Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Now archive — 2026-08-05

Aged entries rolled out of now.md verbatim (newest first). The head of now.md is the live state; this page is history.

Previous update 2026-08-05 23:37–00:0xZ (real date -u) — work session: STAGE-2 SIGN PROBE EXECUTED — THE PRE-REGISTERED ESCALATION BRANCH FIRED: 3 of 4 reference populations are NOT sign-consistent, so no candidate cell opened and no mirror verdict ships (results post, probe probes/probe_sign_convention_stage2.py, report ~/sign_stage2_results.json, 38-repo flow cache ~/sign_stage2_cache/). Instrument built + run exactly per the frozen pre-reg (CPU-only, nice-19 ×8 beside both live GPU chains): population gate — wrist_roll 9/15 agree (median ρ +0.16), wrist_flex 10/15 (−0.13), shoulder_lift 9/15 (−0.46), only shoulder_pan VALID 13/15 (−0.24); synthetic-flip oracle on the valid t_x family PASSED end-to-end (original NORMAL / doctored MIRRORED, bootstrap mass 1.000 both ways, ρ ∓0.887) — mechanism works where the population premise holds, so the failure is the premise, not the machinery. Diagnosis shipped with the claim: image-plane statistic signs follow camera mounting (the two cams sign-disagree in 11/15 shoulder_lift refs at |ρ| up to 0.85; ego-cam rule NO-MARGIN on ~half; ω is wrist-cam-only — 2/15 refs reach |ρ|≥0.3 off-wrist) — NOT evidence that joint conventions vary corpus-wide. #13 updated: three stage-1 mirror cells remain unresolved leads, repair arm neither eligible nor dead; proposed stage-2b posted to Discord for owner steer: re-pool references per (dim, camera kind) via the corpus’s meta/camera_kinds.json (2026-08-02 VLM labeling pass) + label-gated ego rule, reusing today’s flow cache (~cheap). Figure: population strip plot (dataviz-skill compliant, reference-palette slots). check.py green (191); blog built + Space pushed; Discord posted (no owner traffic). Babysits 23:52/00:00Z: box ×4 healthy — A-s0 @32.2k, B @34.2k (done ~00:30Z), s1 @30.5k, s2 @30.6k, 0.38–0.40 s/step, all four 30k probe gates passed (A-s0 7.45@31k, s1 7.71@29.5k, s2 7.52@29.5k, B 8.178 formal); draws run 3 (draws=5) scoring 3.7k/25.8k @94% util. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post ~00:30–02Z, E4B GPU-side checklist, stage-2b pending owner steer) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 23:36–23:4xZ (real date -u) — tick: all four box arms healthy in the endgame stretch; draws run 3 (draws=5) confirmed past load. Box ×4: A-s0 @29.7k, B @31.6k, s1 @28.1k, s2 @28.3k, all 0.387–0.393 s/step, util 60–96%, grad norms nominal. Probes: A-s0 7.91@29.5k, B 8.118@31.5k, s1 7.845@28k, s2 7.796@28k — all well under the gate values (B’s formal 30k gate passed 8.178 last tick; controls hit their own 30k reads in ~2k steps, tracking ~1-point under). B total 3.31–3.37@31.6k vs control actions 3.38–3.50 — margin still line noise. B done ~00:30Z, controls ~01:0x–01:3xZ. Draws run 3: checkpoint loaded, first-poll util rule applied (post-load util confirmed before exit — see below). No Discord traffic, no new reactions (history-checked). GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post ~00–02Z, E4B GPU-side checklist, stage-2 probe implementation) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 23:12–23:4xZ (real date -u) — work session: STAGE-2 SIGN-CONVENTION PRE-REG POSTED (the queue’s next CPU item) + DRAWS RUN 2 LANDED A HEADLINE: mean-of-10 flow BEATS the AR-100k panel anchor. (1) Pre-reg freezes stage 2 of ideas #13 before any probe code exists: optical-flow cross-check on the three stage-1 mirror-signature cells (dishTidyUp_anomaly wrist_flex, groceriesSorting_expert wrist_roll, aractingi shoulder_lift), CPU-only ~20–40 min. Frozen: Farneback params, isolated-motion pair selection (0.5°/frame, 2× dominance), ego-cam identification (cams are unlabeled image/image2), 15-repo so100 reference population + 80% sign-consistency validity gate, bootstrap MIRRORED/NORMAL/INCONCLUSIVE rules, synthetic-flip hard validation gate, Dongkkka + kevin510 as pre-declared specificity controls, and a stream-consistency read separating calibration-mirror from action-only flip. Feasibility verified pre-post: repos local, torchcodec decodes the AV1 videos, parquet streams intact. Execution = a later session; ≥1 MIRRORED ⇒ repair arm gets its own pre-reg. Also: stale posts/index.md refreshed (was 12 posts behind SUMMARY). check.py green (191); blog built + Space pushed. (2) Draws run 2 (draws=10 heun-30) finished 23:31Z: chunk_mae 5.365 / first_mae 1.424 vs single-draw 6.6232/1.9331 (−19%/−26%) and vs the AR-100k anchor 5.8026/2.1431 — mean-of-10 flow now beats AR on BOTH panel columns (unconstrained class: 10× NFE; charter §2 caveat stands until distilled — SnapFlow is the queued leg). Banked prediction check (ideas #1): “chunk_mae moves a lot” ✅, “first_mae barely” ❌ — first_mae moved 26%; honest miss recorded in #1, full analysis in the results post after runs 3–5 + the fairness probe. Run 3 (draws=5) chained 23:32Z, in load phase — next tick confirms post-load util. Babysit 23:31Z: box ×4 @27.7–31.2k, 0.40–0.41 s/step, all probes under gate (B formal 30k gate passed 8.178 last tick); B total 3.408@31.2k. B done ~00:3xZ, controls ~01:0x–01:3xZ. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post ~00–02Z, E4B GPU-side checklist, stage-2 probe implementation) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 23:22Z (real date -u) — tick: B’s FORMAL 30k PROBE GATE READ IS IN: 8.178@30,000 — PASSED (kill line was >9; cross-check vs the 25k panel moot at this margin). All four arms healthy: box ×4 @27.0–30.1k, s/step recovered to 0.38–0.44 (last tick’s 0.50–0.52 watch item resolved — it was the parity-job CPU contention, now ended), util 55–95%, grad norms nominal. Probes: B 8.178@30k (its 29.5k read 8.338), A-s0 8.203@28k, s1 7.731@26.5k (batch best), s2 7.899@26.5k — controls hit their own 30k gate reads in ~3.5k steps, all tracking well under. B total 3.31–3.41@30.1k vs control actions 3.43–3.55 this poll — margin still line noise at the endpoint. B hits 40k ~00:3xZ, controls ~01:0x–01:3xZ. Draws run 2 @24.8k/25.8k — done within minutes, chains to run 3. No Discord traffic; no new reactions (🔥 on the reaction-rendering post already recorded). GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post ~00–02Z, E4B GPU-side checklist, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 23:12–23:2xZ (real date -u) — work session: E4B PRE-LAUNCH CHECKLIST ITEMS 2+3 DONE + LAUNCHER/SMOKE STAGED — the launch path now waits only on GPU-dependent items (pre-reg checklist). Executed during the GPU-busy window, all CPU/network-only, ionice’d: (1) checkpoint staged — google/gemma-4-e4b-it (15 G, snapshot ee0ef60) downloaded into the box HF cache in ~1 min (item 2 ✅). (2) Parity spot-check PASSED on the box, CPU — full bijou.gemma4.verify_parity harness: greedy token ids bitwise OK on every text and image case; logit-level “within tol” spreads (max|Δ| ≤1.66) with token agreement = the harness’s documented E4B ULP-tie behavior (item 3 ✅, log ~/e4b_parity.log). (3) DDP4 launcher staged + diff-verified (~/launch_box_fontaine_arb_rcond_e4b_100k_ddp4.sh): diff vs the mainline launch_arb_rcond_100k.sh shows ONLY the pre-registered deltas — --backbone E4B, B10→B12 (the recipe’s launch value; 10 was the post-OOM resume edit), ${CHUNK_ARGS} hook, run naming — no science flag differs; BACKWARD_CHUNKS is a required env var so the launcher refuses to run before the finalization amendment picks the rung; E1/E2/E3 gates in the header; chains the E5 endpoint 4-GPU sharded panel with dumps. (4) Memory-smoke script staged (~/smoke_e4b_b12.sh [chunks]: 60 steps 1×GPU B12, 2-s VRAM sampler prints peak, rung semantics in header). Remaining before launch, all blocked on tonight’s arms: box free (~02:30–03:15Z with evals); smoke (needs 1 free GPU); finalization amendment (σ_seed from the replicate panels); rsync-back extension; and push+checkout the box to ≥cb51f74 (chunked backward — box is at cc0b922) strictly AFTER all four chained panel evals finish (no code swap under a pre-registered eval). Babysit 23:2xZ: box ×4 @26.3–29.7k, probes A-s0 8.334@27.5k / B 8.338@29.5k / s1 8.11@26k / s2 7.898@26k — all under the 30k gate value, B’s formal 30k read next eval; B total 3.364@29.7k. Watch item: s/step 0.50–0.52 ×4 (was 0.39–0.44; still inside the 0.4–0.7 band — likely CPU contention from the parity job, now finished; next tick verifies recovery). Draws run 2 @24.4k/25.8k, ~done, chains to run 3. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post ~00–02Z, E4B GPU-side checklist, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 23:11Z (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy; B one probe from the formal <9@30k gate read. Box ×4 @25.8–29.1k, 0.39–0.41 s/step, util 71–99%, grad norms nominal: probes A-s0 8.17@27k, B 8.34@29k, s1 7.77@25.5k (batch best), s2 8.69@25.5k (noisy bounce off 7.89@25k, within the ±0.5–0.8 band) — all four still under the gate value; B aux-off total 3.40@29.1k vs control action losses 3.41–3.47 — the margin has converged to line noise at the endpoint approach (consistent with the mainline E4 “within noise” read after the transient early lead). B hits 40k ~00:4xZ, controls ~01:0x–01:3xZ. Draws run 2 @23.7k/25.8k — done ~23:30Z, chain rolls to runs 3–5. Discord: no new messages; no new reactions beyond the recorded 🔥. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post ~00–02Z, E4B launch checklist, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 22:43–23:1xZ (real date -u) — work session: CHUNKED BACKWARD LANDED (--backward-chunks in bijou.train) — the E4B B12-OOM fallback is now ready BEFORE the memory smoke, and it surfaced a mechanism error in the E4B pre-reg, corrected by Amendment 1 before any E4B data exists. The pre-reg’s “equal chunks ⇒ mean of chunk-means = batch mean” is FALSE for token-weighted CE pooling (unequal FAST token counts per sample); the implementation is stronger: per-chunk SUM-form losses over FULL-step normalizer counts (data-only pre-pass; aux ratio over the global aux count; DDP no_sync until the last chunk; static_graph dropped when chunking) — exactly the unchunked gradient even with unequal counts, up to fp reduction order. Oracles all run pre-post: chunking OFF all three CPU loss oracles bit-exact (2.7903/1.9152, 4.9232/4.8631, 27.8262/27.7701); ar_fast chunked CLI A/B bitwise at printed precision; ar_backbone chunked A/B loss-identical with a 0.28% grad_norm delta that was diagnosed, not waved off (three-way experiment: bit-identical sliced memory ⇒ gradients rel ~5e-7 — the math is exact; the residual is per-chunk collation width shifting prefix-encode fp reduction order, amplified by the random tiny fixture’s saturated 262k softmax). 7 new tests incl. the unequal-aux-counts gradient-equivalence oracle (rel < 1e-5); check.py green (191); docs/architecture.md §5 documents the mechanism. Babysit 23:0xZ: box ×4 @25.2–28.5k, 0.39–0.40 s/step, util 57–100%: probes stepped down a leg — s1 7.84@25k, s2 7.89@25k, A-s0 8.14@26k, B 8.33@28.5k — all four now BELOW the <9@30k gate value outright; B total 3.40@28.5k still below every control’s action loss; B hits 40k ~00:4xZ, controls ~01:0x–01:3xZ. Draws run 2 @23.1k/25.8k (ETA ~23:5xZ, then runs 3–5). Discord: no new messages. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (box results post at ~00–02Z + E4B launch checklist, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 22:41–22:45Z (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy; all four box arms now clearly under the <9@30k gate track. Box ×4 @23.0–26.0k, 0.38–0.40 s/step, util 48–93%, ~71–74 GiB, grad norms nominal: A-s0 total 3.74@24.5k (action 3.47), s1 3.85@23k (action 3.57), s2 3.84@23.3k (action 3.58), B aux-off total 3.436@26k — still below every control’s action loss. Probes: A-s0 8.35@24k, s1 8.33@23k, B 8.41@25.5k, s2 9.16@23k (noisy bounce off its 8.28@22.5k, within the ±0.5–0.8 band). Draws run 2 @20.5k/25.8k on pacing (ETA ~23:45Z, then runs 3–5); the 0%-util sample is the known between-batch idle, scored-frames advancing. Discord: no new messages; history check surfaced a 🔥 on our reaction-rendering post (positive ack, recorded — the new history-check protocol caught its first reaction). The 22:31–22:39Z exchange stands settled (ladder approved, polling decision owner-acked); channel watched a further ~5 min of silence before exit. ~4–6k steps to the 30k probe gates; first arm completions ~00–02Z. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (chunked-backward impl if the B12 smoke needs it, stage-2 sign pre-reg, box results post ~00–02Z then the E4B launch checklist) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 22:20–22:40Z (real date -u; NB this session’s commit labels “23:0x/23:1x” ran ~25 min ahead of the real clock — label skepticism stays warranted) — work session: E4B SCREEN PRE-REG POSTED (the owner-picked item) + the overdue lit slice taken, which produced a fourth pre-declared fairness read — then a LIVE OWNER EXCHANGE (22:31–22:35Z) resolved the fallback ladder and landed two more items. Exchange: (a) owner asked whether B12-doesn’t-fit means no E4B run — clarified the ladder (chunked backward at loader-B12 IS the expected path; no-launch is only the low-single-digit-% bottom rung where even 3-sample chunks OOM, and any workaround there breaks matched-params ⇒ owner call); owner 22:35Z: “Noted on the batch size ladder, I agree with your strategy” + 👍 — the ladder is owner-approved. (b) Owner asked about Discord capabilities: answered (attachments yes via CDN URL; reactions were invisible) and landed reaction rendering in discord.py within the exchange (read+history now print reactions:; verified live on the owner’s own 👍; polling caveat documented — reactions surface within a tick, not instantly). Follow-up 22:38–22:39Z: owner asked if we can beat polling — decision (delegated “up to you”): keep REST polling, no gateway daemon (detection ≠ response; sessions are the response floor either way; charter run-only-what-changes-the-next-decision), with ticks now history-checking recent posts so late reactions surface within a tick (tick.md updated). Owner 22:39Z: “I’m ok with 10m delay fwiw” — settled. (c) read4_energy_score LANDED + VALIDATED per Amendment 2 before any probe data exists (degenerate draws=1: interaction exactly 0, ES ≡ direct RMS-L2, 6.6232 anchor intact, 6/6 checks OK; AR + banked-flow baselines join on the probe rows) — all four fairness reads are now execution-ready for the probe at ~06–09Z.

Same session, earlier (~22:20–22:35Z): (1) E4B pre-reg: verbatim mainline recipe + --backbone google/gemma-4-e4b-it (AR path verified fully config-driven — full-depth trunk, tail-anchored block base adapts, no expert/stream surface); eff-48 as owner-picked with a pre-registered chunked-backward fallback ladder (B12 direct → 2×6 → 3×4 → 4×3 at loader-B12, gradient ≡ B12 up to fp reduction order) because bijou.train has no grad-accum today and E2B B12 peaked 77.5 GiB with E4B text ~2.2× params — the impl + oracles is a pre-launch CPU item if the memory smoke OOMs. Both seams stated up front: the E2B reference’s own 48→40@20k batch seam (E4B holds +15% samples ⇒ kills conservative-valid, adopts carry the caveat) and the Δ19-episode probe-corpus seam (probe read at ±0.5 floor; the k4l2 panel — scored on this box copy by the owner today — is the seam-free decision instrument). Gates: @10k record-only, @30k kill if probe > 7.07 with 25k-panel cross-check, @50k re-check (>6.29), endpoint adopt iff panel beats 5.8026 by max(3·σ_seed, 0.15) with σ_seed from tonight’s E5 replicate reads via finalization amendment. Launch blocked on: box free + e4b ckpt download (NOT in box cache, ~16 GB) + parity spot-check + B12 memory smoke + amendment. (2) Lit slice (~20 min, was 2× overdue): [2606.31382] VLM-to-VLA parameter redundancy — bigger backbones do NOT consistently help action performance after adaptation (banked in #17: the kill branch is a live outcome; raises #11’s prior), and Energy Policy [2510.12483] → Amendment 2 posted before any per-draw data: read 4 = the energy score (RMS-normalized, valid-element mask, proper scoring rule — the principled middle between MAE and the best-of-N oracle; candidate distributional column for the comm holdout). read4_energy_score + degenerate validation must land before the probe npz is opened — queued as the next CPU work item alongside the E4B launch checklist. check.py green ×3 this session (184). Babysits 22:19/22:30/22:38Z: box ×4 healthy @21.0–25.7k, 0.38–0.40 s/step (B total 3.44@25.7k — still below every control action loss; s2 3.727@23k its best line yet); draws run 2 @20.2k/25.8k on pacing (ETA ~00:1xZ, then runs 3–5). GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (read4 impl DONE this session; chunked-backward impl if the smoke needs it, stage-2 sign pre-reg, box results post ~00–02Z then the E4B launch checklist) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 22:18Z (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy; PROBE <9 NOW TOUCHED BY ALL FOUR ARMS pre-24k — the <9@30k gate is effectively met batch-wide (A-s0 8.764@22k its first sub-9, B aux-off 8.757@23k with a noisy 8.821@23.5k bounce, s1 8.842@20k, s2 8.981@20.5k — B is inside the control probe envelope, sealing the B-early-lead-was-transient read). Box ×4 @21.0–23.8k, 0.38–0.40 s/step, util 46–99% sampling, ~71–74 GiB, grad norms nominal: A-s0 total 3.84@22.1k (action 3.57), s1 3.95@21k (action 3.64), s2 3.90@21k (action 3.60), B aux-off total 3.406@23.76k — still below every control’s action loss. Draws run 2 @17.95k/25.8k, log advancing on pacing (ETA ~23:50Z, then runs 3–5; the 0% util sample is the known between-batch idle). No Discord traffic. ~1.5 h to the first box arm completions (~5–6.5 h train + eval from 17:12Z → reads land roughly 00–02Z). GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (E4B screen pre-reg is the owner-picked next item, stage-2 sign pre-reg, lit slice TWO SESSIONS OVERDUE — must be taken) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 ~21:51–22:2xZ (real date -u) — work session: THE MODE-AVERAGING FAIRNESS INSTRUMENT IS EXECUTION-READY — the owner’s 21:49Z three pre-declared reads now have a data path (Amendment 1 on the noise-draw pre-reg). Instrument finding en route: the pre-declared “draws-10 per-draw dumps” could not have existed — the draws chain passes no dump flag, and --dump-predictions stores the post-average prediction; per-draw chunks died inside predict_with_text. Landed: (1) bijou.eval --dump-draws — pre-average [frames, draws, chunk, dim] npz + full identity columns (#18.1 conventions) + standalone scoring-semantics scalars, loud constraints (needs --checkpoint + --sample-draws > 1), threaded through the DDP shard merge; collapse_draws factored pure + unit-tested (dump averages back byte-identical to the prediction — the mean is still taken once on the full stack). (2) Probe frozen: stride-7 core subset plan (2,458 frames / 792 repos, deterministic builder) + launcher ~/eval_flow80k_drawsprobe_dump.sh (draws=10 heun-30, ~30 min 1×GPU, GPU-quiet guard, auto-runs the analysis; E1-style gate: draw-0 frame-MAE drift vs the banked flow npz < 0.05). (3) fontaine/scripts/draws_fairness.py — the three reads with the report’s exact valid-element pooling; joins probe rows to the banked AR/flow npzs on concat index with hard row-agreement asserts. Oracles: banked AR-100k panel rebuilt through the edited scoring path 12/12 cells d=0 (incl. 5.802585); degenerate draws=1 validation reproduces 6.6232 EXACTLY on reads 1+2 with all-zero dispersion. check.py green (184 tests, +5). Launch: first quiet local-GPU boundary after the draws chain (~06–09Z), before the results post. Babysits 21:52/22:1xZ: box ×4 healthy @20.3–23k, 0.39–0.42 s/step (one benign 5.6 s save blip on B; B aux-off total 3.487@23k, still at/below control action losses 3.63–3.68); draws run 2 @17.2k/25.8k 99% util (ETA ~23:50Z, then runs 3–5). OWNER STEERING 21:52–21:58Z (replied 22:2xZ, monitor polling 30 s): (a) E4B SCREEN PICKED — AR-100k on the freed 4×H100, matched parameters with the E2B AR-100k (recipe verified: --batch-size 12/GPU DDP4 = effective 48 — owner remembered 10; grad-accum fallback to effective 48 if E4B OOMs), gates = the MAE curve over time vs the banked E2B curve + mid-run panel evals with pre-registered bands. The E4B pre-reg is the next CPU work item. (b) Image-embedding budget = follow-on ablation arm on the winning trunk (banked in #17, pairs with #11 grounding). (c) Owner measured FAST round-trip ≈ error-free (+attachment) — quantization not the AR binding limit, banked in #8; fits the paired late-horizon read. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (E4B screen pre-reg next, stage-2 sign pre-reg, lit slice two sessions overdue) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 21:47–21:5xZ (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy; PROBE GATE <9@30k EFFECTIVELY MET EARLY ON TWO CONTROLS — s1 8.991@18k, s2 8.982@18k, the first sub-9 probes of the batch (A-s0 9.15@18.5k → 9.31@19k noisy bounce; B aux-off 9.58@20.5k — B is now the trailing probe arm despite being ~2k steps ahead, further strengthening the B-early-lead-was-transient read). Box ×4 @18.2–20.7k, 0.377–0.399 s/step, util 58–62%, ~71–74 GiB, grad norms nominal: A-s0 total 3.956@19.5k (action 3.642), s1 4.16@18.5k (action 3.816, one noisy line off 3.906/3.652), s2 4.01@18.2k (action 3.728), B aux-off total 3.665@20.66k — the action-loss margin keeps oscillating around zero at line noise (B 3.665 vs A-s0’s action 3.642). Draws run 2 @14.75k/25.8k, 99% util. LIVE EXCHANGE: owner 21:48:14Z (landed seconds after the cursor read) — challenge on the flow-vs-AR crossover: k≤3 @ 30 fps ≈ 100 ms, not a realistic replan horizon (inference would need <100 ms). Replied 21:5xZ agreeing with the arithmetic and the thrust: deployable regime is k≥5 where AR wins today; draws-10 is attribution, not a deployable config (N draws multiply decode cost); flow’s residual case = first_mae grounding edge + (if draws close the gap) SnapFlow 1-NFE distill + small N; otherwise attribution screens run on the AR recipe. Steering applied: weight the AR-side arm in the limit-attribution plan. Owner 21:49Z follow-up: is MAE unfair to flow — mode-averaging-forgiving? Replied: yes it’s the right worry and it’s measurable tonight on CPU from the draws-10 per-draw dumps — three pre-declared reads for the results post: (1) mean-of-draws MAE (ensembling ≈ manufacturing the mode-averaged predictor; closes gap ⇒ deficit was punished dispersion), (2) best-of-N MAE (oracle mode-match bound on ‘sampled-a-different-valid-mode’), (3) dispersion-conditioned deficit (the queued unimodality probe — deficit concentrating on high-disagreement frames = the unfair-penalty signature). Circumstantial fingerprint already present: flow wins horizon 0–1, deficit grows with horizon + motion quartile. Honest limit stated: MAE can’t settle actual performance, and the owner’s comm-MAE→rig bridge was built on AR checkpoints — if flow is being punished for multimodality, the comm holdout needs a distributional column (best-of-N / energy distance) before it can rank flow arms. Monitor polling the channel at 30 s while the exchange is live. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (stage-2 pre-reg, lit slice due, E4B screen launcher after box reads) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 ~21:5xZ (real date -u) — work session: IDEAS #16 INSTRUMENTS LANDED — the rig benchmark is execution-ready up to its two slots (Amendment 1). Plan frozen (plans/rig_fewshot_v0_k4l2.json: 12 holdout eps — v2 {1,2,3,6,11,15,20,24,25,30,41} + clean {2}, 48 core + 24 labeled, draws through build_plan itself); mechanism amendment posted before any model number: the draft’s bespoke SeedSequence holdout draw could not feed the leakage checker (its self-check demands the codebase-native split — #18.8’s anti-drift assert working as designed), so the holdout is the native split at 0.212/seed 16 = exactly the pre-registered 11+1 counts. Subsets materialized + verified (~/datasets/rig_fewshot_v0/: n10 6,223 / n25 15,881 / n45 29,107 frames; videos hardlinked → bit-identical pixels, verified on shifted mid-file decode both cameras; judgments episode-remapped; stats recomputed, oracle worst |Δ| 1.2e-4 vs both shipped stats.json). Leakage certs ×3 PASSED (first production consumers of the #18.8 provenance path; doctored-provenance negative control FAILS loud). Wrap census CLEAN on both rig repos (hygiene gate 1 done). Remaining before launch: launcher gen + finalization amendment (slots 1–2) after tonight’s box reads. Babysit ~21:50Z: box ×4 healthy @17.4–19.8k, 0.38–0.40 s/step (one benign 10.0 s save-boundary blip on s1), B aux-off total 3.58–3.60 @19.8k — back below every control’s action loss (3.64–3.79) after the 21:24Z margin-zero read; draws run 2 @13.6k/25.8k @100% util. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (launcher gen, stage-2 sign pre-reg, lit slice due next session) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 21:24Z (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy, no Discord traffic (only our own #16 pre-reg post). Box ×4 @16.2–18.5k, 0.374–0.382 s/step, util 57–99%, ~71–74 GiB, grad norms nominal: controls A-s0 total 4.04 @17.3k / s1 4.09 @16.5k / s2 4.08 @16.2k (action 3.64–3.80), B aux-off total 3.686 @18.5k — the aux-off action-loss margin has closed to ~zero at line noise (A-s0’s last line action 3.642 sits below B’s 3.686 total; per-line noise ~0.1). Probes now one interleaved band 9.2–10.2: s1 9.216@16k — new best across all arms, A-s0 10.21@17k (noisy bounce off its 9.4472@16.5k), s2 9.93@16k, B 9.80@18k (off its 9.59@17.5k) — the B-early-lead-was-transient read is now strongly supported; probe noise between consecutive evals is ±0.5–0.8, so the <9@30k gate is the next real checkpoint. Draws run 2 @12.4k/25.8k @100% util on the ~5 h pacing. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#16 follow-on instruments: subset materializer + plan builder; stage-2 sign pre-reg; lit slice due) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 ~21:3xZ (real date -u) — work session: IDEAS #16 PRE-REG DRAFT POSTED — the north-star benchmark design is frozen (post). Few-shot rig-transfer v0: sample-efficiency curve MAE(N), N ∈ {0,10,25,45}, over the 57 owner rig episodes — 12-ep fixed holdout (SeedSequence(16)), nested train subsets as materialized derived corpora with the #18.8 leakage gate (the first consumer of that work); owner run_ft_rig.sh protocol constants, 1×H100 B10, best-checkpoint-at-200 selection; co-primary chunk_mae + first-4 pooled MAE (k fixed per the flow-vs-AR crossover); 3·σ_ft decision rule with σ_ft from N25 seed replicates + an honest degrade rule if σ_ft > 0.5. Key design find: flow-80k is contaminated as a few-shot subject (rig data in its pretrain mix per the owner’s run_ft_rig_flow.sh header) — eligibility gate pre-registered; rcond-100k and all four box arms qualify. Two slots (init selection, E5 noise scale) fill by finalization amendment after tonight’s box reads; execution ≈ one evening on 1 GPU at the first quiet boundary. check.py green (179). Babysit 21:16Z: box ×4 healthy @15.5–17.8k, 0.376–0.387 s/step — A-s0 probe 9.4472@16.5k, first control under 9.5 and now below B’s 9.59@17.5k (the B-early-lead-was-transient read strengthens); B aux-off 3.689@17.8k still at/below every control’s action loss (controls 3.77–3.91); draws run 2 @11.5k/25.8k @100% util. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#16 follow-on instruments: subset materializer + plan builder; stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 21:14Z (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy, no Discord traffic; s1 watch item RESOLVED (log had advanced 15500→15720 — it was the probe/save boundary as suspected, not a stall). Box ×4 @15.5–17.5k, 0.377–0.387 s/step, util 63–99%, grad norms nominal: controls A-s0 total 4.12 @16.5k / s1 4.11 @15.7k / s2 4.23 @15.5k (action 3.73–3.91), B aux-off total 3.685 @17.5k — still at/below every control’s action loss (margin ~0.05 vs s1’s 3.73, continuing to narrow). Probe: B 9.59@17.5k — B’s first sub-10 probe (joins s2’s 9.92@14.5k), trending toward the <9@30k gate. Draws run 2 @11.4k/25.8k @100% util on the ~5 h pacing. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#16 rig benchmark pre-reg draft, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next already armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 21:12Z (real date -u) — work session: IDEAS #18.8 LANDED (leakage identity branch verified, not assumed) + the standing literature slice taken. #18.8 (journal): bijou.eval.leakage’s same-repo-id branch now asserts episode-count equality vs the panel copy AND compares per-episode length fingerprints (jsonl v2 / parquet v3; asymmetric metadata fatal; same-dir shortcut) — a filtered-and-renumbered corpus keeping its repo id can no longer certify a false PASS. Mismatch = SystemExit demanding source_provenance.json. +4 tests (179 green), check.py green; full-corpus identity cert re-run PASSED (5267 radioactive / 47240 checked, 4.1 s); mutated-count production copy fails loud. Unblocks derived-corpus training (#9, #13 repair). Literature slice (~20 min, banked in ideas + journal): SnapFlow (2604.05656) — self-distill flow VLAs to 1-NFE, no teacher, ~12 h/1 GPU, π0.5 1-step ≈ 10-step teacher, SmolVLA-validated ⇒ ideas #12’s distillation leg is now an in-budget arm; LoRA-π0 (2607.10172) — r=32 saturation, frozen vision encoder degrades (external support for #11’s grounding-bottleneck read) ⇒ ft-protocol arm for #16. Babysits 21:04/21:10/21:11Z: box ×4 healthy @15.2–17.5k, 0.38–0.40 s/step (B aux-off total 3.69 @17.5k — still at/below every control’s action loss (3.69–3.79), margin narrowing; watch item: s1 log paused @15500 across two polls ~90 s apart, util fine — likely the 15.5k probe/save boundary, next tick verifies advance); draws run 2 @11.1k/25.8k on the ~5 h pacing. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#16 rig benchmark pre-reg draft, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 21:05Z (real date -u) — tick: both chains healthy, no Discord traffic (the one new message was our own #18.2 post). Box ×4 @14.5–16.7k, 0.37–0.39 s/step (one benign 10.2 s probe/save-boundary blip on s2): controls A-s0 total 4.22 @15.5k / s1 4.23 @15k / s2 4.00 @14.5k (action 3.83–3.90), B aux-off total 3.66 @16.7k — still below every control’s action loss. Probe: s2 9.92@14.5k — first arm under 10, trending well toward the <9@30k gate. Draws run 2 at 10.3k/25.8k @99% util on the ~5 h pacing. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#16 rig benchmark pre-reg draft, #18.8 leakage assert, stage-2 sign pre-reg, literature slice due) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 ~21:25Z-labeled (really ~20:55Z) — work session: IDEAS #18.2 (FLOW-NOISE STABLE-TRIPLE RESEED) LANDED BEHIND A FLAG, BREAK PRE-REGISTERED (amendment). The deep-dive’s top finding fixed at the design level: bijou.eval gains --noise-key {index,stable} — stable keys each frame’s flow noise to blake2b(repo_id, episode, frame) through a numpy SeedSequence (128-bit keying, draw number as entropy: no torch 32-bit manual_seed trap, no DRAW_SEED_STRIDE, no birthday collisions), making flow numbers corpus-composition-invariant. Default stays index (byte-identical to every banked anchor) until the pre-registered flip: first anchor boundary after the box reads, one flow-80k panel re-bank, decision band 6.6232 ± 3·max(0.045, empirical σ_draw from tonight's draws chain), state-copy/AR bitwise-identity as hard controls. Report JSON + banner now record noise_key; SmolVLA path threaded; Q3 forced pass verified to share noise under both keyings. Oracle: AR-100k panel recomputed bit-exact through the edited path (12/12 cells d=0 incl. the 5.8026 anchor); 7 new unit tests (175 green), check.py green. Babysits en route (~20:45Z, ~21:20Z): box ×4 healthy @14.5–16.5k, 0.38–0.40 s/step — B aux-off total 3.80 @16.5k, still below every control’s action loss (3.83–3.88 @14.5–15.5k); draws run 2 at ~10k/25.8k @99% util on the ~5 h pacing. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#16 rig benchmark pre-reg draft, #18.8 leakage assert, stage-2 sign pre-reg) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 20:38Z (real date -u — NB the previous entry’s “~20:55Z real clock” label was stamped ~20 min ahead of reality; clock-label skepticism stays warranted) — tick: both chains healthy, no Discord traffic. Box ×4 @12.5–14.5k, 0.37–0.42 s/step (one benign 11.3 s save-boundary blip on s2), util 64–94%, ~71–74 GiB: controls A-s0 total 4.26 @13.5k / s1 4.28 @13k / s2 4.36 @12.5k (action 3.91–4.00), B aux-off total 3.81 @14.5k — still below every control’s action loss. Probes converged into one band: A-s0 10.55@12.5k (10.99@13k), s1 10.69@12.5k, s2 10.18@12.5k, B 10.95@14k — B inside the control envelope, all trending toward the <9@30k gate. Draws run 2 at 7.5k/25.8k @97% util on the ~5 h pacing. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#18.2 reseed design, #16 rig benchmark pre-reg draft, #18.8 leakage assert) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 ~20:55Z-labeled (really ~20:35Z) — work session: IDEAS #18.1 (INSTRUMENT HARDENING PASS) LANDED (post). Five additive fixes from the deep-dive fix queue, all CPU: (1) --aux-prompt-hash now reaches the in-run probe selection AND offline eval (new bijou.eval flag) — train and instrument can no longer silently disagree on the prompt distribution; (2) resolve_plan bounds-checks frame_index (truncated-episode trap now fails loudly); (3) score_frame refuses zero-valid frames (no more perfect-0.0 hole); (4) report JSON records full scoring semantics (exclude/aux_prompt_hash/sample_steps/method/draws/generate/ condition_override/batch/world — Q3 counterfactuals now identifiable from the artifact); (5) npz dumps gain episode_index/frame_index identity columns through the shard merge. Oracle: banked AR-100k panel report recomputed bit-exact through the edited scoring path (12/12 cells d=0, incl. the 5.8026 anchor); 3 new unit tests, 168 total, check.py green. Deep-dive finding 6b (leakage same-repo-id assert) explicitly NOT in this pass → ideas #18.8. Babysits en route (20:26Z, 20:33Z): box ×4 healthy @12.0–14.0k, 0.37–0.42 s/step — B aux-off total 3.80 @14k, still below every control’s action loss (3.91–3.98 @12.4–13.2k); A-s0 probe 10.55@12.5k (next gate <9@30k); draws run 2 at 7.1k/25.8k @99% util on the ~5 h pacing. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (#18.2 Q3/reseed design, #16 benchmark pre-reg draft) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update 2026-08-05 20:26Z (real clock) — tick: both chains healthy, no Discord traffic. Box ×4 @11.7–13.5k, 0.38–0.42 s/step, util 56–100% sampling: controls A-s0 total 4.26 / s1 4.31 / s2 4.26 (action 3.93–3.99), B aux-off total 3.87 @13.5k — still below every control’s action loss; A-s0 probe 10.55@12.5k (next gate <9@30k), grad norms nominal. Draws run 2 at 6.3k/25.8k @99% util, ~24% in ~1.1 h — consistent with the ~5 h pacing, ETA ~00:1xZ. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (ideas #18 cheap hardening pass) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update ~20:30Z — work session: IDEA #2a (LENGTH-BUCKETED BATCHING) LANDED — and the sim says DON’T spend a GPU screen on it under the current recipe. Post. --bucket-by-length in bijou.train (default OFF): LengthBucketedBatchSampler (megabatch grouping by effective camera count, deterministic per seed+epoch, DDP round-robin), 6 unit tests, check.py green, all three CPU loss oracles bit-exact with the flag off (2.7903/1.9152, 4.9232/4.8631, 27.8262/27.7701), gradflow probe green, CPU smoke with flag ON works. Headline finding (metadata sim, fontaine/scripts/bucketing_padding_sim.py): the recipe’s own --camera-counts 1 2 filter kills the payoff — padding inflation is +5.09% → ceiling ~3.6% step-time (< the 5% deprioritize line), vs the full-corpus census (3–4-cam datasets in) where it’s +32.55% → −23.8% padded tokens ≈ 19% ceiling. Decision pre-registered in the post: no GPU A/B for current lineages; the first widened-selection run family runs the 1k-step A/B before adopting (≥10% adopts); paired arms must always share the flag; 2b (compile) decouples. Ideas #2 → screening. Clock recalibration: the box wall clock says ~30–45 min EARLIER than recent entry labels (the fd5888e “20:05–20:30Z” commit stamped 19:56Z) — times from here on are real date -u; babysits this session 19:59Z + 20:17Z, both chains healthy (box ×4 @10.0–12.9k, 0.37–0.40 s/step, s1 probe 11.01@10k — the last <12@10k gate PASSED, placeholder below fixed; B total 3.93@12.9k still below every control’s action loss; draws run 2 @5.5k/25.8k, 100% util). No Discord traffic.

Previous update (mislabeled ~20:45Z, real ~19:45Z) — tick: both chains healthy, probe gate <12@10k PASSED on all four box arms — A-s0 11.71@10k, s1 11.01@10k (was the watch item at 12.64@9k — dropped to 11.82@9.5k, then under the gate; placeholder from the 20:45Z tick fixed with the measured value), s2 11.30@9.5k, B aux-off 11.64@11k. B’s early probe lead is GONE: it now sits inside the control envelope (11.3–11.8) — the E3 @2.5k offset (16.9 vs 24.3) was a transient, exactly the “does A close the gap by 10–20k” branch; primary read stays the 40k panel pair. B’s total loss 3.94@11k still below every control’s action loss (4.05–4.12@10k). Pace 0.38 s/step ×4 (one benign 10.3 s blip on B at a save boundary). Draws run 2 at 3.2k/25.8k @99% util, on the ~5 h pacing. No Discord traffic. GPUs busy + CPU queue non-empty (idea #2 impl, #18 hardening) → run_work_next armed per no-idle-pauses.

Previous update ~20:25Z — work session: FLOW-VS-AR PAIRED ANALYSIS DONE (queue #4, CPU while both GPU chains ran). Post; script fontaine/scripts/flow_vs_ar_paired.py; all four pooled anchors reproduced to 1e-4 first (pooling = core frames only, 17,204 — the report’s frames field gave it away). Headline: the 0.82 pooled gap is a horizon story — flow beats AR at horizon steps 0–1, crosses at step 2, diverges monotonically to +1.2 by step 40. Deployment view (execute-k-then-replan): flow wins k≤3, tie at k=4, AR wins k≥5 — chunk_mae is the k=50 (most AR-favorable) point, so for short-replan rig control flow-80k is ahead today. Cuts: flow win rate 36.5% of frames; deficit grows with motion (+0.59 still → +0.92 top quartile); 57/366 repos flow-favorable, per-repo spread ±2–4 dwarfs the mean. Prediction banked in ideas #1 before the draws numbers land: ensembling should move chunk_mae ≫ first_mae; scoring note in #12 (score solver arms per-step); metric note in #16 (rig pre-reg must fix k). Babysits en route: box healthy ×4 @9.5–10.2k (probe convergence — B’s early lead is gone: A-s0 11.77@9.5k / s2 11.86@8.5k / B 11.83@10k; s1 12.64@9k trending down, watch vs the <12@10k gate; B aux-off total 3.99–4.08 @10.2k still below every control’s action loss); draws run 2 at ~2.1k/25.8k frames, util sampling 59–95% healthy. (owner mandate 17:50–18:01Z; resumed from the 429-killed draft). Six parallel web deep-reads + one follow-up, per the owner’s method (arXiv paper + fetched config.json per candidate, post-cutoff epistemics). Post; ranked queue mirrored into ideas #17. Headline finds: (1) Molmo2-4B (Ai2, Dec 2025 — surfaced by the completeness sweep, not the seed list): best-in-tier 15-bench avg 62.8 vs Qwen3-VL-4B 58.1, video-trained with spatio-temporal pointing/tracking, Apache weights. (2) Molmo2-4B, InternVL3.5-4B and Qwen3-VL-4B share one decoder (Qwen3-4B, 36/2560/GQA 32:8/head_dim 128) — one port + parity harness amortizes across all three. (3) InternVL3.5 ships a true -Pretrained base ckpt — the only modern-4B vehicle for idea #10. (4) V-JEPA 2.1 (Mar 2026) trains mid-layers predictive (deep self-supervision) — tailor-made for export-stream reads; 2-AC = <62 h robot video → zero-shot Franka. (5) Owner-flagged Ministral 3 3B: clean arch + base ckpt but images-only — screened out. Verdict: E4B rung first (zero cost), then Molmo2-4B, then InternVL3.5-4B (base-vs-IT), V-JEPA 2.1 arm in parallel; Qwen3-VL-4B reserve. No Qwen3.5-VL exists (checked). Babysits en route: box healthy ×4 @8.0–9.1k (B aux-off 4.043 @9.1k, still below every control’s action loss); draws run 2 healthy @94–99% util but pacing ~1.4 frames/s ⇒ ~5 h for the draws-10 run, not ~1.5–2 h — chain-done estimate slips from ~03:30Z to ~09Z-ish (util pegged; it’s just 10× sampling compute — noted, not a problem).*

Previous update ~19:30Z — tick: owner 19:19Z: the 429 was an Anthropic credit run-out, now topped up — “shouldn’t be an issue any longer.” So the usage-cap kill is fully explained (not a session limit pattern to plan around) and the chained work session needn’t wait for the 19:40Z reset — marker armed 19:30Z, trunk survey resumes immediately from the on-disk draft. Both chains healthy: box ×4 @7.9–9.0k, 0.38 s/step, controls 4.47–4.62 (action 4.13–4.19), B aux-off 4.097 @9k — still below every control’s action loss; draws chain run 2 (draws=10 heun-30) scoring @99% util, ~832/25.8k frames. Acked in-channel.

Previous update ~19:25Z — tick: harness alert diagnosed — the 19:08Z work session (trunk survey) died on the USAGE CAP (429 “session limit, resets 19:40Z”; not auth — one-off, no repeat expected after reset). Survey draft (rubric + method skeleton, candidates empty) is on disk uncommitted → committed this tick; chained work session resumes it after 19:40Z (tick holds open past the reset so the chain doesn’t 429 on launch). Draws chain E1 gate PASSED: run 1 (N=1 heun-30) chunk_mae 6.624 vs owner box 6.6232 (Δ0.001, band ±0.03), first_mae 1.933 ≡ owner’s 1.9331 — cross-box instrument reproducibility confirmed; chain advanced to draws=10 (run 2/5, ~1.5–2 h each, chain done ~03:30Z). Box healthy ×4 @7.0–8.3k, 0.38 s/step: controls 4.60–4.67 (action 4.23–4.24), B aux-off 4.169 total — still below every control’s action loss at 8k. Posted in-channel.

Previous update ~19:10Z — work session: bijou deep-dive DONE (owner 16:17Z steer). All 57 files / 22.3k lines reviewed (6 parallel subsystem readers, headline claims hand-verified, one reviewer claim refuted). No P0 — the measurement core survives adversarial reading and no current number is invalidated. Deliverable: ranked findings post; fix queue = ideas.md #18 (headliners: flow eval noise keyed to corpus-relative index ⇒ flow anchors valid only at frozen corpus composition, fix = versioned amendment; 3 resume traps — blocks idea #3 until hardened; Q3 flow tripwire can’t fire; rollout has no absolute clamp — blocks first physical run; idea #2 compile-blocker map + idea #8 chunked-CE design banked). Runs @19:04Z: box healthy ×4 (B aux-off 4.14 @7.3k, still below every control’s action loss; benign probe-straggler + grad-blip lines noted), draws run 1 20.2k/25.8k @99% — E1 number ~19:35Z, tick watches. No Discord traffic.

Previous update ~18:47Z (work session: charter v1.1 — the owner-steered rules pass is DONE — eight steering deltas codified into charter + prompts (journal, charter §11 amendment log); check.py back to green (sealed_v2_anchor lint debt fixed, repool verified unchanged).)

⚡ The second box (192.222.55.210) — batch RUNNING

Pre-reg: box batch (commit cc0b922, posted before launch). Four 1×H100 40k runs launched 17:12Z in per-GPU tmux sessions (launch_box_gpu{0..3}_*):

GPUrunseedtmux / log
0A-s0 control0~/train_fontaine_arb_rcond_40k_1xh100.log
1B-s0 aux-off0~/train_fontaine_arb_rcond_auxoff_40k_1xh100.log
2A-s1 control1..._s1.log
3A-s2 control2..._s2.log
  • E1 hard gate PASSED on all four (17:15Z): 878 datasets / 38,571 train + 4,301 holdout = 42,872 episodes / dims 6/6 / 103 dropped — identical, and B-s0’s log carries no aux line while A’s shows fields + weight 0.5. Box data copy verified against local (listing diff = inert provenance/ tarball only).
  • E2 first-poll PASSED (17:18Z, util rule): all four stepping at 0.43–0.54 s/step (band 0.4–0.7 — no contention penalty so far), VRAM ~64–67 GiB, util 53–94% sampling jitter, loss falling from ~21 on all arms; B-s0’s step lines carry no loss_aux, replicates do. wandb runs: vr8b8hpy (A-s0), skdz5ppa (B-s0), 790g1ccm (s1), d0xmdcnz (s2), project fontaine.
  • Each GPU chains its panel eval (k4l2, --dump-predictions) after 40k. ~5–6.5 h train + ~1.7 h eval ⇒ all reads by ~02Z.
  • Babysit every ~30 min of session time: liveness + s/step (0.4–0.7 healthy, >0.8 sustained = starvation → fix at boundary)
    • probe curve vs anchors (<12 @10k, <9 @30k; B within ±0.3 of A). Kill gates in launcher headers; A-s0 killed ⇒ kill B-s0 (pair void), replicates continue.
  • 18:05Z babysit: healthy ×4 (steps 2.5–3k, 0.37–0.39 s/step, util 68–93%, ~70 GiB each; losses ~21 → 5.2–5.4). E3 already broken at 2.5k, in B’s favor: probe B-s0 16.85 vs A-s0 24.32 (matched step; B 15.53 @3k) — aux-off descends much faster early. No kill gate tripped; primary read stays the 40k panel pair. Surprise logged (journal); babysit watch item: does A-s0 close the gap by 10–20k (transient) or does the offset hold to 40k (then E4 “within noise” is likely falsified — a real attribution finding either way).
  • 18:49Z tick: healthy ×4 (steps 5.0–6.0k, 0.37–0.41 s/step, util 68–74%, ~70 GiB). Losses: controls 4.80–4.87 (action 4.39–4.44), B aux-off 4.18 total (no aux term) — still below every control’s action loss at 6k; grad norms nominal (one 23.4 blip on s1, loss unaffected). No kill gates near. Draws chain run 1 alive at 11k/25.8k, 100% util — E1 number expected ~19:20Z.
  • 18:12Z tick: healthy ×4 (steps 2.5–3.5k, 0.38 s/step, util 65–83%). Matched-2500 probe now complete across all four: controls A-s0 24.32 / s1 29.72 / s2 29.69 (seed envelope [24.3, 29.7] — early probes are noisy, ±0.3 band was optimistic for early steps), B-s0 16.85 — ~7.5 below the best control, well outside the seed envelope. The E3 early aux-off lead survives the noise-floor check.
  • rsync-back live: local tmux fontaine-rsync (~/boxsync_loop.sh, 20-min cadence): logs + eval reports + latest two saves per run → ~/boxsync/.
  • Owner constraint (17:02Z): do NOT delete the box’s existing fine-tune checkpoints (owner rsync in flight). No cleanup of any kind runs on that box.
  • Code on box: branch fontaine @ cc0b922 (pushed over direct SSH; box .venv reused — torch 2.11.0+cu130 both boxes, no seam).

What the LOCAL GPU is doing: noise-draw chain (launched 18:25Z)

Sealed baseline DONE 18:24Z — anchors banked (next section). Immediately after, per plan: noise-draw ensembling chain live, tmux fontaine-eval-draws (~/eval_flow80k_draws_panel.sh, 5 runs ≈ 9 h → done ~03:30Z). First-poll check passed: run 1 (N=1 heun-30, the E1 instrument-gate run) scoring at 100% util, 9.2 GiB. The launcher itself stops the chain if E1 fails (N=1 must reproduce 6.6232 ±0.03 — owner’s 12:20Z box eval). Per-run logs ~/eval__bijou_flow_artrunk...draws{N}_{solver}.log. Babysit: chain liveness + per-run E1/E3 numbers as they land; unimodality probe (per-draw dumps) runs before the results post, next work session.

  • 19:20Z: E1 GATE PASSED — run 1 chunk_mae 6.624 (owner box 6.6232, Δ0.001 ≪ ±0.03 band), first_mae 1.933; state-copy 11.785; Q3 condition sensitivity 0.898 over 5,070 labeled non-success frames. Report + html in local reports/. Chain on run 2 (draws=10 heun-30) — load phase at 19:19Z, util confirmed post-load this tick.

Sealed-panel anchors — BANKED 18:24Z (posted in-channel)

From reports/eval__bijou_arb_rcond_100k_ddp4__step_100000__panel_curated_v0_k4l2_sealed.json (25.8k scored frame-policies, 17,204 pooled frames/policy):

policyv1 (as drawn)v2 (census repos removed)
bijou@100k5.75405.6903 (±5e-3 method)
bijou@100k+fields5.74825.6962 (±3e-3)
state-copy11.663511.5883 (±4e-2)
  • v1 in band: expectation was 5.8017 ±0.15 → gap −0.048 ✅; state-copy −0.12 vs the primary draw (two draws agree well).
  • +fields indistinguishable from bare bijou (−0.006) — consistent with the mainline “aux within noise at the endpoint” read.
  • v1→v2 shift ≈ −0.07, matching the amendment’s prediction; method error ~15× smaller than the shift (amendment).

Banked this session (no GPU needed): 80k flow panel number

Queue #3 dissolved — the owner had already panel-scored flow-80k on the box today 12:20Z (heun-30, panel k4l2, with --dump-predictions), alongside a same-day AR-100k panel rerun with dumps:

  • flow-80k @ heun-30: chunk_mae 6.6232, first_mae 1.9331
  • AR-100k: chunk_mae 5.8026 (anchor, bitwise), first_mae 2.1431
  • state-copy summaries bitwise-identical across the two reports ⇒ the npzs pair per-frame. Flow still trails AR by 0.82 pooled but beats it on first_mae (1.93 vs 2.14, the grounding-sensitive column).

All eight files pulled to local reports/ (17:14Z). Queued CPU analysis: paired per-frame flow-vs-AR deltas (where does flow win?) — feeds a results post + the solver/ensembling ideas (#1, #12).

Work session ~18:45–19:05Z — the rules pass (charter v1.1)

One bounded item per the owner’s order (18:36Z: “let’s start with the rules pass”): reviewed charter + all prompts against the day’s accumulated steering; eight deltas codified (charter §11 amendment log; journal narrative): §0 north star + startup velocity, §1 loaned compute, §2 measure-versioning + rig-instrument clarification, §3 first-poll util + no-idle-pauses standing rule, §6 post-cutoff epistemics, §9 chaining semantics + Discord house style; tick.md/work.md updated to chain work whenever GPUs are busy and CPU items are queued. check.py red→green en route (sealed_v2_anchor lint; repool output verified unchanged, v2 5.6903 reproduces). Both run chains re-checked twice (18:40Z, 19:00Z), healthy. Marker armed → bijou deep-dive chains next.

Earlier work session (17:03Z→) — what happened

  1. Read the owner’s 17:02Z constraint (keep box fine-tune ckpts) — honored: zero deletes on the box.
  2. Verified box: 4×H100 idle, creds present (netrc/HF), torch parity, dataset copy parity (283 dirs, 600G; local-only provenance/ tarball inert), owner’s checkout behind → pushed fontaine over SSH, checked out cc0b922, imports OK.
  3. Wrote + posted the batch pre-reg (execution supersedes the local sequential plan; science of the paired pre-reg unchanged; new E5 = seed-noise floor with pre-registered decision rule). Banner added to the paired pre-reg. check.py green.
  4. Generated 4 per-GPU launchers (diff-verified: replicates differ only in GPU/seed/name; B differs only by dropped aux flags), launched 17:12Z, E1 gate passed on all four.
  5. Discovered the owner’s existing flow-80k + AR-100k panel reports on the box → banked the numbers above, pulled the npzs.
  6. rsync-back loop started (fontaine-rsync tmux).

Bootstrap scoreboard (charter §10)

  • §10.1–§10.6 — done (sealed anchor banked 18:24Z: v1 5.7540 / v2 5.6903).
  • §10.7 first experiment — RUNNING (paired aux-off + replicates on the box; 48 h clock started at the smoke test — beaten).

Owner steering log (active items)

  • 21:43Z (conversational, replied 21:45Z, exchange live): MAJOR REWEIGHT — #16 rig-benchmark execution PARKED, short-term focus = comm-holdout MAE + limit attribution. Owner: rig datasets small/noisy, 12-ep holdout high-variance; a better rig dataset comes later; “lower MAE on the comm holdout always translated to good fine-tunes on my rig.” Attribution questions to attack: bigger trunk / bigger image embeddings / video-trained trunk / is flow even needed vs pure AR — these map to ideas #17 (E4B → Molmo2 → InternVL3.5, V-JEPA 2.1), #11 (grounding; owner’s failure anecdote is gripper placement, i.e. grounding), #12/#1 (flow-vs-AR + ensembling). Aux anecdote banked: 4k ft on AR-100k produced sensible subgoals for a fully-OOD instruction (USB-C cable / terrarium) — the language-generalization north-star behavior exists already. Proposed in-channel: E4B trunk-swap screen as the next pre-reg after box reads (or grounding arms — awaiting owner pick). #16 instruments stay banked (corpus-agnostic, minutes to re-run on the future dataset).

  • 18:32–18:36Z (conversational, replied in-channel): (a) owner interested in idea #2 results (bucketed batching + torch.compile prefix) — status given (impl any work session, A/B needs a quiet GPU boundary ⇒ after box reads land); (b) keep review order, rules pass first (confirmed); (c) STANDING RULE: no idle pauses while GPUs are busy — owner: “we should be able to do a lot of work items while the GPUs are busy… unnecessary pauses right now.” Adopted: GPU-busy windows = CPU work-item windows; run_work_next touched 18:38Z, work session chains immediately (order: rules pass → bijou deep-dive → trunk survey → flow-vs-AR analysis → idea #2 impl). Save to memory.

  • 17:50–18:01Z (conversational, replied in-channel): (a) trunk survey mandate — deep review of in-scope open-weights models: budget <7B, ideally ~3B, video-trained preferred; method per owner 18:01Z: read the arXiv paper (if any) + HF config per candidate, not just model cards. Multi-turn = later-stage research area (noted, not started). → queued in the owner-steered reviews block (item 5c). (b) Ministral 3 3B flagged by owner — first-read posted (3.4B LM + 0.4B vision enc, 256k ctx, Apache 2.0, Dec 2025 = post-cutoff; images only, no video/audio on the card; arch details undisclosed → config read needed). Candidate on size/license; misses the video-trained preference. (c) owner asked after the rules/prompts + bijou reviews — answered honestly (not done; eaten by box launch + Gemma 4 docs); committed in-channel to a chained work session (run_work_next touched 17:58Z) with order: rules/prompts pass → bijou deep-dive → trunk survey → literature slice.

  • 17:31Z: research the Gemma 4 lineage (owner: PLE only on E2B/E4B, 12B unified-multimodal no-audio, “MoE I think?”; read the HF blog) → DONE this tick: blog read, docs/gemma4.md family section rewritten with all 5 variants (E2B/E4B/12B Unified/26B-A4B/31B, params, ctx, modalities). Blog corrections posted in-channel: PLE is in E2B/E4B and 12B; 12B does take audio (raw waveforms linearly projected, encoder-free); only 26B-A4B is MoE (8/128 experts, 4B active). Summary posted 17:41Z.

  • 17:26Z: Gemma 4 is post-cutoff — never reason from Gemma-3 priors (I wrote “Gemma-3-class” in ideas #17). → DONE this tick: docs/gemma4.md written (code-derived from bijou/gemma4/), wake-up memory gemma4-post-cutoff installed (loaded every session via MEMORY.md), ideas #17 line fixed to “larger Gemma-4 variants (E4B/12B)”. Also 17:26Z: 👍 on the “run only what changes the next decision” rule — no action.

  • 17:20–17:23Z: three big steers, all acted on this session: (1) “You push” the README → DONE, dataset-repo commit a9f652f (known-issues section + pre-removal revision hash 250f6ed2c45c… recorded in it). (2) Remove the census repos from the sealed plan → DONE: plans/holdout_curated_v0_k4l2_sealed_v2.json (core −52 frames / 13 eps, labeled −26; amendment posted; v1 deprecated; v2 anchor re-pools from the v1 report’s per-dataset means when the running eval lands — note: sealed run has NO npz dump; the recompute (fontaine/scripts/sealed_v2_anchor.py, sanity-checked against the primary report) is approximate, not exact as earlier claimed — the pooled summary weights by valid chunk elements, not frames, so re-pooling per-dataset means reproduces it only to ~5e-3 (bijou) / ~4e-2 (state-copy); method error ~15× smaller than the −0.07 v1→v2 shift, negligible vs the 0.15 band, quoted with the anchor). (3) North star declared: a VLA for the owner’s rig — prove few-shot transfer (new SO101 arm, tens of episodes) → saved to memory + ideas.md #16 (benchmark pre-reg to write after the box batch lands); backlog reweighted toward rig transfer.

  • 17:08Z: (a) update the dataset README — draft posted in-channel 17:2xZ; owner 17:18Z: “README section text is good 🎉” → resolved by 17:20Z “you push” above. (a2) 17:16Z Discord formatting — owner: posts render as text blobs; adopted Discord-markdown house style (headers/bullets/ backticks, ≤2000 chars, long-form on the blog) + saved to memory. (b) sealed plan “overly strict” — steering adopted: outcomes measurable + pre-registered, but the sealed plan is versioned; a wrong measure is fixed by a posted amendment (sealed_v2 + reason + fresh anchors, v1 deprecated loudly), never silent edits. Codify in the rules pass (queued next session). Concrete case queued: post-removal sealed_v2 redraw with census-predicted baseline pre-registered first.

  • 17:02Z: box fine-tune checkpoints must survive (owner rsync in flight) — honored; no deletes ever on that box.

  • 16:50Z dataset cleanup (kevin510/bbox-2 upstream removal): sequencing proposed in-channel, unconfirmed. Boundary extended to the box copy: no re-pull/mutation of community_curated_v0 on EITHER box until the batch arms + reads are done. Record the pre-removal HF revision hash before any upstream push lands.

  • 16:52Z 80k checkpoint: resolved — owner’s own panel eval found on the box (numbers above); remaining work is CPU analysis, no GPU eval needed.

  • 16:21Z rules/prompts review: DONE ~19:00Z (charter v1.0 → v1.1) — amendment list in charter §11, narrative in journal; prompts (tick.md/work.md) updated to the no-idle-pauses chain.

  • 16:17Z bijou code deep-dive: DONE ~19:10Z — ranked post; no P0, fix queue in ideas #18.

  • 16:19Z literature slice (~20–30 min most sessions): SPENT ~19:35–20:00Z — the trunk survey (a full literature item) closed the four-session gap; standing allocation resumes normal cadence next session.

Queue (depth 5)

  1. Babysit the box batch + the local draws chain (every ~30 min session time). Box: see box section. Draws chain: liveness + E1 gate result on run 1 (~20:00Z), then per-run numbers. At box arm completion: check panel evals ran, then the results post: primary read A-s0 vs B-s0 + E5 noise floor (decision rule in the pre-reg) — closes idea #6’s 40k rung.
  2. Sealed anchor DONE 18:24Z — banked + posted (section above).
  3. Noise-draw chain launch RUNNING (launched 18:25Z; see local-GPU section). Remaining: unimodality probe before the results post.
  4. Paired flow-vs-AR per-frame analysis DONE ~20:25Z — post; horizon-crossover finding; predictions banked into ideas #1/#12/#16.
  5. Owner-steered reviews (chained work sessions, in order): (a) rules/prompts full pass DONE ~19:00Z (charter v1.1), (b) bijou deep-dive DONE ~19:10Z (ranked post; fix queue = ideas #18), (c) trunk survey DONE ~20:00Z (post; ranked queue in ideas #17: E4B → Molmo2-4B → InternVL3.5-4B → V-JEPA 2.1 arm; Qwen3-VL-4B reserve; the E4B screen pre-reg is the natural next queue-refill item once box reads land), (d) flow-vs-AR per-frame analysis DONE ~20:25Z (queue #4, post), (e) idea #2a bucketing implementation DONE ~20:30Z (post; GPU screen pre-registered CONDITIONALLY — sub-threshold under the current recipe, sim banked instead). Then: ideas #18 cheap hardening pass (next CPU work item), idea #2b compile (decoupled, needs design vs the blocker map).
  6. Stage-2 sign-convention pre-reg draft (mirror trio) — backlog.
  7. Ideas #16 rig benchmark: pre-reg draft POSTED ~21:3xZ; subset materializer + plan builder + leakage certs + wrap census LANDED + CERTIFIED ~21:5xZ (Amendment 1 on the post; n10/n25/n45 under ~/datasets/rig_fewshot_v0/). EXECUTION PARKED per owner 21:43Z (instruments banked, corpus-agnostic); launcher gen + finalization deferred until the better rig dataset.
  8. Comm-MAE limit-attribution front (owner 21:43Z) — E4B screen pre-reg POSTED ~22:4xZ (post). The freed 4×H100 at ~02Z goes here. Chunked-backward impl + oracles LANDED ~23:0xZ unconditionally (--backward-chunks; Amendment 1 on the pre-reg corrects the chunk-mean sketch — global-count normalization, exact for unequal token counts; check.py 191 green): an OOM at the smoke now costs zero launch delay. Remaining before launch: results post for the box batch, e4b ckpt download, parity spot-check, B12 memory smoke, finalization amendment (σ_seed from the E5 reads + ladder rung). read4_energy_score LANDED 23:0xZ-labeled session (real ~22:15Z) — all four fairness reads execution-ready.
  9. Ideas #18 instrument hardening: the cheap pass (#18.1) DONE ~20:55Z (post; oracle bit-exact, check.py green). Remaining GPU-busy CPU items: #18.2 flow-noise reseed design/amendment draft (execution waits for the anchor boundary after box reads), #16 rig-transfer benchmark pre-reg draft, #18.8 leakage 6b assert, stage-2 sign-convention pre-reg (item 6).

Handoff notes for the tick loop

Sealed handoff EXECUTED 18:24–18:27Z (anchors banked/posted, draws chain launched, first-poll passed). Tick loop now watches two things: the box batch (one-liner below) and the draws chain (tmux has-session -t fontaine-eval-draws; latest ~/eval__*draws*.log tail; measured pacing 19:52Z: draws-10 runs are ~5 h each, not the planned ~1.5–2 h — chain-done ~09Z-ish; a long-running run 2 is healthy, don’t diagnose. Log lines land in ~160-frame batches ~45 s apart and util can sample 0% between batches — check twice before calling a stall. If the chain stopped early, check whether the E1 gate tripped: that is a finding, post it, don’t relaunch).

Box babysit one-liner (tick or work): ssh ubuntu@192.222.55.210 'tail -2 ~/train_fontaine_*.log; nvidia-smi --query-gpu=index,utilization.gpu,memory.used --format=csv,noheader'

Known safe-to-ignore: wandb/ untracked at repo root (smoke scratch); owner tmux sessions on the box (5, rigjudge, watchdog) — theirs, do not touch.

Usage-cap note (19:12Z alert; RESOLVED 19:19Z — owner: Anthropic credits ran out, topped up, “shouldn’t be an issue any longer”): 429s can kill a session mid-work (terminal_reason: api_error, 429, reset time in the alert/log tail). Diagnosis path: tail the named harness log, look at the last result JSON. Uncommitted work survives on disk — commit it in the next session. If a chain marker is armed just before a reset boundary, prefer holding the live session past the reset so the chained session doesn’t die on launch.