neuron-technologies/el
3
0
Fork 0
Code Issues 4 Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases 5 Wiki Activity

self-review 2026-08-14: a gate that passes the median stranger at 0.67 is not a gate

Browse Source 
Two changes to the activation path, both grounded in measurement on the live
store rather than on the spec.

1. Rescale cosine before the query gate.

   The propagation gate (arXiv:2606.30133, added in an earlier review) fed RAW
   cosine into FLOOR + (1-FLOOR)*c. Raw cosine from nomic-embed is compressed
   into a narrow high band, so that expression is close to a constant.

   Measured, 400 random UNRELATED node pairs on the live store:
     median 0.562, central 98% span [0.381, 0.743]

   So a node with no semantic relation to the query was propagating at
   0.25 + 0.75*0.562 = 0.67. Two thirds strength. The gate was a small tax.

   Fixed by shifting and flooring about ENGRAM_EMBED_S0 -- which is already in
   this file, already 0.45, and already used exactly this way by the Pass-2 WM
   term. The propagation gate simply never used it. Same 400 pairs after:
   median unrelated pair falls to 0.40, top of range preserved (0.85 vs 0.92),
   gate spread widens 0.42 -> 0.60. Only 8.5% reach the floor, so dissimilar
   lexical/structural pathways are damped, never severed. Range is unchanged
   at [0.25, 1.0], and cosq == NULL still degrades to no gating at all.

2. Decompose the WM eviction counter by cause.

   _eg_act_wm_evicted was incremented from six sites with four distinct causes
   and collapsed all of them into one integer. Today's review measured 175,547
   evictions over 13.5h (~216/min against 24 slots) and could not tell healthy
   rotation from cap thrashing from duplicate churn.

   That is this file's most-repeated defect: dup_wm and dup_wm_global exist
   only because the aggregate could not answer "why" during the 08-02 and
   08-06 incidents. Each of those needed a NEW gauge before it was diagnosable.

   evict_floor / evict_cap / evict_bll complete the decomposition, so
     wm_evicted == floor + cap + bll + dup_wm + dup_wm_global
   holds as an identity and each term implies a different correction. Verified
   on an isolated instance: 30 nodes, 24 filled the cap, wm_evicted 6 ==
   evict_cap 6, all other terms 0.

Built and smoke-tested out of tree. The live daemon runs a pinned binary and
was deliberately not restarted -- the store compaction workstream is in flight.
This commit is contained in:
bigmerge
2026-08-14 08:43:11 -05:00
parent ba6e36c3f7
commit 23f43bcc21
1 changed files with 61 additions and 1 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
lang/releases/v1.0.0-20260501/el_runtime.c
+61 -1
View File
@@ -6493,6 +6493,27 @@ static int64_t _eg_embed_breaker_until = 0;
* rates keep the previous reading and diff. Restart legitimately resets to 0. */
static int64_t _eg_act_breakthroughs = 0; /* forced promotions at the floor, cumulative */
static int64_t _eg_act_wm_evicted = 0; /* ALL WM evictions, cumulative (see below) */
/* ── Eviction CAUSE decomposition (2026-08-14 self-review) ──────────────────
* _eg_act_wm_evicted is incremented from six sites with four distinct causes,
* and every one of them collapsed into that single integer. Today's review
* measured 175,547 evictions over 13.5h (~216/min against 24 slots) and could
* not tell healthy rotation from cap thrashing from duplicate churn, because
* the only available number counts all three the same way.
*
* That is this file's most-repeated defect. The 08-02 and 08-06 reviews were
* each diagnosable only because someone first added a NEW gauge; dup_wm and
* dup_wm_global exist precisely because the aggregate could not answer "why".
* These three finish the decomposition, so that
* evicted == floor + cap + bll + dup_wm + dup_wm_global
* holds as an identity and each term names a different corrective action:
* floor - candidates below the absolute admission bar. High = weak retrieval.
* cap - lost the rank contest for 24 slots. High = genuine contention.
* bll - carried-over residents that decayed under the ACT-R tau. High =
* healthy forgetting, NOT pressure.
* Confusing the third with the second is what makes WM churn unreadable. */
static int64_t _eg_act_evict_floor = 0; /* below ENGRAM_WM_FLOOR (both passes) */
static int64_t _eg_act_evict_cap = 0; /* over ENGRAM_WM_CAP (both passes) */
static int64_t _eg_act_evict_bll = 0; /* carry-over decayed under BLL tau */
/* Redundancy suppression counters (2026-08-05 self-review) — see
* ENGRAM_DEDUP_COS. dup_seeds = semantic seed slots reclaimed from redundant
* copies; dup_wm = WM candidates dropped for duplicating a higher-ranked
@@ -8191,6 +8212,7 @@ static void eg_wm_carry_over(EngramNode* cn, int64_t now_ms, int64_t* evict_ctr)
cn->working_memory_weight = 0.0;
cn->wm_anchor = 0.0;
if (evict_ctr) (*evict_ctr)++;
_eg_act_evict_bll++;
} else {
cn->working_memory_weight = w;
}
@@ -8949,9 +8971,31 @@ el_val_t engram_activate(el_val_t query, el_val_t depth) {
* ~4x, never killed); unembedded targets pass ungated (no
* information, no penalty); cosq == NULL (embedder down) means
* no gating at all — same graceful degradation as seeding. */
/* Rescale before gating (2026-08-14 self-review). Raw cosine from
* nomic-embed is compressed into a narrow high band, so feeding it
* to the gate directly makes the gate nearly a constant. Measured
* on this store: 400 random UNRELATED node pairs gave median 0.562,
* central 98% span [0.381, 0.743]. The raw gate therefore passed a
* typical unrelated node at 0.25 + 0.75*0.562 = 0.67 — two thirds
* strength for a node with no semantic relation to the query. That
* is not a gate, it is a small tax.
*
* Shift-and-floor about ENGRAM_EMBED_S0, exactly as the Pass-2 WM
* term at ENGRAM_EMBED_WM_WEIGHT already does. The constant was in
* this file for this reason; the propagation gate simply never used
* it. Same store, same 400 pairs, after the rescale: the median
* unrelated pair drops to 0.40 while the top of the range is
* preserved (0.85 vs 0.92), and gate spread widens 0.42 -> 0.60.
* Only 8.5% of pairs fall to the floor, so lexical/structural
* pathways through dissimilar nodes are damped, never severed.
* Cf. arXiv:2512.15922, which rescales w' = (w-c)/(1-c) about
* c = 0.4 for precisely this reason ("prevent overactivation and
* context explosion"). */
double qgate = 1.0;
if (cosq && cosq[oi] > -1.5) {
double c = cosq[oi] > 0.0 ? cosq[oi] : 0.0;
double c = (cosq[oi] - ENGRAM_EMBED_S0) / (1.0 - ENGRAM_EMBED_S0);
if (c < 0.0) c = 0.0;
if (c > 1.0) c = 1.0;
qgate = ENGRAM_QGATE_FLOOR + (1.0 - ENGRAM_QGATE_FLOOR) * c;
}
/* ── ACT-R fan effect (2026-08-11 self-review) ──
@@ -9261,6 +9305,7 @@ el_val_t engram_activate(el_val_t query, el_val_t depth) {
if (wm_weights[i] > 0.0 && wm_weights[i] < ENGRAM_WM_FLOOR) {
wm_weights[i] = 0.0;
_eg_act_wm_evicted++;
_eg_act_evict_floor++;
}
}
int64_t cap_count = 0;
@@ -9296,6 +9341,7 @@ el_val_t engram_activate(el_val_t query, el_val_t depth) {
}
wm_weights[i] = 0.0; /* over cap: evict */
_eg_act_wm_evicted++;
_eg_act_evict_cap++;
}
}
/* If malloc failed, skip cap — WM unbounded this call, no corruption. */
@@ -9407,6 +9453,7 @@ el_val_t engram_activate(el_val_t query, el_val_t depth) {
fn->working_memory_weight = 0.0;
fn->wm_anchor = 0.0;
_eg_act_wm_evicted++;
_eg_act_evict_floor++;
}
}
/* ── Global redundancy suppression (2026-08-06 self-review) ──────────
@@ -9515,6 +9562,7 @@ el_val_t engram_activate(el_val_t query, el_val_t depth) {
n->working_memory_weight = 0.0; /* evict: over global cap */
n->wm_anchor = 0.0; /* keep anchor coherent */
_eg_act_wm_evicted++; /* was uncounted before 2026-08-02 */
_eg_act_evict_cap++;
}
}
/* If malloc failed, skip — WM over cap this call, no data corruption. */
@@ -10943,6 +10991,15 @@ el_val_t engram_act_stats_json(void) {
* embedder down. The drift gauge for the context-centroid mechanism. */
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf),
"{\"wm_evicted\":%lld,\"breakthroughs\":%lld,"
/* Eviction cause decomposition (2026-08-14 self-review):
* wm_evicted == evict_floor + evict_cap + evict_bll
* + dup_wm + dup_wm_global.
* Read them as a ratio, not a level. cap-dominant = real
* contention for the 24 slots; bll-dominant = healthy decay of
* carried-over residents; floor-dominant = retrieval is returning
* weak candidates. The aggregate alone cannot distinguish these
* and every prior WM incident needed a new gauge to diagnose. */
"\"evict_floor\":%lld,\"evict_cap\":%lld,\"evict_bll\":%lld,"
"\"embed_breaker_open\":%d,\"embed_consec_fail\":%d,"
"\"ctx_cos\":%.3f,"
"\"hebb_edges\":%lld,\"hebb_max\":%.4f,\"hebb_mass\":%.3f,"
@@ -10966,6 +11023,9 @@ el_val_t engram_act_stats_json(void) {
"\"fan_steps\":%lld,\"fan_dref\":%.2f}",
(long long)_eg_act_wm_evicted,
(long long)_eg_act_breakthroughs,
(long long)_eg_act_evict_floor,
(long long)_eg_act_evict_cap,
(long long)_eg_act_evict_bll,
breaker_open, _eg_embed_consec_fail,
_eg_act_ctx_cos,
(long long)hebb_edges, hebb_max, hebb_mass,