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Fix the task first, harden the plant second - DR budget spent on a dying task is wasted

A lesson the Coach cites as task-shaping-before-plant-hardening.
Mechanism understoodExperiment method

Freeze the task/command distribution before spending DR budget on plant robustness; if the task will still change, schedule plant hardening as a final pass and book the interim robustness gap explicitly.

Symptom

Tempting default ordering was to keep the plant-hardened (S2) lineage and teach it new commands; but the S2 plant adaptation had been earned on the straight-walk task, and the new omni tasks (sidewalk, in-place turn) use completely different contact patterns.

Context

The team had direct evidence that DR robustness is a budget that gets reallocated when the data distribution changes ("push/μ 两轮已实证 DR 预算有限且会被重分配") - robustness trained under one task/command distribution does not persist when training continues under another.

Change

Ladder order set to: first C (task shaping - add command modes until the task family is final), then a second S2 pass (plant hardening) on the C product. The plant-robustness gap this creates mid-ladder is accepted and booked explicitly ("此处不欠账" - the debt is assigned to the second S2 pass, not denied).

Outcome

The first S2 pass was not wasted: its laws (kd bandwidth <-> low mu, push need not be trained, ground mu need not be trained, bistability) let the second pass drop from five rungs to three. The C ladder itself ran on the softer plant band without incident.

Mechanism

DR robustness is carried by the policy's visited-state distribution; changing the task changes that distribution, so robustness bought under the old task partially dissolves. Hardening before the task is final means paying for robustness on states that will no longer be visited - "给一个即将不存在的任务花预算" (spending budget on a soon-to-not-exist task).

Applies when

  • deciding ordering between skill/command expansion and DR hardening
  • a hardened lineage is proposed as the root for a task change
  • robustness regressions appear after adding new command modes
“S2 的 plant 适应是为直行步态调的,C4 侧走/C3 原地转是完全不同的接触模式,先硬化再改任务 = 给一个即将不存在的任务花预算(push/μ 两轮已实证 DR 预算有限且会被重分配)。故顺序改为 先 C(任务定型)→ 再 S2(plant 硬化)。”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 0. 决策逻辑 = 短板可不可恢复 (末段)

Principles that cite it