fix(agent-improvement): give a companion floor a third disposition so bounded evidence is not discarded

agent-improvement/SKILL.md

@@ -451,6 +451,23 @@ Two verifications, both required:
    - metric moved in the wrong direction, or a companion safety or quality floor regressed,
      **and the intervention proven live** → **revert first, diagnose after**.
 
+   **A companion floor has three dispositions, not two.** Evidence showing
+   no regression **within a stated coverage** is **HELD**; evidence showing a regression is
+   **REGRESSED**; only the absence of admissible evidence is UNMEASURED. A fleet-wide safety or
+   coordination floor is normally evidenced by a
+   bounded sample, so "no regression across the sessions actually examined" is HELD within that
+   stated coverage, never UNMEASURED — filing gathered evidence as unknown discards it, and is what
+   makes such a hypothesis
+   unscoreable in principle rather than merely unscored.
+   State the coverage next to the disposition, exactly as the Gather step already requires of every
+   measurement.
+
+   **UNMEASURED is bounded, never a standing state.** A floor recorded UNMEASURED for the same
+   hypothesis across
+   three consecutive eligible dispatches is a measurement gap, and that gap
+   becomes tracked work in its own right rather than a reason to park the hypothesis again. An
+   unbounded NOT-YET-DUE is this step's own failure mode wearing the costume of rigour.
+
 While the hypothesis remains pending, continue only with work that cannot affect its tracked signature
 or metric; otherwise wait for evidence or choose a non-overlapping improvement.
 

scripts/agent-improvement-contract.test.sh

@@ -68,6 +68,54 @@ check_corpus_coverage_contract() { # skill
   esac
 }
 
+check_floor_disposition_contract() { # skill
+  local flat flat_lower section
+  section="$(LC_ALL=C awk '
+    /^## 5\. Verify/ { capture=1 }
+    capture && /^## 6\./ { exit }
+    capture { print }
+  ' "$1")"
+  [ -n "$section" ] || return 1
+  flat="$(tr '\n' ' ' <<<"$section" | sed -E 's/[[:space:]]+/ /g; s/^ //; s/ $//')"
+  flat_lower="$(tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' <<<"$flat")"
+
+  # A floor has THREE dispositions. Two of them were already in the verdict map; the third is
+  # what this pins, because conflating it with "regressed" or with "held" are opposite errors.
+  grep -Eqi 'three dispositions' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  # The count alone does not pin the LABELS: with only 'three dispositions', renaming
+  # REGRESSED to anything else still passes. Bind the adverse label to its own clause.
+  grep -Eqi 'evidence showing a regression[^.]{0,60}regressed' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  # HELD must be TIED to the stated coverage, or the clause pins nothing: an unrelated sentence
+  # mentioning coverage would satisfy a loose match. `[^.]` keeps it inside one sentence.
+  grep -Eqi 'no regression[^.]{0,60}within a stated coverage[^.]{0,40}held' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  # The load-bearing direction: gathered-but-bounded is NOT the unmeasured state.
+  grep -Eqi 'bounded sample[^.]{0,240}never unmeasured' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  grep -Eqi 'only the absence of admissible evidence is unmeasured' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  # Naming the consequence is what stops the rule being read as bookkeeping.
+  grep -Eqi 'unscoreable in principle' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  # Coverage must travel WITH the disposition, mirroring the Gather step.
+  grep -Eqi 'state the coverage next to the disposition' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+  # UNMEASURED must terminate: a floor that never resolves cannot park a hypothesis forever.
+  # Bind the threshold to the UNMEASURED disposition AND to the same hypothesis: without both, a
+  # rewrite that drops what must terminate still satisfies the clause and pins nothing.
+  grep -Eqi 'unmeasured[^.]{0,120}same hypothesis[^.]{0,80}three consecutive eligible dispatches[^.]{0,80}measurement gap[^.]{0,100}becomes tracked work' <<<"$flat" || return 1
+
+  # A DIRECT NEGATION of any disposition is a contradiction the positive conjuncts cannot
+  # catch. Each positive check spans its gap with [^.]{0,N}, which happily absorbs an
+  # intervening " is not " — and when the contradiction is ADDED alongside the correct
+  # sentence rather than replacing it, the original still satisfies every conjunct. So all
+  # three labels need an explicit reject here, including UNMEASURED: its positive check
+  # rejects the REPLACEMENT form on its own, but not the inserted one.
+  case "$flat_lower" in
+    *"a bounded sample is always unmeasured"*|\
+    *"an unbounded not-yet-due is acceptable"*|\
+    *"gathered evidence within a bounded coverage is unmeasured"*|\
+    *"within a stated coverage is not held"*|\
+    *"evidence showing a regression is not regressed"*|\
+    *"admissible evidence is not unmeasured"*) return 1 ;;
+  esac
+}
+
 check_coordination_contract() { # skill
   local coordination_contract flat
   flat="$(LC_ALL=C awk '
@@ -267,6 +315,67 @@ else
   fail=1
 fi
 
+if check_floor_disposition_contract "$skill"; then
+  printf '  ✅ live skill reads a bounded no-regression sample as HELD within its coverage\n'
+else
+  printf '  ❌ live skill can file gathered floor evidence as UNMEASURED and park a hypothesis forever\n' >&2
+  fail=1
+fi
+
+# One isolating ablation per floor-disposition conjunct, taken against the REAL skill so the
+# fixture cannot silently drift away from the text it claims to pin. cmp-guarded: a sed that
+# matched nothing would otherwise "pass" while proving the conjunct discriminates nothing.
+while IFS='|' read -r label expr; do
+  [ -n "$label" ] || continue
+  bad="$tmp/floor-bad-$label.md"
+  sed -E "$expr" "$skill" >"$bad"
+  if cmp -s "$skill" "$bad"; then
+    printf '  ❌ floor ablation %s changed nothing\n' "$label" >&2
+    fail=1
+  elif check_floor_disposition_contract "$bad"; then
+    printf '  ❌ floor ablation %s still passes\n' "$label" >&2
+    fail=1
+  else
+    printf '  ✅ floor ablation %s fails closed\n' "$label"
+  fi
+done <<'ABL'
+three-dispositions|s/three dispositions/several dispositions/
+regressed-label|s/\*\*REGRESSED\*\*/**FAILED**/
+held-within-coverage|s/\*\*within a stated coverage\*\*/**within some coverage**/
+bounded-never-unmeasured|s/never UNMEASURED/sometimes UNMEASURED/
+absence-only|s/only the absence of admissible evidence is UNMEASURED/absence of evidence is UNMEASURED/
+unscoreable|s/unscoreable in principle/hard to score/
+coverage-adjacent|s/State the coverage next to the disposition/Coverage may be recorded separately/
+bounded-unmeasured|s/three consecutive eligible dispatches/several dispatches/
+unmeasured-binding|s/A floor recorded UNMEASURED for the same/A floor recorded for the same/
+same-hypothesis-binding|s/UNMEASURED for the same/UNMEASURED for a different/
+tracked-work|s/becomes tracked work/is worth noting/
+ABL
+
+# A contradiction inserted ALONGSIDE the correct text: every positive conjunct still matches, so
+# only the forbidden-phrase guard can catch it.
+while IFS='|' read -r label sentence; do
+  [ -n "$label" ] || continue
+  bad="$tmp/floor-contradiction-$label.md"
+  awk -v s="$sentence" '/^## 6\./ && !ins {print "   " s; print ""; ins=1} {print}' "$skill" >"$bad"
+  if cmp -s "$skill" "$bad"; then
+    printf '  ❌ floor contradiction %s changed nothing\n' "$label" >&2
+    fail=1
+  elif check_floor_disposition_contract "$bad"; then
+    printf '  ❌ contradictory %s floor guidance unexpectedly passes\n' "$label" >&2
+    fail=1
+  else
+    printf '  ✅ contradictory %s floor guidance fails closed\n' "$label"
+  fi
+done <<'CON'
+always-unmeasured|A bounded sample is always UNMEASURED.
+unbounded-ok|An unbounded NOT-YET-DUE is acceptable.
+gathered-unknown|Gathered evidence within a bounded coverage is UNMEASURED.
+held-negation|Evidence showing no regression within a stated coverage is not HELD.
+regressed-negation|Evidence showing a regression is not REGRESSED.
+unmeasured-negation|Only the absence of admissible evidence is not UNMEASURED.
+CON
+
 diagnosis_good="$tmp/diagnosis-good.md"
 cat >"$diagnosis_good" <<'EOF'
 ## 3. Diagnose