core/docs/plans/generalization-arc-2026-07-24.md

Generalization Arc — GSM8K-Level Capability Across Core Subjects

Date: 2026-07-24 · Status: ACTIVE · Base: main @ 5224b5e0 (post ADR-0259 / Band v4-CM)

This is the ratified plan of record for the arc that takes CORE from "one fully-closed cognitive lifecycle (deduction-serve)" to "the same lifecycle running across core subjects at GSM8K-exam level" — articulated answers, problem solving, comprehension, all under wrong=0 discipline.

Execution is risk-tiered across three operators (§6): Fable 5 does the high-risk design + build, Opus 5 the medium tier, Sonnet 5 the low tier. Handoff briefs live in docs/handoff/generalization-2026-07/.

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1. Ground truth at arc start

• Exactly one lifecycle is closed end-to-end: deduction-serve (comprehend → 5 band readers → ROBDD decide → sealed practice arena, 17 bands × 720, θ_SERVE=0.99 → SHA-verified ratified ledger → license gate → render → register chain). Dark behind deduction_serving_enabled=False, awaiting ratification.
• Cross-subject substrate exists but is idle: 16 unmounted domain seed packs, 5 domain chain corpora, 6 OOD fluency lanes, five-layer teaching-order doctrine (docs/teaching_order.md), capability index.
• Learning-loop organs exist but are write-only or dark: 19 default-off flags; proposal/contemplation/promotion paths emit into review sinks with no runtime consumer. Three real ratified-artifact consumers exist (deduction ledger, estimation license, recognizer registry) — the pattern to generalize.
• Math is reader-gated, not solver-gated: compiler holds 50/50 wrong=0 on dev-1 but the reader parses ~1% of real GSM8K; the ~30-band bet was falsified; standing ruling #77 selects seeding-sentence injection as the next math move.
• ADR-0246 §3.7 identity calibration is explicitly OFF this critical path (blocked on §11 research evidence; doctrine order: capability → practice → calibration → serve).

2. Phases

Phase 0 — Truth-substrate hygiene + first live serve (Small)

• 0.1 Root-cause the 3-lane pin drift (miner_loop_closure, curriculum_loop_closure, demo_composition). Classify: determinism bug (stop-the-line) vs stale pins vs local/CI byte divergence. Re-pin surgically only after root-cause. Findings doc in docs/research/.
• 0.2 Ratification packet for deduction_serving_enabled (evidence collation only; the flip is Shay's decision).

Done when: drift explained + resolved; packet delivered.

Phase 1 — Reading generalization: verb predicates + existentials (Large)

The band cascade reads only copula sentences; every other subject states facts as verb sentences. Ordered by leverage:

• 1.1 Band v5-VP — verb predicates: predicate atoms keyed by (verb lemma, argument tuple); intransitive + transitive with named/classed arguments ONLY; closed morphology; typed refusal for everything else (voice, tense shifts, ditransitives, PP-arguments). This band gates Phase 2.
• 1.2 Band v6-EX — existential (some) witnesses: completes the all/no/some square; witness-based lowering.
• Deferred (unchanged from ADR-0259 §5): universal-nested-in-connective (bound-variable tracking), identity/co-reference, tense.

Recipe per band (proven 3×): reader module → shape bands → arena templates (≥720/band) → hand-authored lane split (content-disjoint from practice lexicon) → ledger reseal → tests → ADR → research doc.

Done when: verb-predicate and existential arguments decided at SERVE wrong=0; ledger resealed; promotion sweep of previously-declined cases done honestly (promotion = decided correctly, not decided favorably).

Phase 2 — Port the lifecycle to two non-math subjects (Medium-Large)

Physics and biology first (OOD lanes, seed packs, and domain chains already exist). Implemented strictly to the curriculum-entailment gold contract (§4 — the load-bearing design of this arc):

• Mount subject packs; wire domain chains through the teaching corridor per the five-layer order.
• Exam-shaped serve lanes: question → read (v5-VP reading) → decide from ratified curriculum premises only → licensed articulated answer.
• Per-subject band ledgers via the same arena; capability-index coverage entries; 3-domain anti-overfit panel discipline (independence must be in the READING).

Done when: two subjects serve wrong=0 on hand-authored exam-shaped lanes with earned licenses, zero subject-specific engine code.

Phase 3 — Close the discovery→learning loop (Medium)

• 3.1 Vocab-expansion trigger as code (the COMPREHENSION-READER-AUDIT §measurable-test, made a standing instrument: refusal histogram split mechanism-vs-coverage; admissions-per-lexicon-batch).
• 3.2 HITL proposal-queue surface (review CLI over the existing sinks).
• 3.3 Generic consumption bridge: extract the seal → ratify → SHA-verified license → serve-gate pattern (deduction ledger is the model; estimation license the second instance) into the ADR-0175 Phase-5 bridge so each subject arena plugs in without bespoke wiring.
• 3.4 Feed discovery-yield with real traffic (post 0.2 flip).

Done when: a serve-time gap flows discovery → proposal → ratification → runtime consumption with no manual file surgery.

Phase 4 — Math problem-solving reader (Medium-Large, parallel lane)

Independent of Phases 1–3 (no shared files; production-line pattern):

• 4.1 Seeding-sentence injection (ruling #77; the 75% "no injection" wall).
• 4.2 Compare unblock (summation-question reader + inverse compare), queued behind 4.1 per the same ruling.
• 4.3 q:complex decomposition study (increment-1 band plan §9; 101 cases behind one label).
• Guardrails pinned: docs/research/reader-arc-overfit-inventory-2026-07-19.md, ADR-0251 recalibration (no bespoke-per-case regex growth), ADR-0252.

Done when: real-GSM8K parse floor materially above ~1% with wrong=0 held on the full 500; ceiling revised with evidence.

Phase 5 — Articulation depth (generate/ "core_logos") (trigger-gated)

Not queued by order. Trigger: Phases 1–2 produce multi-step decided content (proof chains, multi-fact answers) — the evidence of where articulation quality binds that the intelligence-loop plan's Phase 6 deferral was waiting for. Scope the arc from that evidence.

3. Dependencies

• Phase 1.1 gates Phase 2. Phase 0 first.
• Phase 3.3 lands before the second subject arena (avoid copy-paste wiring). 3.1/3.2 interleave freely.
• Phase 4 fully parallel. Phase 5 trigger-gated on 1–2.
• §3.7 identity calibration stays downstream of the whole arc (its calibration data comes from this arc's practice volume).

4. Curriculum-entailment gold contract (Phase-2 design, decided here)

This section is the HIGH-risk design, fixed now so the medium tier can implement without re-litigating epistemology.

1. Verdict domain — every exam item resolves to {entailed, refuted, unknown, declined}, identical to deduction-serve. UNKNOWN is the honest verdict for untaught facts. No open-world recall, ever.
2. Two question shapes — (a) self-contained arguments (premises in the text): already owned by bands v2–v6; (b) curriculum-grounded questions (the new Phase-2 shape): question text supplies only the query; the premise set is compiled from the RATIFIED domain chain corpus for that subject. Gold is a function of (curriculum, question) — never of case-local hidden text. This is the decoding-not-generating line in mechanical form.
3. Premise provenance — each lane case pins the chain IDs it draws on; the runner reconstructs premises from the ratified corpus and MUST fail the case if a pinned chain is absent or unratified.
4. Independent oracle — per subject, a closed-world reachability oracle over the chain corpus (sharing no code with the serving path) validates every gold verdict; the lane asserts corpus soundness before any case runs (the assert_corpus_sound() pattern).
5. License granularity — bands keyed by (subject × relation family × chain depth), earned in the ADR-0199 arena: θ_SERVE=0.99, n≥720, wrong=0, sealed + SHA-verified ledger per subject.
6. Typed refusals, lifecycle-mapped — untaught_vocabulary, unratified_chain, out_of_curriculum, ambiguous_reading; the OOV refusal feeds the Phase-3 proposal queue (refusals become discovery, not dead ends).
7. Anti-recall probes (mandatory per lane) — cases whose answer is true in the world but absent from the curriculum; gold = UNKNOWN. A lane without these probes cannot prove the system decodes rather than recalls, and MUST NOT ship.

5. Risks

• HIGH — subject-gold epistemology drift: mitigated by §4 (contract fixed before implementation; anti-recall probes mandatory).
• HIGH — v5-VP scope creep: argument structure/voice/agreement are a real jump from copula. Mitigation: two argument shapes only, closed morphology, typed refusal for the rest — the same discipline that made v2–v4 land clean.
• MEDIUM — arena scale: 720/band × growing band count on local hardware; linear sealing time; watch, don't block.
• MEDIUM — synthetic-overfit trap: practice templates and lane cases stay content-disjoint per subject (standing doctrine).
• MEDIUM — q:complex may not decompose: nothing gates on Phase 4.
• LOW — drift root-cause escalates: if Phase 0.1 finds a determinism bug, the arc pauses until it is fixed (stop-the-line).

6. Risk-tiered operator assignment

Constraint set for every tier: wrong=0; flags stay default-off (flips are Shay's ratification only); Forgejo-primary, no GitHub/gh; local smoke + warmed_session gate before every push (pre-push hook); uv always; branch + worktree per unit; no merge automation; one PR per coherent solution; attribution disabled.

Tier F — Fable 5 (HIGH risk; this session)

• F1: Phase 0.1 drift root-cause (+ surgical re-pin if benign).
• F2: this plan doc + handoff briefs.
• F3: §4 gold contract (done — it is this document).
• F4: Band v5-VP (Phase 1.1), full recipe, PR.

Checkpoint F→O: F1/F2/F4 PRs pushed with compare URLs; memory updated; briefs current. Opus starts at O1 with no open design questions.

Tier O — Opus 5 (MEDIUM risk)

• O1: Band v6-EX existentials (Phase 1.2) — recipe + ADR-0257/0258/0259 as references.
• O2: Phase 2 physics + biology serve lanes per §4 (mount packs, wire chains, arena, ledgers, lanes). Physics first; biology second only after the generic bridge (O3) lands.
• O3: Phase 3.3 generic consumption bridge.
• O4: Phase 4.1 seeding-sentence injection, then 4.2; 4.3 as analysis. Guardrail docs pinned in §2/Phase 4.

Checkpoint O→S: v6-EX merged; ≥1 subject lane serving wrong=0 with earned licenses; bridge merged; math increment measured + documented (whatever its outcome — a null result is a valid checkpoint).

Tier S — Sonnet 5 (LOW risk)

• S1: Phase 0.2 ratification packet (evidence collation).
• S2: Post-fix lane re-pins; public_demo flake documentation.
• S3: Phase 3.1 vocab-trigger instrument (spec is pinned in docs/handoffs/COMPREHENSION-READER-AUDIT.md §measurable-test).
• S4: Phase 3.2 HITL proposal-queue CLI surface.
• S5: Promotion sweeps, capability-index entries, docs/memory housekeeping.

Arc close: all three tiers merged; Phase 5 trigger evaluated with evidence in hand; next arc scoped from it.

7. Non-goals (this arc)

• ADR-0246 §3.7 / identity-gate calibration (evidence-blocked).
• core/ports/ Ring-2/3 consumption (own future flag-gated units).
• Universal-nested-in-connective, co-reference, tense bands.
• Any serving-flag flip without explicit ratification.
• Zig substrate work.