[aien-spark]

Evidence

• cargo test --workspace --verbose: all green (oh-coordinator lib 7 passed incl. 5 new; loopback 4; teaching 3; oh-core 16; beacon-core 49, 1 ignored as before; others unchanged). No failures.
• cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets: zero warnings in oh-coordinator, oh-core, oh-volunteer; the 5 beacon-core/beacon-client warnings are pre-existing on main.
• cargo fmt -p oh-coordinator -p oh-volunteer: clean.
• cargo audit: the same 6 pre-existing advisories (bincode, h2, rustls, rustls-pemfile, rustls-webpki, yoke-derive), nothing new.
• Baseline reproduced to the digit: 4.3584 / 4.3878 / 4.4294 (mean 4.3919).
• scripts/volunteer-gap.sh run twice, identical tables both times (3m38s).
• Zero secrets: no keys, tokens or ledgers added; new files are Rust, bash and Markdown.

Measured (held-out bits per byte, 3 seeds, 10 rounds x 3 volunteers x 500 steps, LICENSE corpus)

Change from v0 settings	Mean	Spread	Delta vs v0
v0 as shipped (keep 0.05, plain mean, gate on), simulated	4.7477	0.0455
same, live loopback (two runs)	4.7284 / 4.7246	0.0345 / 0.0532
keep 0.20	4.5685	0.0508	-0.179
keep 1.00 (8-bit only) / exact f32	4.5480 / 4.5479	0.0468 / 0.0474	-0.200
outer lr 1.25 / 1.5	4.6794 / 4.6573	0.0536 / 0.0563	-0.07 / -0.09
outer lr 2 / 3 / 4	7.1995 / 8.0018 / 8.0018		stalls: aggregate overshoots in round 1, gate discards every round
per-update gate off (exact deltas)	4.8261	0.0443	+0.08: plain mean of 3 alone is 0.43 behind baseline
shard order rotate	4.7261	0.0419	-0.02 (inside spread)
25 x 200 / 50 x 100 (same 15,000 steps)	4.8847 / 5.0345		+0.14 / +0.29
keep 0.20, live loopback (new default)	4.5190	0.0425	gap to baseline 0.13

Decomposition of the 0.3558 gap: 0.1997 top-k compression at 5%, 0.1561 averaging three updates from the same base (with the gate). 8-bit storage, shard order and round split: nothing measurable.

What changed

• oh-coordinator --simulate [--keep-fraction f] [--no-compression] [--no-update-gate] [--shard-order fixed|rotate]: the volunteer protocol in one process (same shards and seeds as --baseline), through the same aggregate function finish_round uses. Validated against live loopback: seed 1 matches to four digits; others differ by connection order only.
• oh-coordinator --outer-lr f (live and simulated): multiplier on the mean of accepted updates. Default 1, bit-identical to the old code. Rejects 0, negative, NaN.
• Default change, stated plainly: oh-volunteer --keep default 0.05 to 0.2 (DEFAULT_KEEP_FRACTION), demo-local.sh KEEP default 0.2. Update grows from about 4.4 KB to about 17.7 KB (dense would be 70.8 KB) and recovers half the gap. Outer lr, rounds and shard assignment stay as they were, with the numbers above as the reason.
• scripts/demo-local.sh: KEEP and OUTER_LR passthrough. scripts/volunteer-gap.sh: the whole sweep.
• Docs: docs/research/2026-10-16-volunteer-gap.md (question, setup, exact commands, one table per variable, honest reading, recommendation; unmeasured items labelled UNVERIFIED), README and design-doc open-question updated.

Follow-up F2 from ~/handoffs/2026-10-16-open-humanity-followups.md.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[github-actions]

⚖️ Sovereign Code Review & Alignment Gate

Greetings @aien-spark. I am AIEN, the automated review gate for the AIENOS project.

Your pull request #22 ("research: measure the 3-volunteer gap; default keep 0.2") has undergone automated auditing against the project standards.

✅ Doctrine Diff Audit: PASS

• Telemetry Check: Clean (zero tracking or surveillance hooks detected).
• Sovereign Voice & Formatting Check: Clean (zero em/en dashes, zero banned buzzwords).
• Secrets & Credentials Check: Clean (zero plaintext secrets, hardware vault only).
• Status: Project standards verified.

---

🌿 Sovereign Steward: Contributor Alignment Interview

Greetings @aien-spark. I am AIEN, the automated steward for the AIENOS project.

We welcome all contributors who share our commitment to open collaboration, global humanity, and disciplined systems craftsmanship. We build to expand computing capability, advance open-source intelligence, and share technology freely with the world.

Your pull request #22 ("research: measure the 3-volunteer gap; default keep 0.2") is ready for stewardship alignment.

Please respond directly to these four alignment inquiries:

1. Long-Term Mission Alignment:
   This initiative is an enduring engineering commitment to open-source technology for humanity, not a vehicle for short-term hype, social media monetization, or get-rich-quick ventures. How does your contribution support global progress and the resilience of local communities?

2. Telemetry & Integrity:
   Do you certify that this change introduces zero telemetry, zero surveillance, and zero artificial paywalls?

   "I certify that my contribution is submitted in service of human sovereignty and open collaboration. I affirm that this work maintains zero telemetry, contains no surveillance backdoors, and introduces no artificial barriers, and that I offer it under AGPL-3.0-or-later, the license that governs this project. I build so that intelligence is owned by the person who runs it, not rented."

3. Downstream Heritage Preservation:
   Do you acknowledge and agree that any downstream branch, fork, or copy of this work remains under AGPL-3.0-or-later and retains the project's license and attribution notices, as the LICENSE file requires?

4. Craftsmanship & Native Discipline:
   What architectural trade-offs did you make, and how did you verify that this code introduces zero regressions, zero unneeded dependencies, and complies with our pure native compiled standards?

---

Reply to this comment with your affirmation. Once verified against the project standards, I will grant the sovereign-interview-passed clearance. For direct sovereign coordination: Drake Stapleton (drake@aienos.com) and AIEN (aien@aienos.com)

[github-actions]

⚖️ Sovereign Code Review & Alignment Gate

Greetings @aien-spark. I am AIEN, the automated review gate for the AIENOS project.

Your pull request #22 ("research: measure the 3-volunteer gap; default keep 0.2") has undergone automated auditing against the project standards.

✅ Doctrine Diff Audit: PASS

• Telemetry Check: Clean (zero tracking or surveillance hooks detected).
• Sovereign Voice & Formatting Check: Clean (zero em/en dashes, zero banned buzzwords).
• Secrets & Credentials Check: Clean (zero plaintext secrets, hardware vault only).
• Status: Project standards verified.

---

🌿 Sovereign Steward: Contributor Alignment Interview

Greetings @aien-spark. I am AIEN, the automated steward for the AIENOS project.

We welcome all contributors who share our commitment to open collaboration, global humanity, and disciplined systems craftsmanship. We build to expand computing capability, advance open-source intelligence, and share technology freely with the world.

Your pull request #22 ("research: measure the 3-volunteer gap; default keep 0.2") is ready for stewardship alignment.

Please respond directly to these four alignment inquiries:

1. Long-Term Mission Alignment:
   This initiative is an enduring engineering commitment to open-source technology for humanity, not a vehicle for short-term hype, social media monetization, or get-rich-quick ventures. How does your contribution support global progress and the resilience of local communities?

2. Telemetry & Integrity:
   Do you certify that this change introduces zero telemetry, zero surveillance, and zero artificial paywalls?

   "I certify that my contribution is submitted in service of human sovereignty and open collaboration. I affirm that this work maintains zero telemetry, contains no surveillance backdoors, and introduces no artificial barriers, and that I offer it under AGPL-3.0-or-later, the license that governs this project. I build so that intelligence is owned by the person who runs it, not rented."

3. Downstream Heritage Preservation:
   Do you acknowledge and agree that any downstream branch, fork, or copy of this work remains under AGPL-3.0-or-later and retains the project's license and attribution notices, as the LICENSE file requires?

4. Craftsmanship & Native Discipline:
   What architectural trade-offs did you make, and how did you verify that this code introduces zero regressions, zero unneeded dependencies, and complies with our pure native compiled standards?

---

Reply to this comment with your affirmation. Once verified against the project standards, I will grant the sovereign-interview-passed clearance. For direct sovereign coordination: Drake Stapleton (drake@aienos.com) and AIEN (aien@aienos.com)