339bfd3776
Cross-examined a six-fault red-team audit against the source at a4f567f0.
Three faults stale or mis-attributed, one already executed, one already ruled,
one superseded the same day — but it is the best-anchored external audit of the
four, and chasing its claims caught a hole in G-24's own sweep.
THE FIND: core/semantic_primitives/ + generate/linguistic_pipeline/ implement
ADR-0252 §2 faithfully — typed Container/ConservationLaw/DimensionalType
primitives, layer_a_english surface extraction, and field_integration.py
(51 geometric refs): constraints embedded as conformal points / COMPOSED
ROTORS with versor_condition + GoldTether closure. Nothing on the serving
side calls it. F-B amended: two readers exist — the inverted one serves,
the faithful one is dark.
Also verified: W-007's "architecturally blocked" claim is stale by two months
(ADR-0146 committed the L10 shape 2026-05-25; the daemon landed 18e25580;
the DerivedRecognizer step is BUILT at pipeline.py:211 behind
recognition_grounded_graph=False). The audit reasoned from the
substrate-liveness ratchet — the instrument PR-3 marked historical this same
day. H-9's mechanism, demonstrated on an external auditor.
Adopted from the audit: the H2 non-collapse criterion (the §5 add-vs-subtract
minimal pair must show non-zero relational contrast under operator
composition) joins the Phase-1 pre-registration verbatim; the use_salience
ruling moves ahead of Phase 3's serving evals.
The pattern, named once in the plan §2b: linguistic_pipeline, the ADR-0144
recognizer step, and relation_compiler are three instances of one class —
correct mechanisms built dark behind unruled flags while enumerative stopgaps
serve. The flag register's §3a hesitancy cluster is the same disease seen
flag-side. CORE's failure mode is not "never built"; it is transition windows
that never close. Phase 2 now begins from the dark-bridge inventory rather
than from new code — "less machinery" made concrete.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wcw2pnMBwyvmNyQg4uPEt4
141 lines
15 KiB
Markdown
141 lines
15 KiB
Markdown
# The Perception Arc — why capability has not moved, and the plan that moves it
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**Author:** Fable 5 · 2026-07-28 · measured at `0e1be8be`
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**Supersedes:** Track B's "widen from 19 constructions" (G-3, as previously specified) — see §4.
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**Governed by:** `AGENTS.md` standing philosophy; the pre-registration discipline that produced the §5 NO-GO.
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---
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## 0. The question this answers
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Everything is implemented. The gate is 4 suites / 1,441 tests, `wrong=0` holds everywhere it is claimed, twelve rulings executed, every register clean. **And capability has not moved.** The reader decides ~1% of the held-out corpus, four deduction bands hold the only earned licences, and nothing else serves. Why?
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This document answers with measurements, not opinion. Every claim below was verified against the source at `0e1be8be` on 2026-07-28.
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---
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## 1. The diagnosis, in five measured findings
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### F-A · The serving path is 100% symbolic — the geometry never touches it
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| Serving-path module | Lines | Geometric refs |
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| `generate/meaning_graph/reader.py` | 490 | **0** |
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| `generate/meaning_graph/model.py` | 229 | **0** |
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| `generate/proof_chain/` (15 files) | 3,916 | **0** |
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| `chat/deduction_surface.py` | 298 | **0** |
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| `chat/curriculum_surface.py` | 406 | **0** |
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Comprehension is a hand-written template parser (1 regex, 35 string ops) feeding an ROBDD boolean entailment engine. That is classical symbolic AI, and it is the source of **all** served capability. The Cl(4,1) substrate — 76 modules, concentrated in `core/physics` (24) — runs identity continuity, persistence, and the soak invariants. The two systems intersect on the serving path in exactly **one** place (F-D), and the licensed lanes bypass it.
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### F-B · The reader inverts its own ratified design — this is the root cause
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**ADR-0252 §2 stage 1** (ratified 2026-07-19) prescribes, verbatim:
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> *"Reduce surface text to the primitives the substrate represents: quantities (the Number core-system), entities (the Object core-system), and their **relational roles — containment / transfer / accumulation / comparison** (two-argument relational predicates). **Not surface-slot regexes.**"*
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**What was built:** surface-slot templates over **categorical / member / ordering / propositional** relations — Aristotelian syllogistic plus propositional logic. The banned mechanism, over the wrong relation set.
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The corpus measurement confirms the inversion independently. On `holdout_dev/v1` (500 problems → 1,798 sentences):
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| Feature in real English | Share | Reader constructions for it |
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|---|---|---|
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| numerals (quantity) | 64.7% | — |
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| coordination / relative clause | 48.3% | — |
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| `how many` questions | 24.4% | 0 |
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| possession (`has/have`) | 18.4% | **0** |
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| transfer verbs (`bought`, `gave`, `ate`) | 14.6% | **0** |
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| quantitative comparison (`twice as many`) | 10.0% | 2 (ordering only) |
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| explicit `if/then` | **0.1%** | **4 — 21% of the inventory** |
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**Read rate: 1.28%** (23 of 1,798 sentences; 93.16% fail as `no_template_match` — upstream of vocabulary, upstream of every flag). The relation kinds the ADR prescribes are precisely the ones missing. Not packs (0.67%; `unknown_morphology` never fires). Not wiring (the failure is before any flag is consulted). **Design-to-implementation inversion.**
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### F-C · The template architecture cannot produce chunk lifts — only overfit slivers
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An enumerative parser generalizes by exactly zero: each new construction is a hand-fitted rule matching one surface shape. 19 constructions → 1.28%. Reaching 50% coverage this way means hundreds of hand rules, each an overfit. **Chunk-sized lifts are architecturally unavailable from this front end** — which is why none have appeared despite everything downstream working.
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### F-D · Geometry participates in exactly two cognitive mechanisms — and both are stranded
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1. **Attention.** `use_salience` (default ON) computes field curvature (`SalienceOperator`) → `AttentionOperator` → allowed vocabulary indices, on the generic pipeline lane. But `deduction_surface` and `curriculum_surface` **intercept before generic dispatch** — so the only lanes that ever earned licences bypass the one serving-path mechanism the geometry has. (Also: `use_salience` is one of the two default-ON flags with no recorded rationale — flag register §1.)
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2. **The relation compiler.** `core/physics/relation_compiler.py` compiles an affine relation into a `ProblemHamiltonian` whose **ground state is the answer as a null point** — deliberately never evaluating `scale·input + offset` in Python. This is real geometric computation: a relation encoded as an **operator acting on state**. It is off-serving, Tier-1-only (single affine relation), and fed by a math reader that decides **5 of 500** holdout cases (G-21).
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**Both readers — logic (1.28%) and math (1.0%) — are enumerative front ends starving engines that work.**
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### F-E · The §5 NO-GO killed the alignment bridge; the composition bridge was never tested
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§5 refuted structure-as-**point-positions** aligned by conformal Procrustes **under similarity**: the quotient that delivers attribute-invariance annihilates structural contrast. Its own scope note excludes other Cl(4,1) representations — and the untested branch is the one the relation compiler already embodies in miniature: **relations as operators, meaning as composition.** A transfer is a versor acting on a state, not a point pair. Composition ("what operator sequence produces this state?") lives in a different quotient than alignment ("do these configurations match?"), and the §5 argument does not reach it.
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**Summary sentence:** the engines work, the substrate works, the discipline works; the perception layer violates its own ratified design, feeds <2% of real input to the engines, and cannot generalize by construction. Fix perception once, compositionally, per the design that was already ratified — and every downstream engine's capability multiplies instead of crawling.
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---
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## 2. The plan
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Sequenced per `docs/conceptualizing_engineering_mastery.md`: measure → decide the paradigm → build once → reconnect → delete. Nothing is built before its paradigm question is answered; nothing survives that the new layer supersedes.
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### Phase 0 · Pin the ground truth · **S**
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- **G-24** in the gap register: findings F-A…F-E, Tier A (it re-scopes Track B and Track C's entry conditions).
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- **The read-rate lane** (discharges G-21's open ask): `evals/perception/read_rate.py` measuring sentence-level read rate on `holdout_dev/v1` — logic reader and math reader, refusal taxonomy included. Pinned as a **floor ratchet** (1.28% / 1.0% at `0e1be8be`): the number may only rise, and a rise is a reviewed decision. This is the metric the arc is accountable to — capability, not machinery.
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### Phase 1 · The §2 experiment — compositional core-primitive reading · **M** · *pre-registered, GO/NO-GO*
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The §5-shaped experiment for the untested branch. **Hypothesis H2:** a reader that (a) maps text onto the **four ratified primitives** — containment, transfer, accumulation, comparison — plus the Number and Object core-systems; (b) encodes each relation as an **operator** (the `relation_compiler` pattern, generalized); and (c) derives sentence meaning by **composition** of operators — generalizes **multiplicatively**: built from *k* atomic constructions, it reads novel compositions it was never shown.
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**Pre-registered criterion, committed before the run** (same discipline as `299c92be`):
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- **Coverage:** ≥ an order of magnitude over the enumerative ceiling on held-out `holdout_dev/v1` sentences — target ≥ 30% sentence read-rate from ≤ 30 declared primitives (vs 19 templates → 1.28%).
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- **Honesty:** zero wrong readings. A mis-read is strictly worse than a refusal (G-2's whole lesson); every reading is checked against a gold role-assignment on a labelled slice.
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- **Compositionality proof:** held-out *compositions* (novel primitive sequences) must read correctly with **zero per-composition rules** — the assertion that separates a compositional mechanism from a bigger template pile.
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**NO-GO branch, declared now:** if composition over geometric operators does not generalize, the honest conclusion is that Cl(4,1) is a state substrate, not a comprehension mechanism — and the reader is rebuilt as a principled **symbolic compositional grammar** (small combinator core + declared lexicon) instead. Either verdict exits the template treadmill; a well-controlled NO-GO is full credit, as §5 proved.
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### Phase 2 · Build the perception layer per the winner · **L**
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One front end replacing both readers, structured as the repo's own governing pattern (ADR-0263 rule 5 — declared in the table, not the call site):
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- **A small combination core** (code): role binding, operator composition, quantity/entity tracking. This is the only part that is code, and it does not grow with coverage.
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- **A construction lexicon** (data): constructions and lexical mappings as declared tables. **Growth = adding rows, not writing parsers.** The gate cost of new coverage is a table diff, reviewable in one glance — the anti-overfit property, made structural.
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- Wired to both engines: role-predicate graphs → `proof_chain` (logic); quantity relations → `relation_compiler` corridor (math). `quantity_kernel` (Number) and entity tracking (Object) as the two core-systems the ADR names.
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### Phase 3 · Reconnect the corridor to serving · **M**
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`parse_and_solve` → Hamiltonian corridor is off-serving today. When the new perception layer feeds it, it goes through the **now-honest** licence machinery (post-R-13/R-8: distinct evidence, split outcome mix, `wrong=0`-or-refuse). Capability target measured on the pinned lane: holdout decision rate 1% → tracked leaps as primitive coverage composes. Lifts arrive in chunks or the paradigm is wrong — that is the falsifiable commitment.
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### Phase 4 · The deletion wave · **S** — *the "scrap what earned scrapping" half*
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- **G-3's template-widening program: superseded.** No more hand constructions in the enumerative reader; it stays serving for the logic bands it already handles until Phase 2 supersedes it in place (nothing torn out before its replacement proves out — §6's own discipline, applied honestly this time).
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- **Curriculum-serve machinery: parked.** It licenses nothing (R-8 measured: zero bands), and its earnable capability is *declining to answer*. The corpus is kept; the lane sleeps until the new layer gives it something to license.
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- **`sensorium/` stays parked** behind P-3's criterion, which is now honest: no modality enters while text perception is at 1%.
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- The 15 gate-unreachable suites get re-examined as lanes consolidate — deletion first, promotion second, per philosophy 1.
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### Phase 5 · Governance · **S** — *Shay's, prepared to cost one word each*
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- **ADR-0252 amendment:** record that §2 stage 1 was implemented in inversion of its own text (banned mechanism, wrong primitives), and bind the §6 build clause to Phase 1's pre-registered verdict.
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- **`use_salience` ruling:** it is default-ON with no recorded rationale and the licensed lanes bypass it. Phase 2 makes attention either load-bearing on the new lane (keep, document, measure) or decorative (off). The flag register's "no criterion recorded" entry gets its criterion.
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- **Ratchet:** the read-rate floor may only rise; every phase reports against it.
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---
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## 2b. Pass-3 amendments — from the third external audit (2026-07-28), verified in-tree
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A red-team audit was cross-examined against the source. Three of its six faults were stale or mis-attributed (see the triage in `31-hindrance-audit.md`), **but its direction flushed out two subsystems this plan's own author had missed** — and they change Phases 1–2 from "build" to "connect and test":
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- **The faithful §2 reader already exists, dark.** `core/semantic_primitives/` (typed `Container`, `ConservationLaw`, `DimensionalType` — *"linguistic → field compilation"*) feeds `generate/linguistic_pipeline/` (layers A/B/C + `field_integration.py`, **51 geometric refs**): surface text → typed constraints → **conformal points / composed rotors** → `versor_condition` + GoldTether closure. **Nothing on the serving side calls it.** So F-B sharpens: the ratified design was not merely inverted by the serving reader — it was *also implemented faithfully* in a parallel pipeline that never reached dispatch. Two readers: the wrong one serving, the right one dark.
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- **The recognizer junction is built, not blocked.** `core/cognition/pipeline.py` step 0b (ADR-0144) attaches `DerivedRecognizer` (anti-unification) and can derive the articulation graph from the admitted `EpistemicNode` — behind `recognition_grounded_graph = False`, one of the flag register's four *"waiting on a transition window that has not been closed"* entries.
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**The pattern, named once:** `linguistic_pipeline`, the ADR-0144 recognizer step, and `relation_compiler` are three instances of one class — **correct mechanisms built dark behind unruled flags while enumerative stopgaps serve.** The flag register's §3a hesitancy cluster (`recognition_grounded_graph`, `realizer_grounded_authority`, `forward_graph_constraint`, `unified_ingest`) is this same unfinished migration, seen flag-side. The disease is not "never built"; it is **transition windows that never close.**
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**Consequences for the phases:**
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1. **Phase 1 (H2) runs on existing machinery, not new scaffolding** — extend `layer_a_english` to the four ratified primitives and encode relations as operators through `field_integration`'s composed-rotor path. Adopted from the audit verbatim into the pre-registration: an explicit **non-collapse criterion** — the §5 `add`-vs-`subtract` minimal pair (residual exactly 0.0 under similarity alignment) must show non-zero relational contrast under operator composition, as a named must-pass case.
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2. **Phase 2 starts from the dark-bridge inventory** (the four §3a flags + the linguistic pipeline), wiring and measuring before writing anything new — "less machinery" made concrete.
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3. **The `use_salience` ruling moves from Phase 5 to before Phase 3** — the read-rate lane (Phase 0) is pre-salience and unconfounded, but serving evals are not; an undocumented default-ON attention mask must be ruled before licences are measured through it.
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## 3. What this plan deliberately does not do
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- It does not touch `core/physics`, the algebra, the reliability gate, or the ledger discipline. Those are correct and load-bearing.
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- It does not delete the enumerative reader before its replacement proves out — supersession-in-place, per the ADR's own preserved rule.
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- It does not promise the geometric branch wins Phase 1. It promises the question is **decided** the way §5 was: pre-registered, cheap, and honest either way.
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## 4. Relationship to the executed assessment arc
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The 2026-07-28 arc (30 commits, `797ebad5..0e1be8be`) built the instruments this plan depends on: honest licences (R-13, R-8), the flag register, the reachability ratchets, the pre-registration precedent, and the eleven standing philosophies. None of it moved capability — and F-C explains why nothing could have: the arc hardened a system whose perception layer cannot generalize. This plan is the capability half the enforcement half was for.
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