assay_v2: T doubles from 2,500 to a 20,000 tu cap while
memory/organism/autocorrelation criteria keep firing). Films of the five
best worlds are embedded below; each was re-simulated from its committed
genome + seed on an H100 and rendered from full field snapshots.| era | engine | window (2026) | evals | archive checkpoint | best I |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 · local validation | laptop CPU (operator shakedown + assay handshake) | ≤ 08-26 | 217 | 34 cells (local v2 epoch) | 74.2 |
| 1 · CPU fleet | 6 pods × 16 vCPU, one world per core | 08-26 → 08-28 (~48 h) | 2,516 | union4_final_cpu = 182 cells | 81.9 |
| 2 · single-mode GPU | 3 GPU pods, one world per process (kernel-level wins only) | 08-28 (2.5 h) | 368 | union5_prebatch = 190 cells | 81.9 |
| 3 · batched pilot | 1 pod, a generation as ONE tensor (blobkit 0.3) | 08-29 (3.6 h, 2 gens, then RED-stop for the perf thread) | 234 | 211 cells at stop | — |
| 4 · batched fleet | 6 islands on H100/A100, blobkit 0.3.3/0.3.4, unions every ~2 gens | 08-29 → 08-30 (~1.5 days) | 6,291 | gpu_b_union1 362 → UNION_FINAL_v2 = 423 cells | 91.16 |
Totals: 9,409 pod evaluations (era-4 alone: 4,917 screens + 769 seed2 + 605 seed3 confirms, ~2,061 lane-hours of assay compute), total spend across all eras incl. gates and perf work ~$515. The final archive holds 423 of 2,880 possible descriptor cells (14.7%); 230 of 423 cells carry minted bilinear vertices — couplings written by an operator, not by us — of which 133 distinct minted vertices fixed. The v1 minted-vertex creation rate was structurally zero.
The campaign champion p6g8_033 (interest 91.16, cell
3|grow|rotor|liquid|s2|g2) has a fully recorded ancestry: ten
hops through all four eras, starting at smoke_m0 — the trivial
single-species ground-truth world every pod boots with, interest 2.8.
Nothing in the spine was designed; every hop is one operator application
that won an archive cell at the time.
The pattern along the spine: merge and add_chan open the valley,
mint_bilin climbs it, delete_bilin prunes the scaffolding. The two
discontinuities are an add_chan (+51.3: added a relaxation channel that
turned a frozen 2-species dead end into a growing rotor world) and a
merge_slow_tanh (+16.3: crossed it with a block built from
ds2g12_019, a 1-activator/3-channel miniature that immigrated
from the local era at interest 32). Inside era 4 the search minted two
bilinear vertices and then deleted one of them again: the surviving champion
carries exactly ONE minted vertex (v6_1_028). Its dynasty
(pool founder p1g2_070) holds 41 of 423 final cells including
4 of the global top-6.
smoke_m0 at interest
2.8 — twelve seeded blobs relax into a static lattice and nothing ever
happens again (T=2,500 tu shown; blob count pinned at 12). This is the
ancestor of the champion, ten operator hops later.ds3_014 — the
v1-era fossil-vertex succession world (pod seed smoke_elite,
interest 74.5 at boot). Flat 12-blob ecology for ~1,500 tu — then the
recorded delayed replication onset: the count curve bends and climbs
stepwise to 80 while species-2 worms stretch across the box. Three of the
four top dynasties descend from this world; the champion dynasty is the
exception — it grew from smoke_m0, pure operator work, no
elite blood.p6g8_033, I=91.16, T=20,000 tu,
seed 942 (the exact assay run, re-simulated). Three species: a growing
labyrinth tissue (species 1, magma) that winds across the box (mean winding
8.0), a sparse worm/blob species living in its corridors, and a third
species that carves moving holes. The two-stage succession is visible in
the count curve: a pioneer boom to ~45 blobs by t≈5,000, then a slow
relaxation into a ~28-blob climax labyrinth (42 organisms at the looser
organism threshold) that keeps reorganizing.
Slow-channel memory 0.93; seed2 confirm 79.7. The one load-bearing minted
vertex v6_1_028 survived a delete_bilin ablation — the
deletion RAISED interest by 3.9 and authored this world.All films above sample the 25 tu snapshot grid, which aliases the REC-scale dynamics — for the fast movers, consecutive 25 tu frames of species 1 correlate at only r≈0.2, i.e. the motion is a strobe. These three 500 tu segments re-simulate the same runs and snapshot every 5 tu (101 frames, ~12× finer), played at 40 tu/s.
p6g8_033,
t=10,000→10,500: the blob count is pinned at 31 for the whole window, yet the
climax labyrinth never stops — corridors creep, tips wind, holes migrate.p3g9_022,
t=19,500→20,000: the mobile swarm in the act of crossing the assay horizon
(count churning 148–162, ending exactly at the assay's 151) — individual
worms and blobs finally trackable frame to frame.p4g3_033,
t=5,000→5,500 (peak growth era): +29 blobs in 500 tu; the count
staircase resolves into individual fission events while the spot lattice
jostles.4,917 era-4 screen attempts, split by operator. Holder rate = share of attempts that ended holding ≥1 archive cell in their island's end-state; the last two columns are the union-final footprint.
| op | attempts | ok% | holder rate | union cells | screens ≥80 | best I | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mint_bilin | 615 | 99% | 16.3% | 85 | 66 | 89.33 | best per attempt; 37% of all I≥70 rows from 12.5% of attempts |
| delete_bilin | 206 | 100% | 15.5% | 20 | 37 | 91.16 | ablation-as-operator; authored the champion |
| merge_slow_tanh | 302 | 92% | 14.6% | 29 | 2 | 81.55 | low volume, built the champion's pool founder (+16.3) |
| merge_cross_edge | 731 | 95% | 13.8% | 89 | 5 | 81.66 | the cell-opener, as in v1 |
| mutate | 1,027 | 92% | 12.1% | 99 | 10 | 87.77 | the workhorse; ceiling below mint/delete |
| add_chan | 413 | 96% | 11.1% | 42 | 22 | 88.74 | buys structure, often at a dip; made the +51.3 jump |
| dup_act | 428 | 40% | 7.0% | 25 | 12 | 86.93 | funnel-kill heavy, occasional elite |
| merge_share_chan | 215 | 25% | 7.0% | 17 | 1 | 81.53 | fragile (same-vacuum law, unchanged v1→v2) |
| immigrate | 980 | 42% | 0.8% | 8 | 0 | 48.84 | see below |
The immigrant deferred-payoff law. Fresh random genomes are a terrible bet per attempt (0.8% holder rate, zero rows ≥70) — and yet 82 of 423 final cells root in a pod immigrant, and the champion's +16.3 merge donor was immigrant-descended. Immigration doesn't score; it seeds dynasties that score generations later. Selection needed both budgets: cheap diversity now, elite operators on top of it later.
Minted vertices are scaffolding. Every top-4 dynasty chain contains at least one mint_bilin, and 3 of 4 pass through a delete_bilin ablation. The search keeps a minted coupling only while it is load-bearing — the same fossil-vertex logic we found by hand in v1 (post 7), now discovered and exploited by the operators themselves.
Per-generation screen statistics are FLAT: mean interest oscillates in 43–48 across eleven generations, C-component means barely move, ok-rate sits at ~76%. The population never "gets better". What ratchets is the archive:
| checkpoint | cells | mean I | p90 | max | ≥70 | ≥80 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| union4_final_cpu | 182 | 44.4 | 69.0 | 81.9 | 17 | 3 |
| union5_prebatch | 190 | 44.3 | 69.0 | 81.9 | 18 | 4 |
| gpu_b_union1 | 362 | 46.5 | 74.2 | 88.5 | 46 | 22 |
| UNION_FINAL_v2 | 423 | 47.0 | 73.2 | 91.2 | 50 | 28 |
The GPU-batched eras did the heavy lifting: cells ×2.2, I≥70 count ×2.8, I≥80 count ×7. 241 of the 423 final cells did not exist at CPU handoff, and 131 surviving CPU-era cells were improved in place. This is the MAP-Elites contract working as designed: screens are lottery tickets, the archive is the ratchet, and the every-2-generations union push is what moved winners across islands.
Succession is the elite axis. The strongest single predictor of interest in the final archive is the staging descriptor: s1 cells average 43.4, s2 cells 65.1, s3 cells 81.4 — and ALL of the top-10 worlds are s2/s3. The s2 count tripled (18→49) and s3 tripled (4→12) across the checkpoints; C7_roles rose 0.51→0.56 and C2_timescale 0.35→0.40. The search found that the way to be interesting in this space is to build worlds that happen in acts — ecologies whose species composition restructures one or two times before settling.
p4g3_033, I=85.20, 4|grow|rotor|liquid|s3|g1 —
the ROTOR STORM: full three-stage succession on camera — a sparse 15-blob
world holds for ~2,500 tu, erupts in a logistic boom, and packs the box
with ~250 spinning organisms (mean winding 15.1, the most kinetic elite in
the archive) while a few species-3 stragglers wander the lattice. Head of
the mint-stack dynasty: mint → mint → mint → delete, ending with 3 minted
vertices plus the inherited fossil. 3-seed confirmed (80.4 / 53.8).p5g3_040, I=86.21, 4|switch|mobile|liquid|s3|g2 —
the world to show a skeptic: best fully-3-seed-CERTIFIED deep world
(confirms 75.9 AND 74.1), three-stage succession with slow-channel memory
0.97 — a fast boom to ~90 mobile organisms, then species-2 worms grow
through the crowd as the population plateau churns (churn 0.51: half the
census turns over while the count holds). One era-4 add_chan (+5.3) on a
CPU-era elite.p4g2_044, I=82.47, 4|switch|rotor|liquid|s2|g2 —
the architecture contrast: the most seed-stable elite in the archive
(81 ± 1 across three seeds), a minimal 21-organism rotor world where
species 3 and 4 form complementary labyrinth phases (yellow negatives of
each other) that slowly anneal while compact rotors ride the walls. This
world carries NO minted vertices — proof the space holds clean elite
worlds both with and without operator-written couplings.The assay extends a world's horizon while any criterion keeps firing, up to a hard cap of T=20,000 tu. In the final harvest 337 rows exited at the cap with criteria still firing (194 screens, 6.6% of scored rows) — the assay was cut off, not converged. Cap-riding is an elite phenomenon: mean interest of cap-exits is 75.5, 157/194 are ≥70, and 142 of 194 were still RISING at exit (I@20k > I@10k). For these worlds our measured interest is a lower bound. 21 union holders sit on cap exits, including the #2 world; 65% of all cap exits belong to the three top dynasties — the lineages that win cells are the ones that refuse to converge.
p3g9_022 re-run to
T=40,000 — twice its assay horizon. The #2 archive world (I=89.33 at
the 20,000 cap, trajectory 57.6 → 69.0 → 80.5 → 89.3, still climbing +8.8
per doubling): a 4-species mobile swarm with full three-stage succession —
the only s3 world above 89. And it was still unfinished: in the re-run the
blob count keeps growing PAST the 20,000 tu cap (~160 → ~190), while
species 4 (cividis panel) crystallizes into a drifting near-hexagonal
lattice threaded by species-2 worms. The assay never saw the second half
of this film.106 distinct cap-exit genomes with I≥70 and still rising are queued as
longer-horizon re-run candidates (cap_riders.json); the
fastest riser gains +12.4 per horizon doubling. Whatever interest ceiling
this space has, the 20,000 tu telescope cannot see it.
| issue | status |
|---|---|
26 battery timeouts dropped. On dense long-T worlds the track-building
step (greedy O(frames × blobs²) matching) could exceed its 300 s per-lane guard;
after one subsampled retry also timed out, the row was recorded as
assay_error and never scored (isl3: 10, isl6: 9, isl4: 4, isl1: 2, isl5: 1).
Zero battery_mode=subsampled rows contaminate the harvest. |
flagged, contained (blobkit 0.3.4) |
| box_limit is the elite norm, not an anomaly. 74% of flagged era-4 screens and 337/423 union holders span the full L=128 box. Elite worlds are box-limited almost by definition (they grow tissues); their descriptors are measured at the size the box allows. | known bias; L192 confirm lane exists |
Names are pod-scoped and reused across eras (p1g2_070
exists in three eras as different genomes). All lineage claims above come from a
timestamp- and structure-aware resolver (act/chan/bilin count deltas, vtag
subset checks, exact parameter matches) — see v2_analysis/LINEAGE.md. |
resolved per-hop |
Champion seed sensitivity. The 91.16 champion confirms at 79.7 on
seed2 — elite but seed-sensitive, like most single-seed peaks. The seed-stable
counterpoint is p4g2_044 (81 ± 1 across 3 seeds); the certified-deep
counterpoint is p5g3_040. |
reported per-world above |
| Engine story not repeated here. Mid-campaign the batched fleet hit a record-path wall (generation walls of 96–181 min), was RED-stopped, instrumented, and fixed by benchmark-gated engineering (2.18× on the frozen workload). That whole story, including the fixes that died by benchmark, is post 9's production chapter. | see post 9 |
| change | why (evidence) |
|---|---|
| Longer horizons for elites — a T=40,000 deploy lane (cap doubling for screens that exit at cap still rising), seeded with the 106 queued cap-riders. | 142/194 cap screens still rising; the p3g9_022 film above; measured interest is a lower bound exactly on the leaderboard's top. |
| Device-side records (CREC on GPU) — move the coarse-grid record reductions on-device; host pulls scalars, fields only at snapshots. | record path = 60% of batched wall at 1.5 effective threads (post 9);
the 0.3.3 devrec prototype already measured 2.18× and is
gate-certified — v3 should make it the default, not the flag. |
| Bigger boxes (L=192–256 lanes) — at least for confirms and for the box-limited elite class. | 337/423 union holders span the full L=128 box; growth-class worlds are measured at box size, not at their intrinsic scale. |
| Succession-directed search — s3 cells average I=81.4 but only 12 exist; make staging a first-class exploration target (e.g. stage-count novelty bonus or an s3-only island). | strongest single interest predictor in the archive; the s2/s3 corner is where every top-10 world lives. |
| Keep the immigrant tax. Do not "optimize away" the 0.8%-holder immigration budget. | 82/423 final cells root in immigrants; the champion's +16.3 merge donor was immigrant-descended. It pays at dynasty timescale, not screen timescale. |
| Continuous batching — reseed dead/converged tensor slots mid-flight instead of ragged-tail draining. | the 0.3 driver already carries the reseed seam (reseed_hook);
island tails idled lanes for hours in era 4. |
probes/blobs/l0/deepsearch/v2_analysis/film_candidates/.
Capture: blobkit 0.3.4 (verify_locks 47/47) on one H100,
init_soup_gpu_batch → advance_gpu_batch with a dense
snap_t schedule on the CREC grid — the exact campaign stepper, f32,
same seeds; ~40–60 full-field frames per world; rendered per-activator-channel
with fixed per-film color scales. Films re-simulate the recorded runs
(identical IC/RNG protocol), they are not renders of stored assay data.