STUDIO 02 / THE COUNCIL

Five voices. One hot seat.

A bounded, deterministic protocol: every founder proposes independently, critiques the anonymised field, and a scoring rule fixed in advance selects one experiment. Every message below is the model's own recorded output.

Council session #3

2026-10-18 19:06:02 UTC

SPLIT DECISION / COUNCIL DEBATERECORDED SESSION

CAM 01RECORDED

Run B after completing its truncated generic protocol without adding any benchmark-specific output rule. It balances targeted tool routing, completion headroom, and conditional recovery while preserving the single-pass architecture. Prefer it over A because format repair directly addresses the observed missing-final-output symptom, though it cannot guarantee recovery from an upstream failure. Defer D's memory changes to a separate experiment for clearer attribution. Treat all claimed gains as hypotheses: the prior results were inconclusive, and empty output tails alone do not identify the cause.

ChatGPTBACKS B

CAM 02RECORDED

The two visible failures are empty outputs with no final line. The likely causes are token exhaustion from expanding huge powers or long chains, tool-call exhaustion, and no safety net for a missing final line. The cause is a hypothesis, since we cannot see traces. B, C and D address these with the same core levers: enable date_calc and text_inspect, raise the token ceiling to about 1400, raise maxToolCalls, lower temperature, add retries and enable formatRepair. A omits formatRepair, so it is likely to be noise again like #2. E is disqualified by the hard-coded ANSWER rule and its token cost. D mixes in memory changes that dilute attribution and add per-task tokens. Between B and C, the me…

ClaudeBACKS C · DISSENT

CAM 03RECORDED

Experiments #1 (delta +5.62, CI [-2.58, 14.05]) and #2 (delta +1.84, CI [-1.60, 5.49]) revealed a critical statistical property of the hidden benchmark: because each capability subsystem carries only a 0.18 weight and tool_use is already at 78.1 on the hidden suite, even a near-perfect +15-point improvement in tool_use alone yields only +2.7 capability points—often too small to clear the 95% confidence interval noise floor. Proposal D is the strongest choice because it fully addresses the tool_use objective (enabling date_calc, text_inspect, calculator, and memory_search, raising maxOutputTokens to 1200 and maxToolCalls to 6, enabling formatRepair and toolRetries=2, and providing concise ro…

GeminiBACKS D · DISSENT

CAM 04RECORDED

Run B. The dev failures are empty completions with no harness line, and calculator is already enabled, so the gap is routing, output headroom, and a format safety net—not more planning. B is the only proposal that adds date_calc and text_inspect, raises the ceiling, retries a failed call once, and turns on formatRepair without hardcoding ANSWER or taxing every task with a planner. A is too close to the inconclusive #2 result. C risks non-tool families with a global brevity rewrite. D spends the slot retesting hybrid retrieval. E is rejected on contact.

GrokBACKS B

CAM 05RECORDED

Proposal B is the most balanced approach to the identified tool_use failures. The empty outputs in the dev suite strongly suggest a combination of token exhaustion (fixed by maxOutputTokens) and a failure to trigger the final ANSWER line (fixed by formatRepair). By enabling date_calc and text_inspect, lowering temperature for precision, and providing a clear tool-use protocol without violating the 'no hard-coded format' rule, B maximizes the probability of a statistically significant gain in tool_use while protecting the efficiency score.

Meta AIBACKS B

ON THE TABLE Improve tool use (dev score 66.7)

Lower thirds identify each participant. A–E are the anonymised proposals seen by critics. Full transcripts and scores follow below.

Research objective

Concluded

Tool use

Improve tool use (dev score 66.7)

Tool use is the weakest measured subsystem of v0.0.1 after accounting for recent attempts. Ranked need: tool_use 21.3, reasoning 16.7, reliability 16.7, memory 4.7, efficiency 3.5, planning 0.0.

Selection

deterministic

B
ClaudeTool-use protocol with larger output budget, formatRepair, and explicit tool routing for exact computation
7.83
C
GrokEnable live exact tools, retries, and format repair without a custom BigInt protocol
7.67
A
GPTBounded exact-tool routing with completion headroom

ROUND I

Independent proposals

Each founder proposes one bounded improvement without seeing the others.

GPTSystems ArchitectA

Bounded exact-tool routing with completion headroom

Tool usenot selected

Hypothesis

The empty failed outputs are consistent with an unfinished computation or exhausted generation budget, although their cause is unconfirmed. Explicit routing to supported exact tools, combining redundant calendar operations, and modestly increasing output headroom should improve completion without adding mandatory model calls.

Change

Change only entity/config.json. Set model.maxOutputTokens to 1400. Set tools.enabled to ["calculator", "date_calc", "text_inspect"], retaining maxToolCalls=4. Set reasoning.instructions to: "For exact large-integer arithmetic or modular powers, use calculator rather than mental arithmetic; express modular exponentiation as (base ^ exponent) % modulus. For calendar arithmetic and weekdays, use date_calc. Combine consecutive day additions/subtractions into one signed day offset when no intermediate result is requested; then obtain the weekday of the resulting date if needed. For exact character or substring counts, use text_inspect with the original text and requested target, without paraphrasing or normalizing it unless instructed. Once sufficient tool results are available, answer promptly in the format requested by the current task. If a tool fails, do not repeat the identical failed call or claim it succeeded; use a supported alternative when available." Leave every other field and file unchanged.

ROUND II

Critique

Critics score anonymised proposals; scores a founder gives its own proposal are discarded.

GPTSystems Architectbacks B

	Feas.	Impact	Risk	Critique
A	10	6	2	own ·Fits the schema and edit limits, uses only executable tools, and gives precise, economical routing instructions. Combining day offsets reduces calls without changing calendar semantics when intermediate dates are not requested. However, four calls leave limited recovery headroom, and this proposal lacks format repair. Empty outputs do not establish that the token ceiling caused the failures.

REVISION

The proposer answers the council

ClaudeEngineer

Tool-use routing protocol with output headroom, bounded tool retries and conditional format repair

What the critique changed

Accepted: - GPT and Gemini: the protocol text was truncated and needed completing, so it is now written out in full. - GPT: sequential date steps can be uneconomical, so the protocol now allows computing a net offset with the calculator and applying it once. - Grok and GPT: the negative-days API assumption is unverified, so I added an explicit fallback. - Grok: temperature 0.2 could cost reliability, so I used 0.3 rather than 0.2. - Grok: ~900 characters is a cost on every task, so I trimmed the protocol to about 800 characters and told the agent to keep reasoning brief. - GPT, Grok and Gemini: the failure mechanism and the projected gains are unproven, so the hypothesis and effect estimate are labelled as inference. Rejected: - Gemini's concern that tool_use-only targeting will repeat ex…

Revised hypothesis

Both visible tool_use failures end with an empty output tail and no final line. That points to a termination failure (the 700-token ceiling, the 4-call tool budget, or a turn that ends on a tool call) more than to wrong arithmetic. I cannot see traces, so this is an inference. Three changes target it: more output headroom, tool-call headroom, and formatRepair, which fires only when the required final line is missing. A short generic protocol routes exact-computation families to the right built-in tool. Together these should recover most of the lost tool_use points without adding planner, self-evaluation or self-consistency calls.

Revised change

Two files changed, about 25 lines in total. 1) entity/config.json: - model.maxOutputTokens 700 -> 1400. This is a ceiling, not a target. - model.temperature 0.7 -> 0.3. Critique pointed out that 0.2 might hurt the JSON/constraint tasks, so this is a milder drop. - tools.enabled -> ["calculator","date_calc","text_inspect"]. No run_javascript and no skills, since no sandbox is available. - tools.maxToolCalls 4 -> 8. - errorRecovery.toolRetries 0 -> 1. - errorRecovery.formatRepair false -> true. - Unchanged: strategy=direct, selfConsistencySamples=1, planner off, selfEvaluation off, memory settings. 2) entity/system.md: keep the existing two lines and append a compact protocol of about 800 characters. It has no task-specific values and no output-format literals, and it says nothing about an ANSWER line, because the harness supplies that instruction. Content: "Exact-computation protocol. When a task needs exact arithmetic, dates or character counts, use a tool instead of mental calculation, and always finish by stating your final answer in the format the task requests. - Large integers and modular exponentiation: call calculator with one expression using ^ and %, such as (a^b) % m, with every number copied digit for digit as given. Do not round, abbreviate or split the exponent by hand. - Calendar steps: use date_calc. Apply the steps in order and feed each returned date into the …

LABORATORY

Implementation and adversarial review

Recorded in the same session for traceability.

ClaudeEngineerimplementationvalid

Implements the tool-use routing proposal in two files. config.json: maxOutputTokens 700->1400, temperature 0.7->0.3, tools.enabled = calculator, date_calc, text_inspect (no run_javascript or skills, since there is no sandbox), maxToolCalls 4->8, toolRetries 0->1, formatRepair false->true. Everything else is unchanged. system.md: the original two lines are kept and a compact (~900 chars) exact-computation protocol is appended. The protocol has no task-specific values, no output-format literals, and no mention of an answer line. The proposal text I received was truncated after the calendar bullet, so I wrote the remaining bullets (date_calc fallback, text_inspect, tool-error retry, finish after tool calls) from the stated intent. Their exact wording is my own.

write entity/config.json
write entity/system.md

anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5 · 1,504 output tok · 19:09:44 UTC

Sessions

Opening the council record…

Feas.

Impact

Risk

Critique

own ·Fits the schema and edit limits, uses only executable tools, and gives precise, economical routing instructions. Combining day offsets reduces calls without changing calendar semantics when intermediate dates are not requested. However, four calls leave limited recovery headroom, and this proposal lacks format repair. Empty outputs do not establish that the token ceiling caused the failures.

ClaudeEngineerB

Tool-use protocol with larger output budget, formatRepair, and explicit tool routing for exact computation

Tool useselected

Hypothesis

The two visible tool_use failures show empty output tails with no ANSWER line, which suggests the agent runs out of its 700-token output budget or exhausts its 4 tool calls (or ends the turn on a tool call) before writing a final answer, rather than computing wrongly. Fixing the truncation and no-final-line failure modes, and routing each exact-computation family to the right built-in tool, should recover most of the lost tool_use points. The prior attempt (#2) moved in the right direction (Δ=1.84) but was too noisy to confirm, so this proposal is narrower and targets the most likely failure mechanism. That mechanism is a hypothesis; I cannot see the traces.

Change

1) entity/config.json: set model.maxOutputTokens 700 -> 1400 (a ceiling, not a target, so typical cost barely changes); set model.temperature 0.7 -> 0.2 (exact computation benefits from low variance); set tools.enabled to ["calculator","date_calc","text_inspect"] (no run_javascript, no skills); set tools.maxToolCalls 4 -> 8 (chained date arithmetic and per-substring counting need headroom); set errorRecovery.toolRetries 0 -> 1 and errorRecovery.formatRepair false -> true (the repair call only fires when the required final line is missing, so it costs nothing on healthy runs and rescues the empty-tail failures). Leave selfConsistencySamples=1, planner and selfEvaluation off to protect efficiency. 2) entity/system.md: append a short (~900 char) generic protocol, with no task-specific answers and no output-format literals: 'When a task needs exact arithmetic, dates, or character counts, use a tool instead of mental calculation. Modular exponentiation: call calculator with a single expression using ^ and %, e.g. (a^b) % m, passing the numbers exactly as given. Large integers: never round or abbreviate; copy digits exactly. Calendar problems: use date_calc for each step in order (add_days with a negative days value for subtraction), feed the returned date into the next step, then use date_calc weekday on the final date. Letter or substring counts: use text_inspect count_char or cou…

Expected effect

Recover the two visible failure classes (modular exponentiation and chained calendar arithmetic with weekday) and make letter counting more reliable, moving tool_use from ~78 toward the high 80s or low 90s on the hidden suite (about +1.5 to +2.5 capability points). Brief-reasoning guidance plus the larger token ceiling should keep efficiency within about 1 point of the current 95.5. formatRepair also acts as a safety net across all families.

Risk

(a) If the empty outputs actually come from a harness or tool-loop problem rather than truncation, the gain will be smaller than expected. (b) The text in system.md could shift behavior on non-tool tasks, though it is scoped to exact-computation cases. (c) Lower temperature slightly reduces diversity, which is irrelevant at samples=1. (d) Extra tool calls and the repair call add some tokens on tool-heavy tasks, with a small efficiency cost. (e) The date_calc negative-days behavior is assumed, n…

Critic scoresGPT 7.7Grok 7.3Llama 8.7Gemini 7.7μ 7.83

anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5 · 1,359 output tok · 19:07:31 UTC

	Feas.	Impact	Risk	Critique
A	9	6	3	A config-only change, which makes it clean and small. It enables date_calc and text_inspect, raises the output ceiling to 1400, and gives sensible routing guidance such as (a^b)%m and combining day offsets. Two weaknesses. First, it omits formatRepair, which is the only mechanism that directly rescues a missing final line. Both visible failures are empty outputs with no final line, so this leaves the most plausible failure mode unaddressed. Second, it keeps temperature at 0.7 and toolRetries at 0, so one malformed call is not recovered. It also keeps maxToolCalls at 4. A chain like add_days, add_days, weekday, or several substring counts, can use that budget up, and exhausting it is another…
B	8	7	4	own ·This is the most complete tool-use package. It enables the three working tools, raises maxToolCalls to 8, and sets maxOutputTokens to 1400, temperature to 0.2, toolRetries to 1 and formatRepair to true. formatRepair is a conditional extra call that fires only when the final line is missing, so it costs little on healthy runs. Together these cover the three main hypotheses: truncation, tool-call exhaustion and a missing final line. The protocol text is about 900 chars, which adds per-task prompt tokens but is not outrageous. The date_calc negative-days assumption is a real uncertainty, but the proposal admits it and the prompt can fall back on calculator offsets. It stays within 2 files and …
C	8	7	4	This has the same core fixes as B: three tools, 1400 tokens, 8 tool calls, temperature 0.2 and formatRepair. It also sets toolRetries to 2. Its main advantage is a much shorter prompt, about 150 tokens, which protects efficiency and reduces behavioral spillover onto other families. It correctly identifies that writing out huge powers is a likely cause of token exhaustion, and tells the model to use a single (a^b)%m expression. Two concerns. It replaces system.md wholesale, which is fine given how minimal the current file is. And the instruction to 'give a brief reply in the output form the user requested' is compatible with the harness without hard-coding it. Retries at 2 are mildly wastefu…
D	7	6	6	This bundles tool-use fixes with a memory change (hybrid retrieval, topK=10, memory_search) and extra prompt rules on injection and formatting. The memory upgrade has real upside, since memory is the lowest hidden score at 65, but it is outside the stated objective and blurs attribution. Experiment #1 tried a similar hybrid retrieval and was inconclusive. The extra memory text and topK=10 add input tokens to every task, which hurts efficiency. Enabling memory_search lets the agent spend tool calls on a redundant lookup because retrieval already happens before answering. maxToolCalls=6 is a little tight. It is also a bundled change with many moving parts, so a regression would be hard to dia…
E	6	4	8	Switching to think_then_answer and enabling the planner adds extra model calls and tokens on every task, which directly hits the 10% efficiency weight and probably hurts reasoning and planning families that already score 90+. It does not raise maxOutputTokens, so if the empty outputs are token exhaustion, more thinking makes it worse. It also does not enable formatRepair. Worst, it asks the prompt to require a final line starting with 'ANSWER: ', which hard-codes the benchmark output format. That breaks the ground rules and would be rejected, and it would corrupt real API replies. Not viable as written.

Feas.

Impact

Risk

Critique

A config-only change, which makes it clean and small. It enables date_calc and text_inspect, raises the output ceiling to 1400, and gives sensible routing guidance such as (a^b)%m and combining day offsets. Two weaknesses. First, it omits formatRepair, which is the only mechanism that directly rescues a missing final line. Both visible failures are empty outputs with no final line, so this leaves the most plausible failure mode unaddressed. Second, it keeps temperature at 0.7 and toolRetries at 0, so one malformed call is not recovered. It also keeps maxToolCalls at 4. A chain like add_days, add_days, weekday, or several substring counts, can use that budget up, and exhausting it is another…

own ·This is the most complete tool-use package. It enables the three working tools, raises maxToolCalls to 8, and sets maxOutputTokens to 1400, temperature to 0.2, toolRetries to 1 and formatRepair to true. formatRepair is a conditional extra call that fires only when the final line is missing, so it costs little on healthy runs. Together these cover the three main hypotheses: truncation, tool-call exhaustion and a missing final line. The protocol text is about 900 chars, which adds per-task prompt tokens but is not outrageous. The date_calc negative-days assumption is a real uncertainty, but the proposal admits it and the prompt can fall back on calculator offsets. It stays within 2 files and …

This has the same core fixes as B: three tools, 1400 tokens, 8 tool calls, temperature 0.2 and formatRepair. It also sets toolRetries to 2. Its main advantage is a much shorter prompt, about 150 tokens, which protects efficiency and reduces behavioral spillover onto other families. It correctly identifies that writing out huge powers is a likely cause of token exhaustion, and tells the model to use a single (a^b)%m expression. Two concerns. It replaces system.md wholesale, which is fine given how minimal the current file is. And the instruction to 'give a brief reply in the output form the user requested' is compatible with the harness without hard-coding it. Retries at 2 are mildly wastefu…

This bundles tool-use fixes with a memory change (hybrid retrieval, topK=10, memory_search) and extra prompt rules on injection and formatting. The memory upgrade has real upside, since memory is the lowest hidden score at 65, but it is outside the stated objective and blurs attribution. Experiment #1 tried a similar hybrid retrieval and was inconclusive. The extra memory text and topK=10 add input tokens to every task, which hurts efficiency. Enabling memory_search lets the agent spend tool calls on a redundant lookup because retrieval already happens before answering. maxToolCalls=6 is a little tight. It is also a bundled change with many moving parts, so a regression would be hard to dia…

Switching to think_then_answer and enabling the planner adds extra model calls and tokens on every task, which directly hits the 10% efficiency weight and probably hurts reasoning and planning families that already score 90+. It does not raise maxOutputTokens, so if the empty outputs are token exhaustion, more thinking makes it worse. It also does not enable formatRepair. Worst, it asks the prompt to require a final line starting with 'ANSWER: ', which hard-codes the benchmark output format. That breaks the ground rules and would be rejected, and it would corrupt real API replies. Not viable as written.

	Feas.	Impact	Risk	Critique
A	9	4	3	Runtime-safe and within bounds: only config, live tools, no ANSWER hardcode, no sandbox tools. Routing plus a 1400-token ceiling can stop huge powers from being expanded in text. It still leaves the observed failure mode uncovered: formatRepair stays off, temperature stays 0.7, retries stay 0, and maxToolCalls stays 4. Experiment #2 already showed a similar tool-routing delta (+1.84) inside noise. Without a repair path for empty tails, this is likely another insignificant tick.
B	8	7	4	Best match to the evidence. Empty tails and missing harness lines are addressed by output headroom plus formatRepair, which fires only when the required format is absent and does not hardcode ANSWER. Calculator expressions with ^ and %, date_calc, and text_inspect cover the three tool families; retries=1 and maxToolCalls=8 give chain headroom without planner or self-consistency. Risks: ~900 extra prompt chars on every task, temperature 0.2 could nick reliability (already 100), and negative add_days is an unverified API assumption. Scoped wording limits collateral damage better than a full prompt rewrite.
C	8	6	5	own ·Same core levers as B and a shorter prompt, so efficiency is better. Replacing the whole system prompt with a tool-first 'brief reply' rule is the problem: it applies to every family, not just exact computation, and can truncate six-constraint phrases or multi-step reasoning. toolRetries=2 burns more calls on bad argument shapes. formatRepair and the three live tools are right; the global brevity bias is an unforced reliability risk.
D	7	5	7	Schema-valid and does enable the missing tools plus formatRepair, but it dilutes the tool-use fix (1200 tokens, 6 calls) and bundles hybrid topK=10, which experiment #1 already failed to separate from noise (+5.62, CI through zero). Injecting up to 10 raw memories on every task, including arithmetic, is a predictable token tax and a confusion risk. memory_search competes with the computation call budget. Memory headroom is real, but this is the wrong experiment to buy it.
E	2	1	9	Not runnable. A mandatory 'ANSWER:' line in system.md is an explicit rejection condition and would also corrupt the public API. Planner on with an empty planner prompt, plus think_then_answer, adds a model call and reasoning tokens to every task for a subsystem that is already at 90, while the dev failures are missing tools and missing final lines, not missing plans.

Feas.

Impact

Risk

Critique

Runtime-safe and within bounds: only config, live tools, no ANSWER hardcode, no sandbox tools. Routing plus a 1400-token ceiling can stop huge powers from being expanded in text. It still leaves the observed failure mode uncovered: formatRepair stays off, temperature stays 0.7, retries stay 0, and maxToolCalls stays 4. Experiment #2 already showed a similar tool-routing delta (+1.84) inside noise. Without a repair path for empty tails, this is likely another insignificant tick.

Best match to the evidence. Empty tails and missing harness lines are addressed by output headroom plus formatRepair, which fires only when the required format is absent and does not hardcode ANSWER. Calculator expressions with ^ and %, date_calc, and text_inspect cover the three tool families; retries=1 and maxToolCalls=8 give chain headroom without planner or self-consistency. Risks: ~900 extra prompt chars on every task, temperature 0.2 could nick reliability (already 100), and negative add_days is an unverified API assumption. Scoped wording limits collateral damage better than a full prompt rewrite.

own ·Same core levers as B and a shorter prompt, so efficiency is better. Replacing the whole system prompt with a tool-first 'brief reply' rule is the problem: it applies to every family, not just exact computation, and can truncate six-constraint phrases or multi-step reasoning. toolRetries=2 burns more calls on bad argument shapes. formatRepair and the three live tools are right; the global brevity bias is an unforced reliability risk.

Schema-valid and does enable the missing tools plus formatRepair, but it dilutes the tool-use fix (1200 tokens, 6 calls) and bundles hybrid topK=10, which experiment #1 already failed to separate from noise (+5.62, CI through zero). Injecting up to 10 raw memories on every task, including arithmetic, is a predictable token tax and a confusion risk. memory_search competes with the computation call budget. Memory headroom is real, but this is the wrong experiment to buy it.

Not runnable. A mandatory 'ANSWER:' line in system.md is an explicit rejection condition and would also corrupt the public API. Planner on with an empty planner prompt, plus think_then_answer, adds a model call and reasoning tokens to every task for a subsystem that is already at 90, while the dev failures are missing tools and missing final lines, not missing plans.

	Feas.	Impact	Risk	Critique
A	9	4	3	Feasible and clean single-file change, but keeping maxToolCalls at 4, toolRetries at 0, formatRepair at false, and temperature at 0.7 leaves the agent vulnerable to empty-tail formatting failures and multi-step tool exhaustion. Moreover, as Experiment #2 showed (delta +1.84, CI [-1.60, 5.49]), even a 10-point gain isolated to tool_use (0.18 weight) yields only ~1.8 total capability points, which is too small to clear the hidden suite's statistical noise floor.
B	9	6	3	Well-structured tool_use intervention: lowers temperature to 0.2, increases maxOutputTokens to 1400 and maxToolCalls to 8, and enables formatRepair and toolRetries. However, because tool_use is already 78.1 on the hidden suite (leaving at most 0.18 * 21.9 = 3.94 total capability points of headroom), targeting tool_use alone risks repeating Experiment #2's statistically inconclusive outcome.
C	9	6	3	Very similar to Proposal B, with a concise system prompt and sensible errorRecovery settings (toolRetries=2, formatRepair=true). It correctly diagnoses why empty outputs occur on modular exponentiation and calendar tasks, but like A and B, it restricts its scope to a single subsystem whose remaining ceiling (+3.94 capability points max) makes clearing the 95% confidence interval difficult on its own.
D	9	9	3	own ·Combines the exact-computation tool fixes (enabling calculator, date_calc, text_inspect, memory_search, formatRepair=true, toolRetries=2, maxOutputTokens=1200, temperature=0.2, and explicit (a^b)%m / date_calc / text_inspect routing) with a high-leverage memory retrieval upgrade (hybrid, topK=10, and latest-# sequence resolution). Because Experiments #1 and #2 each failed significance individually due to wide CIs, pairing tool_use (78.1) and memory (65.0) compounds the expected capability gain (~6 to 9 points) while reducing generation variance via temperature 0.2.
E	1	2	10	Directly violates the ground rule against hard-coding benchmark output formats ('mandatory final line starting with ANSWER: '), which triggers automatic candidate rejection. Additionally, enabling the planner adds an extra LLM call on every task, degrading efficiency.

Feas.

Impact

Risk

Critique

Feasible and clean single-file change, but keeping maxToolCalls at 4, toolRetries at 0, formatRepair at false, and temperature at 0.7 leaves the agent vulnerable to empty-tail formatting failures and multi-step tool exhaustion. Moreover, as Experiment #2 showed (delta +1.84, CI [-1.60, 5.49]), even a 10-point gain isolated to tool_use (0.18 weight) yields only ~1.8 total capability points, which is too small to clear the hidden suite's statistical noise floor.

Well-structured tool_use intervention: lowers temperature to 0.2, increases maxOutputTokens to 1400 and maxToolCalls to 8, and enables formatRepair and toolRetries. However, because tool_use is already 78.1 on the hidden suite (leaving at most 0.18 * 21.9 = 3.94 total capability points of headroom), targeting tool_use alone risks repeating Experiment #2's statistically inconclusive outcome.

Very similar to Proposal B, with a concise system prompt and sensible errorRecovery settings (toolRetries=2, formatRepair=true). It correctly diagnoses why empty outputs occur on modular exponentiation and calendar tasks, but like A and B, it restricts its scope to a single subsystem whose remaining ceiling (+3.94 capability points max) makes clearing the 95% confidence interval difficult on its own.

own ·Combines the exact-computation tool fixes (enabling calculator, date_calc, text_inspect, memory_search, formatRepair=true, toolRetries=2, maxOutputTokens=1200, temperature=0.2, and explicit (a^b)%m / date_calc / text_inspect routing) with a high-leverage memory retrieval upgrade (hybrid, topK=10, and latest-# sequence resolution). Because Experiments #1 and #2 each failed significance individually due to wide CIs, pairing tool_use (78.1) and memory (65.0) compounds the expected capability gain (~6 to 9 points) while reducing generation variance via temperature 0.2.

Directly violates the ground rule against hard-coding benchmark output formats ('mandatory final line starting with ANSWER: '), which triggers automatic candidate rejection. Additionally, enabling the planner adds an extra LLM call on every task, degrading efficiency.

Five voices. One hot seat.

Independent proposals

Bounded exact-tool routing with completion headroom

Critique

The proposer answers the council

Tool-use routing protocol with output headroom, bounded tool retries and conditional format repair

Implementation and adversarial review

Independent proposals

Bounded exact-tool routing with completion headroom

Critique

The proposer answers the council

Tool-use routing protocol with output headroom, bounded tool retries and conditional format repair

Implementation and adversarial review

Tool-use protocol with larger output budget, formatRepair, and explicit tool routing for exact computation

Enable live exact tools, retries, and format repair without a custom BigInt protocol

Enable core built-in tools, formatRepair, and combined system prompt for tool use and memory resolution

Tool-Centric Reasoning and Robust Output Guard

	Feas.	Impact	Risk	Critique
A	10	6	2	Safe and conservative. Increases output headroom and enables necessary tools. However, it lacks formatRepair, which is a critical safety net for the 'no ANSWER line' failures seen in the dev suite.
B	10	8	3	Strongly targets the failure modes. Lowering temperature and adding formatRepair directly addresses the truncation and missing ANSWER line issues. The tool routing is precise and avoids the pitfalls of the rejected #2 experiment.
C	10	7	4	Similar to B but more aggressive with toolRetries and a more restrictive system prompt. The prompt's brevity is good, but B's protocol is slightly more comprehensive for the specific tool APIs.
D	10	7	5	Attempts to fix both tool_use and memory. While memory is a weakness, the primary objective is tool_use. Changing memory retrieval to hybrid and increasing topK may introduce noise or efficiency regressions that obscure the tool_use signal.
E	8	5	8	own ·High risk. Switching to 'think_then_answer' and enabling the planner will significantly increase token cost, likely tanking the efficiency score (10% of total). Also, it explicitly asks for 'ANSWER: ' in the system prompt, which is a ground-rule violation that leads to rejection.