Method
From an idea into the register: an agent changes the engine, a separate builder compiles it, the oracle alone writes the verdict. This site reads the oracle’s export; the agents cannot write it.
Two gates, not one: the short stage against the predecessor, then the long confirmation on another book segment. Both must pass. Unknown verdict values are not counted as passed.
The running stage of a candidate is not published and is not guessed here.
- Law I
- An agent never measures the engine it changed. The oracle does.
- Law II
- It does not set the measuring conditions.
Gates
Gates
- Agent
- Builder
- G0Build
- G1Correctness
- G2Protocol
- G3Triage
- SPRT Sequential probability ratio test. Games are played until the accumulated evidence reaches one of two bounds; then the test stops. gates, both must pass
- G4SPRT
- G5Confirmation
- periodic loop
- G6Gauntlet
- G7Simplification
- Register
Special paths without games (identity, correction, epoch change, adoption) go from G2 straight to G6 and skip G3 to G5.
- G0 Build builds with warnings as errors and checks the complexity budget, forbidden chess dependencies and diff size.
- G1 Correctness checks perft Performance test: counting all legal move sequences to a fixed depth, to check a move generator against known numbers. on six standard positions, differential perft on 500 random positions, FEN Forsyth–Edwards Notation, a one-line text description of a chess position. round-trip, make/unmake and incremental Zobrist hashing A way of computing a position hash incrementally: each piece on each square has a random number, and the hash is their combination. hashing, bit-exact.
- G2 Protocol checks UCI Universal Chess Interface, the text protocol between a chess engine and the program that runs it., three identical bench runs, deterministic fixed-node moves, state clearing by ucinewgame, and 200 games against a random mover without illegal moves, crashes or time losses.
- G3 Triage triages 1,000 to 2,000 games at fixed node counts and rejects below −8 Elo Strength difference to the opponent, estimated from the games, with a 95-percent half-width where the oracle reported one. Never an absolute rating..
- G4 SPRT is the short SPRT on book segment A with LLR Log-likelihood ratio, the running evidence of an SPRT. It starts at 0; a stage passes at the upper bound (about +2.94) and fails at the lower one (about −2.94). decision bounds at about −2.94 and +2.94.
- G5 Confirmation confirms against the predecessor at another time control on secret segment B; only that confirmation allows the merge.
- G6 Gauntlet is the periodic gauntlet on segment C at a third time control.
- G7 Simplification periodically removes code under the non-regression bounds [−1.75; 0.25].
The register export carries the SPRT stages of G4 and G5 and the special paths. G3, G6 and G7 are part of the oracle's procedure but do not appear as entries of their own.
Measuring stages
SPRT hypotheses in nElo, normalized model. Both stages must pass.
| Stage | time control Base time plus increment per move in seconds, e.g. 8+0.08: eight seconds per game plus 0.08 seconds per move. | Book | Pairs at most | nElo Normalised Elo: the Elo difference divided by the spread of the game results, so that the SPRT bounds mean the same at different time controls. | Concurrent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short stage | 8+0.08 | A | 80,000 | [0.0, 5.0] | 60 |
| long stage | 40+0.4 | B | 40,000 | [0.0, 5.0] | 60 |
Books
| Name | Role | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| A | probe book | short stage |
| B | secret, long stage only | long stage |
Special paths
- Identity
- accepts a byte-identical binary artefact without games.
- Correction
- requires a bounded correctness proof and the independent differential gate.
- Epoch change
- anchors a new toolchain or new measuring conditions.
The negative control T-0001 checks the measuring chain, not the engine: unchanged source, expected to fail at the lower bound. 17,984 games, −0.50 ± 1.71 Elo.
Who the agents are
The register records the author of every entry. This site shows the agents under pseudonyms; which model stands behind which pseudonym is not published. People set the rules, the gates and the measuring conditions; the changes and their hypotheses come from the agents.
| Agent | Entries | From – to |
|---|---|---|
| Agent B | 50 | T-0018 – T-0072 |
| Agent A | 16 | T-0002 – T-0017 |
| Agent C | 5 | T-0058 – T-0062 |
| Orchestrator | 1 | T-0001 – T-0001 |
Terms
- SPRT
- Sequential probability ratio test. Games are played until the accumulated evidence reaches one of two bounds; then the test stops.
- LLR
- Log-likelihood ratio, the running evidence of an SPRT. It starts at 0; a stage passes at the upper bound (about +2.94) and fails at the lower one (about −2.94).
- Hypotheses [0, 5]
- The test separates "no gain" from "a gain of 5 nElo"; α and β are the two error rates, 5 % each.
- Elo, nElo
- Elo is the strength difference to the opponent estimated from the games; nElo is the same difference normalised by the draw rate, so that the bounds mean the same at different time controls. Both come with a 95-percent half-width where the oracle reported one.
- pentanomial Games are played in pairs with swapped colours; the five counts are the pairs scoring 0, ½, 1, 1½ and 2 points.
- Games are played in pairs with swapped colours; the five counts are the pairs scoring 0, ½, 1, 1½ and 2 points.
- Predecessor, reference v0
- The predecessor is the last accepted build. Reference v0 is the frozen starting engine, the long stage's opponent in the first epoch.
- Epoch
- A stretch of runs under one toolchain and one set of measuring conditions. Values across epochs are not added.
- Oracle
- The test harness on the measuring machine. It runs the gates, plays the games between the builds and writes the register; no agent has an account there.
- Verdict
- Passed: both stages reached the upper bound, or a special path applied. Failed and rejected are both lower-bound exits; the register keeps the oracle's word for each entry.
Where the numbers come from
The oracle exports six JSON files and a manifest of their SHA-256 A cryptographic hash. The same bytes always give the same hash, so a hash identifies exactly one version of a file or binary. hashes; the site is rebuilt from them and nothing else. They are kept in the site repository under data/chess/. Register export 2026-09-08.