quantum-cortex 1.0.0__tar.gz

quantum_cortex-1.0.0/AUTHORS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+# Authors — quantum-cortex
+
+This file lists the authors of **quantum-cortex**, the pure-LLM member of the
+Quantum Meridian ecosystem (a project of Win2Win SRL, Belgium). It covers **this
+repository only** — each repository of the family keeps its own `AUTHORS.md`.
+
+The repositories of the family, each with its own `AUTHORS.md` (private at the v1 edition of this repository; the two hub pages that govern this one are mirrored in `docs/hub/`):
+
+- quantum-meridian — documentation & governance hub
+- quantum-contracts — shared wire types & invariants
+- quantum-proxy — control plane (`qctl`), premium tier
+- quantum-agent — VS Code extension (fork of Cline), free tier
+- [quantum-figma-mcp](https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-figma-mcp) — design-system federation satellite
+- [quantum-cortex](https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex) — the pure-LLM member, Apache-2.0, independent sibling  ← **you are here**
+
+## Maintainer
+- Nicolas Van Eeckhout (founder) — Win2Win SRL
+
+## Contributors
+Contributors are added here when their pull request is merged. To be listed, add
+your name (optionally with a handle or email) in your first contribution, or in a
+follow-up PR.
+
+Copyright in each contribution is retained by its author and licensed under the
+terms of this repository's LICENSE (Apache-2.0).
+
+Independent of any licence, the author retains the moral rights under Belgian law
+(Code of Economic Law, Article XI.165).
+
+(c) 2026 Nicolas Van Eeckhout, Win2Win SRL.

quantum_cortex-1.0.0/LICENSE

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+Apache License
+Version 2.0, January 2004
+http://www.apache.org/licenses/
+
+TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION
+
+1. Definitions.
+
+"License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction, and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document.
+
+"Licensor" shall mean the copyright owner or entity authorized by the copyright owner that is granting the License.
+
+"Legal Entity" shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity. For the purposes of this definition, "control" means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity.
+
+"You" (or "Your") shall mean an individual or Legal Entity exercising permissions granted by this License.
+
+"Source" form shall mean the preferred form for making modifications, including but not limited to software source code, documentation source, and configuration files.
+
+"Object" form shall mean any form resulting from mechanical transformation or translation of a Source form, including but not limited to compiled object code, generated documentation, and conversions to other media types.
+
+"Work" shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Source or Object form, made available under the License, as indicated by a copyright notice that is included in or attached to the work (an example is provided in the Appendix below).
+
+"Derivative Works" shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object form, that is based on (or derived from) the Work and for which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship. For the purposes of this License, Derivative Works shall not include works that remain separable from, or merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of, the Work and Derivative Works thereof.
+
+"Contribution" shall mean any work of authorship, including the original version of the Work and any modifications or additions to that Work or Derivative Works thereof, that is intentionally submitted to Licensor for inclusion in the Work by the copyright owner or by an individual or Legal Entity authorized to submit on behalf of the copyright owner. For the purposes of this definition, "submitted" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Licensor or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the Licensor for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by the copyright owner as "Not a Contribution."
+
+"Contributor" shall mean Licensor and any individual or Legal Entity on behalf of whom a Contribution has been received by Licensor and subsequently incorporated within the Work.
+
+2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.
+
+3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
+
+4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions:
+
+     (a) You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and
+
+     (b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and
+
+     (c) You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and
+
+     (d) If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or, within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and wherever such third-party notices normally appear. The contents of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only and do not modify the License. You may add Your own attribution notices within Derivative Works that You distribute, alongside or as an addendum to the NOTICE text from the Work, provided that such additional attribution notices cannot be construed as modifying the License.
+
+     You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and may provide additional or different license terms and conditions for use, reproduction, or distribution of Your modifications, or for any such Derivative Works as a whole, provided Your use, reproduction, and distribution of the Work otherwise complies with the conditions stated in this License.
+
+5. Submission of Contributions. Unless You explicitly state otherwise, any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work by You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of this License, without any additional terms or conditions. Notwithstanding the above, nothing herein shall supersede or modify the terms of any separate license agreement you may have executed with Licensor regarding such Contributions.
+
+6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.
+
+7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License.
+
+8. Limitation of Liability. In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
+
+9. Accepting Warranty or Additional Liability. While redistributing the Work or Derivative Works thereof, You may choose to offer, and charge a fee for, acceptance of support, warranty, indemnity, or other liability obligations and/or rights consistent with this License. However, in accepting such obligations, You may act only on Your own behalf and on Your sole responsibility, not on behalf of any other Contributor, and only if You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold each Contributor harmless for any liability incurred by, or claims asserted against, such Contributor by reason of your accepting any such warranty or additional liability.
+
+END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
+
+APPENDIX: How to apply the Apache License to your work.
+
+To apply the Apache License to your work, attach the following boilerplate notice, with the fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying information. (Don't include the brackets!)  The text should be enclosed in the appropriate comment syntax for the file format. We also recommend that a file or class name and description of purpose be included on the same "printed page" as the copyright notice for easier identification within third-party archives.
+
+Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]
+
+Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+limitations under the License.

quantum_cortex-1.0.0/LICENSE-DOCS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+# Documentation licence
+
+The **documentation** of quantum-cortex, that is every file under `docs/` (the whitepaper
+`docs/WHITEPAPER.md`, the record `docs/RESULTS.md`, the register, the decision records, the
+concept pages, the working notes), the figures under `docs/figures/`, and the prose content of
+`README.md` and of the other Markdown files at the root, is licensed under the
+
+**Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)** licence.
+
+You are free to share and adapt this material for any purpose, even commercially, under one
+condition: **attribution**. You must give appropriate credit to *Nicolas Van Eeckhout, Win2Win
+SRL*, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any
+reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
+
+The full legal text is at <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode>.
+
+**Scope.** This licence covers the documentation and the figures only. The **source code**, the
+tests, the notebooks, the configurations and the measurement files under `metrics/` are licensed
+under the Apache License 2.0 (`LICENSE`), whose attribution conditions are stated in `NOTICE`.
+Where a file mixes code and prose (a notebook, a docstring), the Apache License applies. The
+pretraining data is not part of this repository and carries its own licence (FineWeb-Edu,
+ODC-By 1.0, attributed in `NOTICE`).
+
+**Citing.** To cite the whitepaper or the repository, use `CITATION.cff`; the tag of each edition
+is the citable object.
+
+Independently of any licence, the author retains the moral rights of authorship under Belgian
+law (Code of Economic Law, Article XI.165).
+
+Decided by the founder on 2026-09-30 (register Rev79) so that the whitepaper carries the licence
+that arXiv and the archives expect, distinct from the hub's CC BY-SA 4.0 for its own
+documentation.
+
+© 2026 Nicolas Van Eeckhout, Win2Win SRL.

quantum_cortex-1.0.0/NOTICE

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+quantum-cortex
+Copyright 2026 Nicolas Van Eeckhout (Win2Win SRL, Brussels, Belgium)
+ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5256-3185
+Original work: https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex
+
+Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not
+use this work except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
+the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+ATTRIBUTION NOTICE (Apache License 2.0, Section 4):
+quantum-cortex was originally created by Nicolas Van Eeckhout. Redistribution
+of this work, or of any Derivative Work, in Source or Object form, is permitted
+by the License only on its conditions, two of which concern this file: the
+attribution notices it contains must be retained in the Source form of any
+Derivative Work (Section 4(c)), and a readable copy of them must be included
+with any Derivative Work you distribute, in a NOTICE file, in the source or
+documentation, or in a display where third party notices normally appear
+(Section 4(d)). This holds whether or not the work is modified, forked,
+renamed, or incorporated into a larger work. A redistribution that drops this
+attribution is outside the License. As Section 4(d) provides, the contents of
+this file are for informational purposes only and do not modify the License.
+
+Independently of the License, the author holds the moral rights of authorship
+under Belgian law (Code of Economic Law, Article XI.165), including the right
+to be named as the author; these rights are not waived by the License.
+
+AUTHORSHIP: the design, the declarations, the readings and the integration of
+this work are the author's, documented in the repository's dated record; a
+language model produced most of the code and drafted text under his direction
+and review, as stated in the whitepaper (docs/WHITEPAPER.md, section 7b).
+
+THIRD PARTY DATA: the pretraining slice used by the runs in the record is drawn
+from FineWeb-Edu (HuggingFaceFW), made available under the Open Data Commons
+Attribution License v1.0 (ODC-By 1.0); its provenance is recorded in
+data/mixes/fineweb-edu-n1.json and data/mixes/fineweb-edu-n1.provenance.json,
+and the dataset is cited in the whitepaper's references. No third party code
+is vendored in this repository: core components are written from scratch, and
+peripheral needs are met by declared pip dependencies (see requirements.txt
+and docs/OSS-SURVEY-2026-08-07.md for the anti plagiarism protocol).
+
+This repository is the pure LLM member of the Quantum Meridian ecosystem
+(a project of Win2Win SRL). It is fully open and contains no proprietary
+Quantum Meridian control plane code. The continuity benchmarks it publishes
+(the Molaison dissociation, the H.M. protocol; oracle shift; the reference
+ratio) are part of this work and carry the same attribution requirement.
+
+The documentation, the whitepaper and the figures of this repository are licensed
+separately under CC BY 4.0 (see LICENSE-DOCS.md); the code is Apache 2.0.
+
+How to cite this work: see CITATION.cff in this repository.

quantum_cortex-1.0.0/PKG-INFO

@@ -0,0 +1,209 @@
+Metadata-Version: 2.4
+Name: quantum-cortex
+Version: 1.0.0
+Summary: An open language model built to measure continuity: a sealed episodic organ outside the weights, a frozen dissociation protocol, and a record that can be audited to the digit.
+Author: Nicolas Van Eeckhout
+License: Apache-2.0
+Project-URL: Homepage, https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex
+Project-URL: Repository, https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex
+Project-URL: Paper, https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex/blob/main/docs/WHITEPAPER.md
+Project-URL: Results, https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex/blob/main/docs/RESULTS.md
+Classifier: Development Status :: 4 - Beta
+Classifier: Intended Audience :: Science/Research
+Classifier: License :: OSI Approved :: Apache Software License
+Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3
+Classifier: Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Artificial Intelligence
+Requires-Python: >=3.10
+Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
+License-File: LICENSE
+License-File: LICENSE-DOCS.md
+License-File: NOTICE
+License-File: AUTHORS.md
+Requires-Dist: numpy>=1.26
+Requires-Dist: torch>=2.2
+Requires-Dist: jsonschema>=4.20
+Requires-Dist: cryptography>=42
+Provides-Extra: dev
+Requires-Dist: pytest>=8.0; extra == "dev"
+Dynamic: license-file
+
+# quantum-cortex
+
+**An open, from-scratch language model built to measure one capability nobody measures: *continuity* — a model that remembers your project and visibly changes its mind when the world changes.**
+
+Independent member of the Quantum Meridian ecosystem (its hub repository is private at this edition; the two hub pages that govern this one are mirrored in [`docs/hub/`](docs/hub/)): the same cognitive concepts that Quantum Meridian runs *as orchestration around third-party models* (expert zones, associative memory, an oracle channel, typed decode contracts) live here **in the weights and the decode loop**. Apache 2.0, trained from scratch, a dependency in neither direction.
+
+**The thesis, and what the record now says about it.** A language model is asked to be one system: to know, to recall and to judge, all from the same weights. This project separates them. A sealed journal outside the weights holds the episodes, with their address, their time and the evidence of their own retrieval; the model reads that journal in generation under a contract that obliges it to cite or to abstain. The question the record answers is not whether the model can memorise more, it is **what belongs in the weights and what belongs in an organ**. Same first five steps as any language model, at a much smaller scale; post training here is one fine tune that teaches a contract, not a stage that bakes behaviour into the weights, and that behaviour lives in an organ outside them, measured against frozen thresholds; two steps others leave out, provenance before data and measurement after every run (the figure: [`docs/figures/pipeline-vs-cortex.svg`](docs/figures/pipeline-vs-cortex.svg), whitepaper §1.5).
+
+Three measured answers, each with a test that can fail:
+
+- **The organ holds what the weights should not.** Cut the journal and the episodes vanish while the skills are untouched; that dissociation is the protocol, frozen before any result existed, and it passes on four seeds in a new process from the disk alone.
+- **The model does not recompute what the organ already knows.** At 27M parameters it learns to retrieve the right episode and to read it, and never learns, from the bytes alone, to judge whether what it read answers the question. Six data recipes moved a prior without moving that judgment. The limit is stated with its size attached.
+- **Give it the organ's own judgment as a number, and the decision moves.** A familiarity mark written into every line of the read window cut claims on entities the journal never held from 0.62 to 0.10, the first movement of that discrimination in nine runs. With the organ also vetoing a weakly marked citation and supplying that line's own value, the four frozen thresholds hold on two independent seeds. The record states it as **the model decides, the organ answers** — never *the model manages it*, because the exactness of the answer is the organ's by construction.
+
+That last sentence is the point, and it is why this is not a memory feature bolted onto a language model. It is the two systems hypothesis made falsifiable at a size one researcher can afford: a cortex that does not rebuild what its hippocampus already holds. What such an organ could also carry — consequences that depend on context, the difference between *what happened* and *what would happen* — is a door this paper names and does not open; see `docs/IDEAS-REGISTER-2026-08-07.md`.
+
+Built by one researcher with a language model as design, implementation and review partner, under an evidentiary discipline strict enough that **the absence of a result is itself a recorded result**. All eleven measurements of the model alone are INVALID and are published in the same table as the rest, with their attribution; what holds is the system, the model deciding and the organ answering, on two live seeds.
+
+---
+
+**Status board:** [`docs/STATUS-2026-09-13.md`](docs/STATUS-2026-09-13.md) — the sequence of steps, what each validated, what is tried next, in plain words, and what carries to a larger model.
+
+## What exists today (verify each line)
+
+| | Result | Evidence |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Baseline** | Byte-level GPT-2-style control, 25.9M params, **val_ppl 2.601** on 500M FineWeb-Edu tokens | [`metrics/runs.jsonl`](metrics/runs.jsonl) run `be1fa8139f59`, schema-validated in CI |
+| **Continuity, first measurement** | The **Molaison dissociation (the H.M. protocol: named after Henry Molaison, the patient whose hippocampus was removed in 1953 and who formed no new episodic memory from that day while keeping every skill he had; the protocol asks the model the same question: with its journal cut, do the episodes vanish while the skills stay?) passes** against the persistent-memory organ: recall **1.000** with the journal, **0.125** without (chance floor), gap **0.875** vs required 0.50; the journal **never hallucinates** a fact it does not hold (negative control 0.000); skills journal-independent. Stable on 4 seeds. Since 2026-09-12 the same pass holds with the journal **sealed on disk and reopened from the disk alone** for session B (`persistent: true`, `claimable: 1`), gated on 4 seeds since 2026-09-14 (recall 1.000 on every seed, gaps 0.85 to 0.92, negative control 0.00 to 0.055 against the line 0.10). | [`metrics/mqar/hm-protocol-2026-09-08.json`](metrics/mqar/hm-protocol-2026-09-08.json) · persistent runs: [`hm-protocol-persistent-2026-09-12.json`](metrics/mqar/hm-protocol-persistent-2026-09-12.json) and `hm-protocol-persistent-2026-09-14-seed{1,2,3}.json` · spec frozen 2026-08-08: [`docs/benchmarks/hm-protocol.md`](docs/benchmarks/hm-protocol.md) · `tests/test_c2b_hm_protocol.py` |
+| **The journal in the decode loop, eleven measurements on the model (nine runs, the last on three seeds): the model alone INVALID eleven times, attributed eleven times; the system, the model deciding and the organ answering, holds the four frozen conditions on two live seeds (rows 37 and 39).** Fine tuned from N1, the model reads its journal as content through a zero init cross attention; the learned cue encoder generalises to entities never seen (86.5 to 98 % of the right episodes retrieved) and the reader reads (97 to 99.6 % of its attention on the retrieved bytes). Six data recipes (v1 to v6) left the decision to cite or abstain where a class prior puts it: the best grounding (v6, valid citations 61.5 %) still claims on 62 % of never planted entities. The seventh run added a matching head supervised on the exact question, "is the queried entity in the window": it learned a constant. A linear probe on its inputs is at chance on held out pairs, and citing the line the reader attends most does no better than generating the label. The limit is the reader's representation at this size: it reads the window, not the line, and carries at most a weak, seed dependent trace of the comparison (a second seed, trained on a laptop GPU, repeats the reading). The ninth recipe (v9) gives the model the organ's own similarity as a number in every window line: claims on never planted entities fall from 0.62 to 0.10 and the grounding rises, INVALID still by the invalid citations and by the negative control at the line, on three seeds; with the organ vetoing a weakly marked citation and supplying the cited line's own value, the four conditions hold on the two seeds that did not conceive the policy (strict recall 0.845 and 0.890, invalid citations and claims on never planted entities 0.000). Session B in a new process reproduces every number of the eleven measurements. | [`docs/RESULTS.md`](docs/RESULTS.md) rows 21 to 29 and 36 to 40 · [`metrics/mqar/hm-lm-7e343011489f.json`](metrics/mqar/hm-lm-7e343011489f.json) · [`docs/adr/ADR-008-journal-in-the-decode-loop.md`](docs/adr/ADR-008-journal-in-the-decode-loop.md) |
+| **Memory ablation (associative recall, MQAR)** | Two associative memories — modern-Hopfield and gated delta-rule — each beat the transformer control on the 12-tier curve (single seed); **no single memory dominates**: Hopfield owns easy/dense tiers, delta the hard/short ones, the control the long ones. Only 6/12 tiers are separable. | [`metrics/mqar/domain-map.md`](metrics/mqar/domain-map.md) · [`mqar-ablation-final-2026-09-07.json`](metrics/mqar/mqar-ablation-final-2026-09-07.json) |
+| **The memory router (RES-18)** | A router over paths (control / Hopfield / delta / journal) on a **guaranteed non-regression floor**: a memory is used only where it beats the control. The oracle ceiling is **+21%** over the control, **+6%** over the best single memory. The *learned* router reaches that ceiling on a synthetic task and **not yet on real spans** (12 tiers is too few — recorded, not hidden). | [`cortex_c2/`](cortex_c2/) · [`router-ablation-real-spans-2026-09-07.json`](metrics/mqar/router-ablation-real-spans-2026-09-07.json) · ADR-006 D8–D9 |
+| **External anchor** | A from-scratch ladder of pure recurrent models (GLA + selective gate + channel decay + local conv + delta rule, each from its paper), now at **eight seeds, 1500 steps, paired on seed with the control and the two hybrids** (128 units, the first real cut and resume). At three seeds and 1000 steps the hybrids reached 3-4x the best pure rung; at eight seeds and 1500 steps the comparator changes: **the local convolution rung (L3) takes off on five seeds of eight** (0.47 to 0.67 at 8 pairs) and the statement does not carry over. The hybrids trail L3 and do not beat the control. | [`metrics/mqar/ladder8-ckpt/`](metrics/mqar/ladder8-ckpt/) · [`PROVENANCE-ladder8.json`](metrics/mqar/ladder8-ckpt/PROVENANCE-ladder8.json) · [`docs/RESULTS.md`](docs/RESULTS.md) rows 18-20 |
+| **What the gate refused, and the one line it let through** | At eight seeds the six declared tests: five held (hybrids vs the best pure rung: t −2.10 / −1.97; hybrids vs control: t 1.11 / 0.56; control vs the best pure rung: t −2.30) and one gated, structural and negative: **the delta rule pure trails the local convolution pure** (L4 vs L3, t −3.21, df 7), with its reserve written next to it (a bimodal comparator; a sign test does not pass). **No line in favour of a memory thesis.** The three seed run keeps its date (superseded); the five seed run stays withdrawn (its log was never retained). A selection envelope over the separately trained models (0.235) is a ceiling, held twice over: a maximum is significant against its own components by construction, and no router inside one model can compose separately trained models. | [`LATEST-ladder8.json`](metrics/mqar/ladder8-ckpt/LATEST-ladder8.json) · [`metrics/mqar/logs/`](metrics/mqar/logs/) · [`docs/WHITEPAPER.md`](docs/WHITEPAPER.md) §4.4b |
+
+**Scope, stated plainly:** everything above is at 25 to 27M parameters and MQAR scale. The Molaison pass on the *organ* uses a hash seeded cue encoder and a reference skill probe; its first artefact (2026-09-08) was produced within one process (`persistent: false`, not claimable, in the protocol's vocabulary since 2026-09-12), the later ones reopen a sealed journal from the disk alone (`persistent: true`, four seeds), and the organ's survival across a real process restart is established by test (ADR-007 D8) and by measurement (row 13b). On the language model reading its journal in generation, the model alone is INVALID on all eleven measurements and the system holds on two live seeds (rows 37 and 39). Two comparisons have passed the statistical gate, both structural: the delta rule pure trails the local convolution pure (row 20, with a bimodal reserve) and the recurrent base arms beat the pure rung at sixteen seeds with a trunk that never learned the task (row 35); no line in favour of a memory thesis on the ladder.
+
+---
+
+## Why this is worth your time — four contributions
+
+1. **A law borrowed from black-hole thermodynamics that decides when a result may be claimed.** The author's parallel physics program ([mirror-bh-thermodynamics](https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/mirror-bh-thermodynamics)) proves that thermodynamic invariants which look volatile when only the visible horizons are counted become *exact* when the complete root set is counted — the apparent noise is the share of what was left out (R² = 1 under full accounting, verified to forty digits). Transposed here as **rule 6 of the admission gate — the completeness test**: before claiming, regress the result on the declared context; unexplained variance is treated as an *omitted factor*, not as noise, and blocks the claim until it is found or declared a limit. The law has already acted on this repository twice, in both directions: it exposed an ill-posed metric (the router's "93% of the oracle ceiling" was a ratio over a collapsing denominator — replaced by an absolute measure) and it **refused** to rescue a near-miss (the 5-seed delta result at t = 2.65: the per-seed variance regressed on context at R² 0.15–0.20 — genuine, not omitted, so no adjusted analysis was admissible). A method that corrects its author in both directions is the strongest evidence this repository offers that its numbers can be trusted. → [`docs/WHITEPAPER.md`](docs/WHITEPAPER.md) §2.7 and rule 6, [`metrics/mqar/completeness-test-router-2026-09-08.json`](metrics/mqar/completeness-test-router-2026-09-08.json), register RES-20.
+2. **A continuity benchmark that exists before a model scores well on it.** The Molaison protocol (episodic persistence), the oracle-shift protocol (adaptive revision) and the reference-ratio protocol (non-regeneration) are specified, seeded, config-hashed and open. Whoever defines the measurement frames the question. → [`docs/benchmarks/`](docs/benchmarks/)
+3. **A memory router that cannot degrade the model.** Control as the floor, routing regime that hardens as it consolidates, a circuit breaker that re-routes instead of killing — versioned behind a retro-compatible contract (v2 was added as one dispatch branch; v1 untouched). → [`cortex_c2/`](cortex_c2/), ADR-006
+4. **A method you can audit.** 251 tests in CI, 239 in about two minutes without the training smoke tests; 8 architecture decision records and a 26-entry decision log, dated and never rewritten; a run ledger where unknowns are `null`; two retrogradations and one invalid run kept in the artefacts. The collaboration itself follows a design thinking discipline the author formalised in 2018 (understand before solving; diverge then converge; hold desirability, viability and feasibility together): the researcher supplies the upstream structure, the model supplies rapid divergence and execution, and the ledger arbitrates — a pattern that caught five over claims in one week and is reproducible by others. One consequence is recorded as the project's long horizon (whitepaper §5b): the organ this repository builds, a journal that survives the session boundary and a gate that judges by persistence, is the organ its own AI collaborator lacks; the model that co designed it does not persist between sessions, and the author's ledger reproduced by hand the capability the project measures. That is an ambition, not a result. The same evidentiary discipline was independently converged on by the author's physics program (theorem register, per-claim novelty pre-gates, dated follow-up notes, an archive kept for provenance) — suggesting it is a property of the method, not of either subject. → [`docs/WHITEPAPER.md`](docs/WHITEPAPER.md) §2, [`docs/adr/`](docs/adr/)
+
+---
+
+## Who this is for
+
+The cortex is built for settings where continuity is the decisive property. Where it is not, use a frontier model. Five settings, each tied to what the triad must measure and to the organ that measures it:
+
+- **A long running project companion.** A lawyer on a six month case: a decision taken in January (set an argument aside, on the strength of a ruling) is recalled in May in a fresh session, the ruling is cited rather than re summarised, the discarded argument stays discarded. *Persistence and non regeneration; the Molaison protocol measures exactly this; C2b.*
+- **An assistant whose world changes.** A compliance officer: a directive enters into force on Tuesday, the oracle channel receives it, and by Wednesday the model's answers on reporting obligations have changed, visibly and datably, without retraining. *Revision; the oracle organ C3, not yet built.*
+- **Private, local, encrypted memory.** A general practitioner keeping follow up notes on her own machine, one encrypted journal per patient, recall across consultations months apart, no record ever sent to an API. *Persistence under a trust boundary; needs scale and ternary weights.*
+- **The local model of an agent.** A Quantum Meridian agent asks the cortex for everything that touches the project's history and a frontier model for new code; the cortex signals, through its decode contracts, when a question leaves its domain. *The non regression router, at the scale of models.*
+- **The measurement, for other laboratories.** A team with a long memory model runs the open suite (Molaison, oracle shift, reference ratio) with its frozen thresholds on their own model and publishes a comparable number. *The product here is the benchmark, not the model.*
+
+What the cortex is not: a general chatbot, a frontier code model, or a competitor on raw capability. The five settings above hold precisely because they rest on a capability those models do not have and do not measure.
+
+**Where each setting stands (the landing of 2026-09-14, updated 2026-09-30; every cell has its artefact in `docs/RESULTS.md`):**
+
+| Setting | Holds today | Holds with a mention | Postponed, said as such |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| The measurement, for other laboratories | The Molaison protocol, thresholds frozen 2026-08-08; the organ passes, persistent and claimable, on four seeds (row 13b); a 27M model measured eleven times, INVALID eleven times on the model alone, attributed (rows 21 to 29, 36 to 39); the system holds on two live seeds (rows 37, 39); `notebooks/reproduce_molaison_cpu.ipynb` reproduces the organ's pass in minutes without a GPU | The model alone is measured and INVALID; the system passes | The oracle shift and reference ratio suites are not built |
+| A long running project companion | The organ as a component: gated write path, sealed on disk journal, session B in a new process; `cortex_c2b/companion_demo.py` on a fictional matter followed from January to May, five planted questions cited with the right record, three never written questions abstained (`metrics/mqar/companion-demo-2026-09-14.json`) | Addressing is exact at the organ level (the entity is the address); paraphrase addressing is the model arm's job | The 27M model reading its own journal in generation: the model alone at its measured limit; the system, the model deciding and the organ answering, holds (rows 37, 39) |
+| The local model of an agent | The encoder retrieves (0.98) and the reader reads (0.98) on the model; the decode contract exists; the system holds the four conditions on two live seeds (rows 37, 39) | The model alone is INVALID: the decision follows a class prior from the bytes and moves with the organ's mark (v9) | The model carrying the contract alone is a matter of size, door 1 of §5d |
+| An assistant whose world changes | Nothing | | The oracle channel C3 is not built; the setting is not served |
+| Private, local, encrypted memory | The journal sealed at rest, one scope per subject, survives a process restart (ADR-007) | Served by the organ only | The model that fits on a device (scale, ternary weights) is not built |
+| The recurrent ladder and the hybrids | The eight seed ladder (rows 18 to 20) and the Σ (row 27): L3 takes off, mostly a matter of training length; no memory advantage of the hybrids at this size | A finding and a negative structural line, not a product | The recurrent base arms at sixteen seeds (rows 30 to 35): both arms beat the pure rung at 95 %, with a trunk that never takes off (the attention pre empts it); the trunk's contribution is the reliability of the take off; stage B is the founder's decision |
+| v9, the familiarity mark (row 36): the organ's own similarity written in every read window line; the oracle passes, and for the first time the 27M model's discrimination moves (claims on absent entities 0.62 to 0.10, strict recall 0.385 to 0.75); INVALID by the invalid citations and by the negative control at the line; the external model arm's first execution (Qwen3-1.7B) retained: the episodic contract holds, the skill arm fails |
+| v9 on a second seed and the organ side policies read live (rows 37, 38): the model alone stays INVALID; with the organ vetoing a citation whose line is weakly marked and supplying that line's own value, the four frozen conditions hold on the seed that did not conceive the policy, a system result on one live seed; the retrieval probe says the remaining misses are the index's buckets, not the cue |
+| The third seed (row 39): the system holds the four frozen conditions on **two live seeds** that did not conceive the policy, strict recall 0.845 and 0.890 with invalid citations and claims on never planted entities at zero on both; the model alone stays INVALID on all three |
+
+## Reproduce it (no GPU needed to verify)
+
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/quantum-cortex && cd quantum-cortex
+pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu
+pip install -e . && pip install pytest
+pytest tests/ -m "not slow"        # 239 tests: ledger, data-mix invariants, C2 layers, router, journal, lifecycle, restart, storage policy, journal in the decode loop, recurrent base hybrid, Molaison
+python -m cortex_c2b.hm_protocol    # the Molaison dissociation, end to end, in seconds (persistent: false, in memory)
+python -m cortex_c2b.hm_protocol --persistent   # the same, sealed on disk, session B reopened from the disk alone
+python train.py --config configs/smoke_journal_cpu.json   # the journal in the decode loop, the whole loop on CPU in a minute (ADR-008); a mechanics smoke, not a result
+python -m cortex_c2b.external_arm --frame                 # the external model arm's frozen prompt, hash 7fda43aced410d65; the runbook is docs/benchmarks/external-arm.md
+python -m cortex_eval.resumable_rb --quick --reference-from <a ladder subset dir>   # the recurrent base hybrid family, four arms, in seconds (Rev38); mechanics, not a result
+python -m cortex_eval.domain_map    # the per-tier domain map from the committed artefacts
+```
+
+GPU runs (the MQAR ablation, the confirmation run) reproduce from the notebooks in [`notebooks/`](notebooks/) on a free Kaggle T4; every run writes its record to the ledger. Full setup: [`docs/GETTING-STARTED.md`](docs/GETTING-STARTED.md).
+
+---
+
+## Use it with your own model
+
+The organ is a component; the 27M cortex is one of its users. Three ways to compose it with a model, each stated in whitepaper §3.6 with what it inherits from the record and what it has to measure for itself:
+
+1. **As a library, any model decoding, no training.** `Journal` (sealed per scope, one key per journal), `WritePath` (the gate: what the journal already predicts is refused), `JournalPath` (the index: a read is never a scan), `lifecycle`. Your model receives the retrieved lines as a window and answers under the contract: cite a label and give the attribute, or abstain. The cue is any unit vector of 64 floats: the protocol's hash seeded address below, or your own encoder. Worked example: `python -m cortex_c2b.companion_demo`.
+2. **A model people use, through the frozen prompt, no training.** `python -m cortex_c2b.external_arm` runs the Molaison dissociation unchanged around an open model (Qwen3 pinned at 1.7, 4 and 8 billion parameters; any other runtime is a wrapper with three calls: `complete`, `nll`, `describe`). First execution retained, not graved: the episodic conditions hold, the skill arm fails (+18.7 % perplexity with the window in front of ordinary text). Runbook: [`docs/benchmarks/external-arm.md`](docs/benchmarks/external-arm.md).
+3. **A model trained with the organ in its decode loop.** `cortex_c2b.lm_bridge` and `cortex_c2b.organ_use`, the way the cortex itself was measured; written for this repository's byte level transformer, not carried to another architecture in this edition.
+
+![Three ways to compose the organ with a model: as a library, behind a frozen prompt, in the decode loop](docs/figures/composition-three-ways.svg)
+
+The first way, in a dozen lines. Session A, today (the key comes from the environment, one per journal, never from a file):
+
+<!-- compose: session A -->
+```python
+import os
+from cortex_c2b import Journal, POLICY_STOP
+from cortex_c2b.write_path import WritePath
+from cortex_c2b.read_path import JournalPath
+from cortex_c2b.hm_protocol import address_cue
+
+key = bytes.fromhex(os.environ["QUANTUM_CORTEX_JOURNAL_KEY"])     # one key per journal, one journal per scope, never in a file
+journal = Journal("runs/my-scope/journal.jsonl", key=key, policy=POLICY_STOP)
+write, read = WritePath(journal, admission_threshold=0.15, seed=0), JournalPath(journal)
+report = write.write(address_cue("decision|argument:originality"),
+                     b"12 Jan: the originality argument is set aside on the strength of ruling 2024/AR/512",
+                     "decision", now=0.0)
+if report.admitted:                                                # the gate refuses what the journal already predicts
+    read.on_write(report.entry)
+print("written" if report.admitted else f"refused: {report.reason}", report.entry.pointer[:12] if report.entry else "")
+```
+
+Session B, months later, in a new process that knows nothing of session A but the disk:
+
+<!-- compose: session B -->
+```python
+import os
+from cortex_c2b import Journal, POLICY_STOP
+from cortex_c2b.read_path import JournalPath
+from cortex_c2b.hm_protocol import address_cue
+
+key = bytes.fromhex(os.environ["QUANTUM_CORTEX_JOURNAL_KEY"])
+journal = Journal("runs/my-scope/journal.jsonl", key=key, policy=POLICY_STOP)   # reopened from the disk alone
+read = JournalPath(journal)
+for address in ("decision|argument:originality", "decision|argument:database-right"):
+    hits = read.retrieve(address_cue(address), k=4)                # never a scan; (entry, payload, score) per hit
+    if hits and hits[0][2] >= 0.5:                                 # the declared line on the journal's own score
+        entry, payload, score = hits[0]
+        print("cite", entry.pointer[:12], payload.decode())        # the window your model answers from, under the contract
+    else:
+        print("abstain: no record for", address)
+```
+
+Expected: the first address is cited with its pointer and its record, the second is abstained on (no record was written); running session A again is refused as redundant; the files under `runs/my-scope/` are sealed (no plaintext at rest). `tests/test_compose_snippet.py` runs these two blocks as they stand, session B in a new process, and asserts all four. The line at 0.5 is declared for this cue convention; with your own encoder, set it on addresses never written before use, as the companion demonstration does. Before believing a pair of a model and the organ, run the protocol on it (`docs/benchmarks/hm-protocol.md`, thresholds frozen since 2026-09-12); a result on any model, PASS, FAIL or INVALID, is a row we publish next to ours with its attribution.
+
+---
+
+## Where to read next
+
+- **The paper, as it is being written:** [`docs/WHITEPAPER.md`](docs/WHITEPAPER.md) — thesis, method, architecture, results as a domain map, open questions; claims enter only through a seven-rule admission gate.
+- **Every decision, dated:** [`docs/adr/`](docs/adr/) (ADR-001…008) · [`docs/IDEAS-REGISTER-2026-08-07.md`](docs/IDEAS-REGISTER-2026-08-07.md) (37 ideas, each with an implementation status) · the ecosystem-level log D1 to D26, mirrored from the private hub in [`docs/hub/`](docs/hub/).
+- **What happens next, and its gates:** [`docs/SEQUENCE.md`](docs/SEQUENCE.md).
+- **The approach, before the numbers:** [`docs/JOURNEY.md`](docs/JOURNEY.md) — a long haul, what this edition means and does not, what comes next, and what it implies if it holds.
+- **How the work is run:** the working files (handover prompts, resume notes, the rules given to the AI collaborator) are kept in the author's private workshop; this public repository is a filtered copy of it with the same commits and dates, see [`docs/WORKSHOP.md`](docs/WORKSHOP.md).
+
+## What comes next (gated, in order)
+
+1. ~~**The recurrent ladder at eight seeds**~~ **Done (2026-09-12): read cold, graved as rows 18 to 20.** It contradicted its hypothesis and produced the run's real finding, L3's bimodal take off. The Σ of the convergence ran (2026-09-13, row 27): two of the three floor seeds take off by 3000 steps, the third is undecided, and no seed learns 16 pairs at 3000 either: the bimodality was mostly speed, and a floor at 1500 steps is not a verdict. Stage A of the recurrent base hybrid ran (2026-09-16, rows 30 and 31): at 3000 steps seven seeds of eight take off on L3 pure; the two decisive arms reach 0.97 with a trunk that never takes off: the attention pre empts the recurrent base, the risk named before the code; stage B (the consolidation arms) is the declared answer, not yet run. The reference that tests why the arms reach 0.97 (row 32, the control plus the trunk's convolution) is bimodal: the convolution suffices for the level where it engages, four seeds of eight at exactly 1.000; the trunk's contribution is the reliability of the take off. At sixteen seeds (rows 33 to 35) both arms beat the pure rung at 95 % (the claim of Rev38 in its letter, with a dead trunk) and beat the convolved control; the convolved control's floor seeds do not move at 12 000 steps.
+2. ~~**The language-model arm of Molaison**~~ **Closed on the model alone (rows 21 to 29, 36, 37, 39: INVALID, attributed) and held by the system on two live seeds (rows 37 and 39): the model decides, the organ answers.** The organ's security measured (row 40). The whitepaper v1 is the landing edition of that work.
+3. **v1.1, in the order the record names them:** the index's buckets, a wider negative control, the write side separation of near duplicates, the detectors as code, stage B of the recurrent base arms, the reader with a local convolution, the external arm's agreement then larger open models, the withdrawal of an evicted address from the memory (row 41), the reconstruction probe under reads (`docs/JOURNEY.md`).
+4. **C3, the oracle channel** → the second component of the triad (adaptive revision); then **a 100M+ run** (EuroHPC Development Access; the author's company is eligible) → the reader's selectivity as a function of size, the door that decides the model arm's future.
+
+Contributions welcome on any of the four — see [`CONTRIBUTING.md`](CONTRIBUTING.md). The most valuable first contribution is a **replication**: run `pytest`, run the Molaison protocol, and open an issue with what you saw.
+
+---
+
+## License and attribution
+
+**Lost between RES, Rev, ADR, rows and D numbers?** `docs/NAVIGATION.md` is the key: what each label means, the path an idea takes from the register to a measured row, and which documents are current versus historical.
+
+**Where things are.** `docs/WHITEPAPER.md` is the paper. `docs/RESULTS.md` is the record: one row per measurement, with its artefacts, the test that recomputes it, and its reserve. `docs/FALSIFY.md` is the twenty minute way to attack it. `docs/adr/` holds the decisions, declared before the runs they govern; `docs/IDEAS-REGISTER-2026-08-07.md` holds every idea with its dated revision. `metrics/` holds the ledger, the artefacts and the retained logs. `cortex_c2b/` is the memory organ, `train.py` the training entry point, `tests/` the suite that recomputes every published aggregate. The collaboration's own working notes are kept in the private workshop (`docs/WORKSHOP.md`).
+
+**Trying to break it?** `docs/FALSIFY.md` is the twenty minute version: the frozen thresholds and when they were fixed, the readings declared before each run, the negative rows, the command that recomputes every published aggregate from its artefacts, and what would falsify the central claim.
+
+Apache License 2.0, unmodified. You may use, modify, fork and redistribute this work freely, with no warranty and no liability on the author's side (Sections 7 and 8 of the License; [`DISCLAIMER.md`](DISCLAIMER.md)), on the conditions the License itself imposes, one of which is attribution: **the attribution notices of the `NOTICE` file must travel with any copy or derivative work** (Sections 4(c) and 4(d)), and with them the statement that quantum-cortex was originally created by Nicolas Van Eeckhout; a redistribution that drops them is outside the License, and the author's moral rights of authorship under Belgian law hold independently of it. To cite the work, use [`CITATION.cff`](CITATION.cff) (GitHub renders it as "Cite this repository"). The continuity benchmarks published here carry the same requirement. The pretraining slice is drawn from FineWeb-Edu (ODC-By 1.0), attributed in `NOTICE` and in the whitepaper's references. The documentation, the whitepaper and the figures are under CC BY 4.0 ([`LICENSE-DOCS.md`](LICENSE-DOCS.md)); the code stays Apache 2.0.
+
+---
+
+*Author: Nicolas Van Eeckhout (Win2Win SRL, Brussels) · [ORCID 0000-0002-5256-3185](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5256-3185) · License Apache-2.0 · Companion physics program: [mirror-bh-thermodynamics](https://github.com/vaneeckhoutnicolas/mirror-bh-thermodynamics).*