Tier 3 go/no-go decision (Phase 10)

Prepared: 21 Oct 2026, by Claude Code (engineering lead), from reports/G4.md, docs/PHASES.md and the researcher’s answers of the same day.

The decision rule is the Phase 10 prompt’s: evaluate the go checklist first; if any item fails, switch to MODE B (polish) without discussion; stop if the checklist says no.

Go checklist

Item

Rule

Value (researcher, 21 Oct 2026)

Met

Gate G4 passed

G4 PASS, and reports/G4.md says Tier 2 is complete or honestly reported

PASS, decided on 21 Oct 2026

Yes

Cumulative hours within plan

at or under plan (151 h at the end of week 19, plan Table 4.1)

“within plan”; no figure given

Yes

Recent average

at least 9 h per week over the last four weeks

“at least 9 h per week”; no figure given

Yes

Capstone deadline

not earlier than the end of week 24 (Sun 28 Mar 2027)

early December 2026, by 10 Dec 2026

No

The hours rows rest on the researcher’s statement. The exact figures were not given, so the weekly hours log in docs/PHASES.md has no entries for weeks 1 and 2.

Decision

MODE B (polish), scoped down. One item fails (the deadline), so the prompt’s rule gives MODE B with no discussion. The researcher chose the scoped-down form, about 4 to 6 hours of their time.

E5 (cross-platform replication) and E6 (EMBER2024) are not run. They become future work, and the report says so. As the Phase 10 prompt defines E5, it repeats the Tier 2 headline contrasts on whichever of LAMDA or BODMAS they have not yet been run on. E3 and E4 each ran on both, so on that definition there is no platform left to repeat them on, and a cross-platform comparison of their directions and magnitudes can be read from the existing tables. This is a reading for the researcher, not a finding; what E5 would still add is a comparison of platforms under a pre-registered rule for disagreement, which is future work.

What the deadline changes beyond Phase 10

The capstone is due by 10 Dec 2026, about seven weeks after this decision. The researcher hands in the report and the code repository.

Moved to after the deadline:

  • the 8-page paper and the venue checklist;

  • the release pipeline (PyPI, Zenodo DOI, documentation site);

  • the maintenance system (arXiv-audit skill, issue templates).

Kept before the deadline:

  • the report, chapters 1 to 9;

  • the licence and ethics audit;

  • a clean-clone reproduction check;

  • the README.

Every irreversible step (PyPI upload, DOI, making the repository public, tags) still needs the researcher’s explicit go. The ledger (docs/PHASES.md) records the compression.

MODE B scope (plan of 21 Oct 2026)

  1. This decision file.

  2. Test coverage of constraints, the label queue, the conformal layer and the monitors (reports/coverage.md).

  3. Dead code and orphan scripts (nothing cited in docs/CLAIMS.md is deleted).

  4. A test that every config in configs/ parses and plans its cells.

  5. A listing of results produced by superseded code (docs/results_audit.md; nothing deleted).

  6. A CI timing check and the uv cache.

  7. A README for a first-time reader.