
if isinstance(age, int) and age > PROVISIONAL_WARN_DAYS:
stale.append(f"{name} ({age}d)")
if unowned:
print(" WARN — provisional with no owner:", " ".join(unowned))
if stale:
print(f" WARN — provisional for over {PROVISIONAL_WARN_DAYS} days:",
" ".join(stale))
print(" NOTE: evidence files must list these; a ruling flips the "
"scenario, not the kernel")
if missing:
print(" uncovered:", " ".join(missing))
if invented:
print(" ERROR — claimed but not defined in the spec:", " ".join(invented),
file=sys.stderr)
return 1
return 0 if not missing else 2
if __name__ == "__main__":
sys.exit(main())

View file

@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
---
id: CB-WP-0003
title: "Harden the inner loop: executable rules, session economics, dead policy"
status: proposed
status: done
state_hub_workstream_id: "39d61dc0-870d-45c1-a595-bcf91f289dce"
---
@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ accordingly.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T01
status: todo
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "3d5d45fb-f931-407a-be71-d2d727279d5e"
```
@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ rules and the three v1.1 rules are currently prose.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T02
status: todo
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "f861e67f-ed09-489d-963d-06697da9c08e"
```
@ -100,7 +100,12 @@ one with five assertions (AC-5..AC-9); `make cost` depends on
`make cost-test`; `cost-test` runs in CI and in `make all`. `cargo bench
-- --test` and cb-sim's empty-run check were already in place.
**Remaining scope:**
**Closed 2026-07-31 alongside T01** — both items below are done:
tools/rule-coverage.py and tools/dep-weight.py gained `--self-test`
(the former exposing a latent silent-pass on zero parsed rules), and
`make loop-lint` fails CI when any `tools/*.py` lacks the flag.
**Scope as written:**
- `tools/rule-coverage.py` and `tools/dep-weight.py` have positive-control
logic but no `--self-test` entry point, so nothing verifies the control
@ -119,7 +124,7 @@ dedup.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T03
status: todo
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "1365b35d-4539-489a-beff-c072221e4702"
```
@ -153,7 +158,7 @@ rather than reporting a clean verify.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T04
status: todo
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "382724e6-efd5-4ef8-a438-9d31a65dacdb"
```
@ -198,7 +203,7 @@ attribution.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T05
status: todo
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "26c920ee-2c09-4b45-a908-4d343532db09"
```
@ -229,7 +234,7 @@ Unblocked: depends on CB-WP-0002, now complete.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T06
status: todo
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "8f3a6147-54e8-48f9-8543-c13b0e0b0278"
```
@ -248,7 +253,7 @@ to reject.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T07
status: todo
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "2f702821-7e64-4981-9885-82fa07f638aa"
```
@ -281,7 +286,7 @@ self-report of which one it was.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T08
status: todo
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "c2ee91ee-e551-48a7-b1a9-477c34c0690c"
```
@ -299,7 +304,7 @@ file must list them, not that the build breaks.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T09
status: todo
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "69ccc9ec-dc35-481c-8065-cef040f07f50"
```
@ -320,9 +325,9 @@ now price the evaluation itself.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T11
status: todo
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: ""
state_hub_task_id: "809215d8-8a5c-4b10-9445-9bc6db9bda42"
```
**New, from CB-WP-0002.** `benchmarks/baselines/model-prices.toml`
@ -345,7 +350,7 @@ State Hub: a schema that cannot hold the fact it needs.
```task
id: CB-WP-0003-T10
status: todo
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "f43de208-92b1-4f0e-9236-a9d27f3ec451"
```