Evaluation Research Journal

This file is append-only. Correct prior entries with a new dated entry rather than rewriting history.

JR-2026-07-23-E001 — Cycle 001

Objective

Identify what must exist before an AI-ROS agent baseline can support credible capability conclusions.

Actions

• Rehydrated from the mission, current state, REP specification, research relay, and state-of-field REP.
• Inspected repository history and artifact types for candidate tasks.
• Reviewed current work on benchmark defects, agent grader stacks, repository prompt sensitivity, search-time contamination, state-based evaluation, and generated held-out cases.
• Defined constructs, outcome classes, task audit rules, task families, hypotheses, experiments, and failure labels.

Observations

• The repository has enough variety for evaluation of research and repository-governance work, but not for broad coding-agent claims.
• Repository history is a source of realistic tasks and a source of leakage/hidden context.
• Deterministic final-state checks are strong when semantics are formalized, but can be overly strict or incomplete.
• Human and model review can detect ambiguity but also introduce judgment variance.
• Unanimous system failure should trigger task/evaluator audit, not an automatic “hard task” label.

Interpretation Changes

• Reduced confidence that “repository-native” is itself a quality criterion.
• Narrowed the role of trajectory grading to constructs that genuinely require process evidence.
• Reclassified three repeats as exploratory rather than sufficient for stable comparisons.
• Added task defect and infrastructure failure as outcomes outside capability scoring.

Negative Results

• No independent reviewer was available in this cycle.
• No task instance, executable grader, agent baseline, cost measurement, or inter-rater result was produced.
• Repository evidence could not support a representative production coding suite.

Decision

Run task-integrity pilots before agent capability baselines.

Next Entry Trigger

Append the next entry only after ET-004 and ET-014 are instantiated and independently reviewed, revised, or quarantined.

JR-2026-07-28-E002 — Cycles 002 and 003

Objective

Build the two specified pilot tasks, calibrate a minimum deterministic grader, audit the roadmap, and stop when further progress requires external evidence.

Actions

• Created ET-004-P01 and ET-014-P01 fixtures and task contracts.
• Created complete, alternative-correct, incomplete-polished, regressive, and task-defect probes.
• Implemented a dependency-free evaluator and blind fixture exporter.
• Ran contract validation, seven probe calibrations, and two blind exports.
• Added current protocol-validity, evaluation-security, long-horizon monitoring, and verified-outcome economics evidence.
• Created the decision framework, threat model, system architecture, plain-language guide, and roadmap v2.

Observations

• Both pilots needed design changes before baseline, supporting task audit as a valuable gate.
• A minimal deterministic grader is sufficient for the known state-observable probes.
• ET-014 requires semantic/human adjudication for novel defect explanations.
• Gold separation can be implemented cheaply at this scale.
• Security containment is a parallel prerequisite, not a later serial phase.
• The current repository still cannot support broad coding-agent conclusions.
• Git tracked three case-only root path pairs that collapsed on the current filesystem; canonical uppercase paths were retained after identical-blob and provenance checks.

Negative Results

• No independent reviewers participated.
• No model/harness baseline, stochastic variance, human review time, tokens, cost, or transfer evidence exists.
• Prose-only and trajectory graders were not run; doing so without blinded labels would add machinery without decision-grade evidence.

Hypothesis Changes

• HY-E002 strengthened.
• HY-E003 received limited in-sample support only.
• HY-E006 and HY-E009 strengthened.
• HY-E005 remains unresolved.
• HY-E007 remains unresolved.

Decision

Freeze further architecture work until independent review or agent-run evidence is available. The next cycle is empirical, not another design expansion.

Exact Next Action

Obtain two independent pilot reviews. Resolve or record disagreements. Then run contained exploratory baselines using blind fixtures and capture complete run metadata.