Implements the 4-phase documentation reorganization master plan. - Consolidation: Merged brief/, handoff/, planning/, and decisions/ into briefs/, handoffs/, plans/, and adr/ respectively (101 ADRs relocated) - Root Cleanup: Relocated HANDOFF-gpt55-*.md and key top-level docs (runtime_contracts.md, etc.) to canonical folders. Added superseded alerts. - Indices & Navigation: Created docs/README.md navigation document, docs/sessions/README.md index, docs/adr/README.md index - Note: Also includes prior commit adding ADR-0200+ corpus hygiene governance (ADR-0225, dependency map, backfilled cross-references)
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ADR-0016 — Capability Roadmap and Eval Methodology
Status: Accepted
Date: 2026-05-15
Authors: Joshua Shay
Derived from: docs/sessions/SESSION-2026-05-15-capability-gates.md
Context
CORE needs a falsifiable framework for measuring progress toward its design goals. Without one, "are we there yet" remains a subjective question and progress drifts toward vibes-based evaluation.
The 2026-05-15 session deliberated on:
- What fluency means for the three foundational languages (English, Hebrew, Koine Greek) and when engineering ends and curriculum begins.
- What additional capability dimensions matter for an AGI-aspiring architecture.
- How CORE's structural properties compare to modern transformer architectures.
- How to build honest benchmarks that resist overfitting.
Decision
Adopt the Verifiable Competence Benchmark framework defined in
docs/capability_roadmap.md as the governing plan for CORE's capability
development. The framework consists of:
-
Benchmark Discipline (Part I) — five rules that govern every eval lane: three-set splits, versioned difficulty escalation, adversarial regeneration on pass, frontier baseline tracking, and honest reporting.
-
Six Phases (Part II):
- Phase 0: Methodology lock-in (eval infrastructure)
- Phase 1: Foundational Triple (fluency, domain acquisition, identity)
- Phase 2: Structural Wins (provenance, monotonic learning, calibration, symbolic logic, adversarial identity)
- Phase 3: Reasoning Depth (compositionality, inference closure, introspection, multi-step reasoning, cross-domain transfer)
- Phase 4: Scale and Efficiency (sample efficiency, vault cost curves, multi-agent composition)
- Phase 5: Curriculum Era (open-ended domain acquisition)
-
Eval contract template — every lane lives in
evals/<lane>/with:contract.md,dev/,public/v1/,holdouts/,runner.py,baselines/,results/. -
Open scope decisions to be pinned before Phase 3:
- Agency (responsive vs. goal-directed)
- Tool use (typed deterministic operators)
- Code generation (first-class articulation target)
Consequences
- Every new eval lane must follow the convention or it does not merge.
- The existing
core eval cognitionis retrofitted as the first lane under the new convention (Phase 0 forcing function). - Progress is tracked in
docs/PROGRESS.mdwith evidence links. - The roadmap itself is versioned; amendments are dated, never silently rewritten.
References
docs/capability_roadmap.md— full roadmapdocs/sessions/SESSION-2026-05-15-capability-gates.md— deliberation logdocs/eval_methodology.md— extracted Part I (benchmark discipline contract)