Current Project State

Current Milestone

Formal global optimization pipeline. Design brief: research/synthesis/global_opt_pipeline_brief.md. Being handed to ChatGPT 5.4 Pro for pipeline design.

Incumbent

ep06c_polished, NLL = -5381.59 +/- 0.15 SEM at R=100k (paired 5-seed tie-break). Truth-connected: descent from theta_true reaches the same neighborhood within 1.7 nats. ~350 nats better than prior headline.

Top Open Questions

  1. 154-nat MLE-DGP gap at R=100k — sample-MLE displacement, not basin discovery. Basin discovery is closed for the current panel.
  2. Operator-floor null N3: is the geometric tail operator eta_H * r/(1-r) with a single global r the real bottleneck for tail pricing accuracy? (Consistent with Exp 09 non-monotonicity + Exp 12 R-conditionality.)
  3. Global recovery from cold starts: best cold NLL = -5131 (255-nat gap). Bottleneck is local-opt depth, not search coverage.

Last Decisive Experiment Outcomes

ExpVerdictDateWiki Page
Exp 12: Online asymptotic onsetKILL_DETECTOR_FAILS2026-04-12exp-12-online-asymptotic-onset-detection
Exp 11: Curvature at incumbentDIAGNOSTIC_ONLY + major fragility2026-04-11exp-11-curvature-incumbent-scaled-diagnostic
Exp 10: Hybrid tail cacheKILL_NEGATIVE_LEVERAGE2026-04-11exp-10-hybrid-tail-cache-theta-only
Exp10a: Restart allocationPASS (promoted incumbent)2026-04-10exp-07-optarch-10-restart-allocation-incumbent
Exp 09: Adaptive tail splicePARTIAL PASS (not production-ready)2026-04-09exp-09-adaptive-tail-splice-mc-pricing

Phase Status (compressed)

BlockStatus
FoundationsAll complete (tests passing)
Constrained EstComplete. Incumbent: ep06c_polished at -5381.59 SEM
Bansal ApproxFAIL — Jensen gap 67-72% at 50yr
Basin Finder 01-05All audited. See experiment pages
Sim RecoveryLocal PASS / Global FAIL. Audit pending
Exp 10 (Hybrid tail cache)KILL_NEGATIVE_LEVERAGE
Exp 11 (Curvature)DIAGNOSTIC_ONLY + major fragility
Exp 12 (Online onset)KILL_DETECTOR_FAILS
Pending08 sub-experiments after Gate; pipeline design; writeup queue W3-W5; PMMH

Outstanding Writeups

  • W3: 06_last_mile_probe_v2/06c_v2_highr_polish — produced ep06c_polished, no memo
  • W4: 08_basin_geometry interim (P0/P1 + 08a)
  • W5: est_on_sim_data audit (memo exists, 04_audit/ empty)

Canonical Next Docs

  • Synthesis brief: research/synthesis/global_opt_pipeline_brief.md
  • Full experiment registry: .claude/docs/experiment_registry.md
  • Full gotchas: .claude/docs/gotchas.md
  • Full plan: /workspace/PLAN.md
  • Arc tracker: /workspace/SALVAGE_INDEX.md
  • Documents index: /workspace/documents/INDEX.md
  • Wiki experiments: omega-wiki/wiki/experiments/
  • Wiki claims: omega-wiki/wiki/claims/
  • Wiki open questions: omega-wiki/wiki/graph/open_questions.md
  • Wiki context brief: omega-wiki/wiki/graph/context_brief.md