core/evals/cognition/contract.md
Shay 1e01f7794e feat(evals): Phase 0 — benchmark methodology lock-in and eval framework
Implement the eval infrastructure defined in ADR-0016 before building new
eval lanes. This establishes the discipline that governs the entire
capability roadmap.

- Generic eval framework (evals/framework.py): lane discovery, versioned
  scoring, result persistence
- Cognition lane retrofitted into new convention: 45 cases split into
  stratified dev (13) / public v1 (13) / holdout (19) sets with contract,
  runner, and recorded results
- Generalized `core eval <lane>` CLI: dynamic lane discovery, --list,
  --version, --split, --save, --json flags
- Holdout runner scaffold: plaintext fallback, encryption interface ready
- Baseline runner scaffold: pluggable frontier model interface
- Fix: CognitiveTurnPipeline.run() crashed on turn_log[-1] when the
  unknown-domain gate returned a stub without appending to turn_log
- ADR-0016, eval_methodology.md, PROGRESS.md, capability gates session log

Phase 0 exit audit found two methodology issues:
1. Pipeline turn_log crash (fixed here)
2. Versor drift in multi-turn sessions (pre-existing, under investigation)
2026-05-15 22:36:53 -07:00

1.7 KiB

Cognition Eval Lane — Contract

Lane: cognition Version: v1 Created: 2026-05-15

What this lane measures

End-to-end cognitive pipeline correctness: given a natural-language prompt, does the CognitiveTurnPipeline produce a response that:

  1. Classifies intent correctly.
  2. Captures expected domain terms in the realized surface.
  3. Contains expected surface fragments (grounding check).
  4. Maintains versor closure (versor_condition < 1e-6).
  5. Produces a deterministic trace hash across runs.

Scoring rubric

Each case produces five binary signals. Lane-level metrics are rates over cases:

Metric Definition v1 pass threshold
intent_accuracy Fraction of cases with correct intent classification >= 0.90
term_capture_rate Fraction of expected terms found in surface >= 0.80
surface_groundedness Fraction of cases where all expected surface fragments present >= 0.80
versor_closure_rate Fraction of cases with versor_condition < 1e-6 1.00
determinism All trace hashes identical across 2 runs true

Pass criteria

  • Public v1: All five metrics meet or exceed thresholds above.
  • Holdout: intent_accuracy >= 0.85, versor_closure_rate == 1.00.

Version escalation plan

  • v2: Longer prompts, paraphrased surface forms, rarer vocabulary (e.g. "elucidate" instead of "what is"), multi-clause prompts.
  • v3: Adversarial items targeting weakest category from v2 results.

Categories tested

definition, comparison, cause, procedure, recall, correction, verification, unknown

Runner

runner.py in this directory. Invoked via core eval cognition.