Training Coach
Doctrine
A report may cite any of these as doctrine-N.
doctrine-1Contract freeze and fingerprint disciplineThe policy I/O contract (observation layout, scales, history semantics, action pipeline) is frozen and fingerprinted; every exported policy is stamped and verified; contract changes ship as new versioned profiles that leave old artifacts bit-identical, and old policies run forever under their era's pinned profile.
Case. The 215-dim omni contract was frozen with a three-machine digest; the one contract-level extension (lateral feed-forward) went in as a new `omni_ff` profile with the old profile provably untouched, and the contract checker caught two real wiring bugs before any training (`contract-freeze-and-checker`). A silently changed gait-clock default would have fed old policies a 25% slower clock - closed by pinned legacy profiles (`legacy-profile-pinning`). A stale derived USD forked plant mass 2.2% until an automated source-vs-derived instrument gated it (`derived-asset-staleness-check`). A gain profile is part of the closed loop a policy was trained in and belongs in its stamp; the recovery line's anchored authority was left out of its manifest and recorded as the gap not to repeat (`gain-profile-belongs-in-the-stamp`), and a second policy behind a deploy-side switch made the handoff state itself a contract (`recovery-two-policies-and-a-state-machine`, `walk-recovery-fsm-handoff`).
Coach application. On any proposal touching obs/action semantics, defaults, or derived assets: demand the version/profile plan, the fingerprint update, and the checker extension in the same change; flag any old artifact that would run under new defaults.
doctrine-2Attribution by resolved training params - never eval-override knobsCapability differences between lineages are explained only by digging each lineage's *resolved* training configuration and eliminating columns; evaluation-side override knobs (kd-scale, power-scale, cycle-time) act on the plant for *every* policy and may serve as deployment mitigations but never as explanations.
Case. Low-friction robustness across 8 lineages x 3840 cells was traced to kd DR *bandwidth* - every lineage had ground friction pinned to (1.0,1.0), so "trained friction" could not be the axis; the parameter axis and the plant axis were explicitly separated after the first attribution conflated them (`kd-bandwidth-mu-law-attribution`). "Weak turning" on hardware was a power-scale plant effect, not a training gap (`deploy-knob-attribution-before-retraining`); slowing the deploy clock was out-of-distribution, not a feature (`cycle-time-override-is-ood`). The ground truth for what a run trained under is the logged per-run config, not the source tree (`resolved-config-is-source-of-truth`).
Coach application. Whenever asked "why is lineage A better", require the resolved-param table first; kill zero-variance columns; refuse explanations phrased in eval-knob terms; when a knob helps, label it deployment mitigation.
doctrine-3PASS gates become constraints; FAIL gates become objectivesOnce a skill passes its gate, that gate converts into a standing regression constraint (budget <= 2/20 against the parent baseline) for all later training; gates currently failing are the only legitimate objectives of the next rung.
Case. The C ladder ran one frozen 13-cell x 20-seed matrix at every rung with promotion = "new skill PASS and old skills within regression budget"; C1 was stopped and re-rooted precisely because it trained away the root's backward PASS (`fixed-acceptance-matrix-per-rung`, `preregistered-stop-criteria-per-rung`). The C4 product shipped only at 260/260 cells with zero regression.
Coach application. Keep the ledger: every PASS adds a constraint row; propose rungs only against FAIL rows; treat any constraint violation as stop-and-attribute, never "the next rung might win it back".
doctrine-4One variable per ladder rung - counted against what the checkpoint sawA rung changes one variable, where "one" is counted against the checkpoint's actual training state, not against the current config's diff; batching is allowed only when each change owns a disjoint symptom space with a pre-registered ablation order.
Case. Two rungs failed identically because resuming s1e-500 under the evolved config silently added four plant variables the checkpoint had never seen ("单变量纪律不只看「我改了什么」,还要看「checkpoint 见过什么」" - `resume-state-dr-audit`). v8 legally batched four orthogonal fixes with a written ablation order (`orthogonal-batch-with-ablation-order`); v9 spent one run completing a 2x2 factorial so either outcome convicted a factor (`fill-the-missing-factorial-cell`); v10b's three-way ablation wrongfully convicted the clock and had to be retried fairly.
Coach application. Before any resume: diff cfg against the checkpoint's logged training state. Before any batch: require the symptom-ownership map and ablation order in writing.
doctrine-5Pre-register risks, readings, and stop criteria before the ladderBefore a ladder or risky rung, write down the known risks, the interpretation of every plausible outcome, and hit-any-one stop criteria - frozen before training, tightened when priors say results should come fast.
Case. The C ladder opened with three numbered risks including the exact falsification condition for its own root choice; A/B arms carried "预注册读法(事后不改)" tables; a level expected to fail was run anyway for its pre-registered diagnostic value (`preregister-risks-and-fork-readings`). Stop criteria caught C4-redo rungs at +200 instead of full caps (`preregistered-stop-criteria-per-rung`); hardware sessions pre-registered per-config expected signatures and the disagreement rule "不改结论改账" (`preregistered-real-expectations`, `feasibility-accounts-lock-design-point`).
Coach application. Refuse to open a rung without the written risk/reading/ stop block; after results, read conclusions off the pre-registered table and flag any post-hoc reinterpretation.
doctrine-6Plant parameters are measured, never inventedEvery plant number carries measurement provenance: armature = N^2 x rotor inertia from no-load tests, friction split by rig and by API column, torque limits shaped by per-joint gait peaks, latency traced through the real pipeline, masses weighed - and DR bands are additive around the measured nominal, sized to the measured dispersion.
Case. Guessed friction was 2.5x low and guessed damping 5x high (`friction-measured-not-guessed`); armature had been 0 with a 9:1 gearbox (81x reflected inertia, `armature-n2-rotor-inertia`); a uniform torque derating was "the wrong shape" vs measured peaks (`torque-limit-shape-by-measured-peaks`); the delay implementation itself was a wrong plant for a whole lineage (`latency-lerp-reverse-extrapolation`); the run design point was locked by three accounts including the tau_limit/kd speed ceiling (`feasibility-accounts-lock-design-point`); identified friction had to land in the right simulator API columns to act at all (`sim-api-friction-columns`). The recovery and one-leg lines opened with the same kind of accounts before any reward existed - a connected static path and the torque along it for an armless get-up, and the gains single support needs to be holdable at all (`get-up-feasibility-accounts-before-training`, `single-support-gain-authority-probe`).
Coach application. For any plant value in a config review, ask "measured how?"; reject absolute ranges with no nominal; check API column mapping and derived-asset regeneration whenever measured values land.
doctrine-7Sim2sim gate before sim2real - under deployment conditionsEvery checkpoint passes a second, independently built simulator before hardware, and both the gate and the smoke loop run under the measured deployment conditions (real pipeline delay, honest contact parameters, the deployment gain/power profile).
Case. The standing order "先sim2sim 再sim2real" (`sim2sim-gate-before-sim2real`); acceptance flipped to match hardware only under measured condim/torsional friction (`eval-plant-honesty-contact-params`); gates moved permanently to `--delay 2` after the kicking incident (`pipeline-latency-is-plant-not-dr`); and the harness itself must be audited - a frame-convention bug in the cross-sim evaluator invalidated a whole line of verdicts (`body-frame-velocity-api-audit`). The recovery line's second simulator caught a torque penalty paid for by bracing the legs together (`torque-penalty-bought-by-leg-bracing`), and a 1.8x torque disagreement between the two plants stayed binding because its one surviving explanation was never tested (`torque-disagreement-between-simulators-unresolved`).
Coach application. Block any hardware request lacking a second-sim PASS at deployment conditions; when sim2sim and training-side metrics disagree, treat the evaluator as a suspect too.
doctrine-8Observation honesty - the actor's inputs are a hardware contractThe actor observes only signals the real robot produces with realistic noise; privileged truths go to the critic; history windows are estimators and must train under plant variation; rewards on quantities the actor cannot observe buy only average suppression, never closed-loop correction.
Case. Ground-truth velocity/forces went critic-only (`observation-honesty-critic-only`); frame_hist under zero DR memorized the trainer's plant fingerprint - 0/20 transfer (`history-obs-needs-plant-variation`); world-frame yaw rewards could not teach pull-back because heading is unobservable to the actor - correction was routed to the deploy outer loop instead of breaking the contract (`reward-observability-limit`, `deploy-heading-loop-and-align-training`).
Coach application. Audit every actor-obs element for hardware existence; require minimal plant jitter whenever history/recurrence exists; for each reward, ask "can the actor see this error?" and route correction tasks to outer loops.
doctrine-9Reward economics are audited in realized currencyReward design decisions are made on realized per-step magnitudes under the actual policy and command distribution: price the do-nothing optimum before adding a mode, compare achieved values to the computed ignore-floor, calibrate thresholds between measured healthy and sick distributions, and ship every new penalty with a withdrawal clause.
Case. feet_air_time at weight 2.0 realized 0.038 vs tracking 1.2 - drag was rational (`realized-contribution-audit`); ignoring a vy command cost 28-180x less than ignoring vx until a gated tracking term was added (`reward-cost-of-ignoring-audit`, `gate-new-reward-terms-by-command`); achieved-vs-floor separated "never learned" from "priced out" (`ignore-floor-diagnosis`); the foot-distance wall was placed between measured healthy (0.6% tax) and sick (55%) policies (`calibrate-threshold-between-healthy-and-sick`); the landing penalty carried a pre-registered stand-down condition and actually stood down (`calibration-threshold-with-withdrawal-clause`); two clearance terms were inert until zero-points and gate occupancy were checked (`inert-reward-term-audit`). A get-up policy sat because three gated terms paid the seated pose 84% of the return and the one term that could tell sitting from standing was an exp kernel reading 4.6e-5 at the real error (`seated-basin-dead-exp-kernel`); a torque-tail term was weighted by its measured steady value beside a peer term after the estimate proved 12x off (`tail-torque-needs-hinge-on-computed-demand`).
Coach application. Never discuss weights in the abstract: demand the realized-contribution table, the ignore-floor number, and the healthy-pay calibration before any reward edit is approved.
doctrine-10The zero-cost option must be the desired behaviorFor every penalty, name what the zero-cost option is; penalize failure events (slip, saturation excess, contact in flight windows), never the motion or joints that healthy behavior uses; make degenerate strategies fatal via termination where penalties cannot price them out.
Case. Joint-usage penalties for drift taxed a 1.4%-of-momentum channel 2.7/step and collapsed training; the slip penalty costs a non-slipping gait exactly zero (`penalize-the-slip-not-the-joint`). A frozen-at-clamp joint pays zero action-rate forever - only a pre-clip saturation penalty flips the cheat economics (`saturation-cheating-zero-rate-cost`). Ungated phase shaping made standing 42x more expensive than stepping and cooked the hip motors (`moving-gate-42x-stand-tax`); crouch-shuffling lived until a height termination deleted it (`termination-closes-degenerate-basin`). A gated penalty is an exit: the policy parked just outside an uprightness gate, then just under a height gate, to stop paying a stance tax, and only a positive band plus an always-on guard closed both (`penalty-gate-is-an-escape-hatch`); a soft-limit penalty that charged the standing pose itself bought a 4.1 deg lean (`soft-limit-penalty-charges-nominal-pose`); an unpriced foot attitude was spent on edge-standing (`unpriced-foot-attitude-is-a-free-variable`); and the one-leg line listed its cheapest cheats before training and still met one through a zero-gradient band (`enumerate-cheapest-cheats-before-training`, `binary-band-reward-fake-touchdown`).
Coach application. Run the "零代价的选项是什么" audit on every proposed term; convert motion taxes into event-conditional penalties; check the termination set against each known degenerate strategy.
doctrine-11Measurement discipline: independent referees, signs, distributionsA disputed measurement is adjudicated only by an independent algorithm from raw state; directional ability requires sign-antisymmetry under command reversal; bimodal metrics are reported as mode shares (never medians, never 3 seeds); ratios are not comparable when totals change; reward values compare only within one command distribution; single chaotic events never cross machines.
Case. The triple reversal - a good metric was "refuted" by a sibling metric that shared the disease (`independent-referee-for-metric-disputes`, `body-frame-velocity-api-audit`); same-signed +/- responses were bias, not turning (`same-sign-response-is-yaw-bias`); the swing median sat in a bimodal gap (`median-hides-bimodal-distribution`); "v6 is jitterier" died on absolute energies (`ratio-metrics-need-absolute-check`); yaw gain measured 15x wrong in an oscillating frame (`heading-integral-not-body-rate`); a 44% improvement evaporated under same-distribution comparison (`same-distribution-reward-comparison`); drift direction was a limit cycle (`multiseed-sign-test-for-drift`); a cross-machine push cliff was chaos (`single-impulse-recovery-is-chaotic`).
Coach application. Before accepting any surprising number: ask for the independent recomputation, the sign pair, the distribution shape, and the comparison conditions. Retract in writing when a metric falls.
doctrine-12The deployment pipeline is plantIrreducible pipeline properties - action latency, rate limits, power/torque scaling, teleop command mappings - are part of the nominal plant, modeled from day one and reproduced in every gate; deploy-side scalings are crutches that flag unmodeled plant, and they cannot be algebraically folded into training constants.
Case. Right-leg kicking was over-trained-delay x loop gain; power 0.8 was a gain-reduction crutch that retired when the delay was modeled (`pipeline-latency-is-plant-not-dr`); power derating damages non-forward axes first (`power-scale-hurts-nonforward-axes`); training at 0.4 scale as the "twin" of deploying 0.5 x 0.8 collapsed 0/20 (`deploy-scaling-not-training-equivalent`); one shared teleop speed sent an out-of-band lateral command and the robot clipped its own foot (`teleop-command-band-per-axis`); the latency DR range had not even covered the measured pipeline (`latency-dr-covers-measured-pipeline`). A rate limiter added at deployment only clipped a policy that kept commanding (`deploy-rate-limiter-windup`); moved into training and anchored on the last command it became an integrator in the balance loop (`slew-anchor-is-an-integrator`); anchored on the measured angle it bounded torque and kept the bandwidth (`beta-anchored-action-target`). The walking lines' safe setting, power-scale 0.8, cut the ends of the recovery policy's full-range travel and left its spikes alone; a gain inside the trained band did the job (`power-derating-cuts-full-range-contract`).
Coach application. Demand the measured pipeline latency/limits in the plant model and in gate conditions; treat every deploy-side derating as a question ("what is this compensating?"); block per-axis command sources that exceed training bands.
doctrine-13DR budget is finite; its distribution is the measured supportRobustness is a conserved budget: disturbance training on an already-hardened lineage borrows from existing margins; DR ranges span the measured deployment support - no fictitious tails (they buy degenerate gaits), no single constants (they allow thin-margin specialization); harden the plant only after the task distribution is final.
Case. The same push dose helped a narrow lineage and damaged a balanced one - budget conservation (`push-dr-conditional-budget-conservation`); wide latency tails bought drag-glide, constant values shipped 60% thinner tilt margins - the answer is a narrow band on the measured support (`dr-tail-plant-continuation`, `constant-value-dr-overfits-margin`); task-first ordering because hardening a soon-to-change task wastes budget (`task-shaping-before-plant-hardening`); COM randomization used deliberately as a behavior-shaping tool, and rolled back on symptom per its own contract (`com-randomization-forces-leg-spread`, `com-dr-rollback-on-symptom`). DR that is switched on can still be thin: the run policy fell in the frontal plane its gain-and-latency randomization never touched (`thin-dr-judged-by-channel-coverage`), and a friction priority settled under one action contract had to be re-measured under the next (`friction-priority-re-measured-after-plant-change`).
Coach application. Before any DR rung: check the untrained policy against the spec, the lineage's current DR load, and the measured real-world range; after it: audit retained margins, not just the new tolerance.
doctrine-14Gates measure what hardware feels: posture, margins, stripped assistsAcceptance batteries carry posture-class rows (tilt max median, per-joint L/R asymmetry, temperature) beside task rows, graded margin columns beside binary gates, chirality scored per side, at least one condition that removes the environment's free stabilization, and validated predictive scalars promoted into the gate.
Case. Three same-shaped judging errors - survival, displacement, wz-difference - all missed what the operator felt; posture metrics had the predictive power (`task-metrics-vs-posture-metrics`, `stand-gate-posture-not-survival`); binary survival saturated and hid a 60% margin gap (`constant-value-dr-overfits-margin`); v5 passed everything on the ground and failed suspended (`suspension-probe-removes-free-stabilizer`); the hip_roll (l+r) scalar predicted real drift direction and ordering and entered the battery (`hip-roll-sum-predicts-lateral-drift`); averages hide chirality (`chirality-scored-separately`); gait-quality gates are judged at speeds that demand a gait (`low-speed-commands-reward-dragging`). The recovery line added the rest of the kit: where failed episodes end, not only where they started (`end-state-confusion-matrix`); a frozen acceptance distribution with a pinned seed (`frozen-acceptance-distribution-and-pinned-seed`); video of the metric rollout itself (`video-as-acceptance-record`); and the admission that a 10 s episode cannot see a stance that fails after a minute (`episode-length-bounds-what-a-gate-sees`). The one-leg line removed a foot-spacing wall that no gate measured, and the feet met on hardware (`removed-wall-returns-on-hardware`).
Coach application. Review every battery for posture rows, margin columns, per-side scoring, and an assist-stripped condition; when operator feel and gates disagree, suspect the metric class first.
doctrine-15Fork and root selection: recoverability, maturity, frozen rewardsChoose fork roots by which candidate's deficits the coming training can pay back (precision is recoverable; lost plasticity, symmetry, and margins are not); prefer mature checkpoints as roots even when younger ones score better as products; never fine-tune through a reward change - continuation is legal only with the reward frozen and plant/DR widening one rung at a time.
Case. s1e-500 beat higher-precision candidates because its exclusive strengths were unrecoverable (`fork-root-recoverable-shortfall`); the b300 arm proved maturity is capital against adaptation shock (`root-maturity-vs-product-quality`); the B-arm scatter/half-recover/collapse signature falsified reward-change fine-tuning and drew the legal boundary for S2 continuation (`fine-tune-reward-change-falsified`).
Coach application. For root debates, build the exclusive-strengths table and ask "which side can be trained back?"; require dual-arm evidence for maturity claims; classify any proposed continuation as reward-frozen or not before approving.
doctrine-16Curricula: verified engagement, lineage counters, disease-phase gatingAutomatic curricula must prove they engage (a saturated ratchet is constant DR wearing a curriculum's name); every ramp counts lineage-cumulative progress, not per-process steps; penalties aimed at late-stage pathologies ramp in after exploration noise decays; difficulty rises on measured per-stratum success, never on schedule.
Case. The s1f ratchet capped at iter 248 and never engaged (`auto-curriculum-engagement-check`); the saturation ramp re-fired at +600 after every resume and no shipped product ever saw the penalty (`curriculum-counter-lineage-steps`); the same penalty worked once gated to the disease phase and became an untouchable mechanism (`gate-penalties-to-the-disease-phase`); record-high aggregate reward hid a fully-failing delay stratum (`aggregate-metrics-mask-subgroup-failure`); bucket share is not a gradient lever (`bucket-share-is-not-a-gradient-lever`). An assist curriculum keyed to a pooled success share was withdrawn on the strength of the categories that already worked (`curriculum-criterion-conditioned-on-lagging-category`); a pace set by per-step income moved only when that income was time-gated (`per-step-income-drives-speed-time-gate`), and the same gate had to be retired in a lineage without the disease (`time-gate-vs-wide-stance-retire-the-fix`).
Coach application. Ask every curriculum three questions: does it engage (show the internal state)? what does it count (process or lineage)? when is it present (against the pathology's phase)? Check where shipped checkpoints sit relative to every ramp.
doctrine-17Probe before training: feasibility first, hypotheses in tablesAfter two failed training attempts at a skill, stop training: demonstrate the behavior open-loop, enumerate hypotheses in a written table audited against actual configs cheapest-first, race one probe per side of the sim2real boundary for hardware-only pathologies, and use suspended tests to acquit or convict actuators before blaming authority.
Case. "在黑暗里试钥匙" - four sidewalk rungs failed until an open-loop probe separated exploration/waveform/authority in one experiment (`open-loop-probe-before-reward-tuning`); the foot-drag mystery fell to a seven-hypothesis config audit (`hypothesis-table-code-audit`); the period-doubling was resolved by racing a reward-side and a plant-side evidence line - and both paid off, one per sub-case (`period-doubling-evidence-race`); the suspended test acquitted the roll actuator in one measurement (`suspended-test-isolates-actuator-authority`). A read-only configuration probe told a wall from a slope in the recovery line's seated basin (`configuration-probe-wall-not-slope`), and the fix it pointed to - where the feet are - took prone from 0/159 to 158/159 (`prone-dead-end-is-foot-placement`); a knob that did not move its variable was recorded as no test of the idea (`dof-vel-penalty-is-not-a-pacing-knob`).
Coach application. When a skill resists training, prescribe the probe before any further reward edits; require verified target trajectories before imitation terms; keep a falsified-fixes list so closed roads stay closed (`amplitude-cut-falsified-yaw-fix`).
doctrine-18External advice is recomputed locally; values transfer as ratiosEvery external suggestion is classified adopt / already-have / modify / trap by recomputing its claim on the local reward table and probe data; numeric values transfer only as dimensionless ratios (to tracking weight, leg length, sqrt(gL), control rate); citations are verified to exist.
Case. "Start vy very small" would have destroyed sidewalk learning on this reward table - the gradient scales quadratically (`external-advice-audit-against-own-arithmetic`); swing-height targets and weights transferred correctly only through leg-length and tracking-ratio scaling (`transfer-ratios-not-absolutes`); the "6-step delay" was refused for lacking a control rate (`latency-dr-covers-measured-pipeline`); a borrowed reference's structure was FK-verified and its amplitude re-derived from the division of labor (`reference-structure-fk-amplitude-division`); retrieval agents fabricated verbatim arXiv quotes - only source-verifiable material was used; and one dismissed suggestion later proved right for a different mechanism, and was credited (`cycle-average-tracking-for-gait-quantities`). An advisor's staged state machine turned out to exist in none of the three papers it cited, and reading them changed the plan (`advisor-paraphrase-vs-paper`).
Coach application. Intercept every "paper X does Y" with the local recomputation; convert absolutes to ratios before comparison; verify quotes; revisit dismissed advice when new mechanisms appear.
doctrine-19Hardware sessions are scripted experiments, not tuning sessionsReal-robot time executes a pre-registered matrix: risk-ordered (baseline first, fragile last with a spotter), stage-gated (suspended smoke before ground), A/B sessions bracketed by a repeated reference run, operators briefed on measured zero-command and untrained-axis behavior, chirality-aware disturbance protocols, no field tuning - the only legal field changes are scripted, single-variable, and self-reversing.
Case. The S2 acceptance sheet (`risk-ordered-real-deployment`, `battery-bracketed-real-ab`, `know-zero-command-behavior`, `push-test-chirality-protocol`, `no-field-tuning-protocol`); the RAM-only torque experiment with automatic power-cycle rollback (`reversible-single-variable-field-experiments`); and the sim-veto rule - even sim's condemnations get one safeguarded hardware check when they judge the purpose-built configuration (`sim-veto-needs-real-confirmation`). The recovery line's first real run went ahead with its preconditions unmet and was stopped as dangerous (`first-real-get-up-violent-stage-one-policy`); after it: a staged hang, mat and floor protocol (`staged-hang-mat-floor-for-get-up`), a fixed power-cycle pre-flight and two-machine discipline (`power-cycle-preflight`, `two-machine-config-discipline`), a fall guard replaced rather than switched off (`fall-guard-becomes-a-state`), and logs that are part of the run (`hardware-log-is-the-attribution-input`).
Coach application. Turn every hardware request into a runbook with order, gates, brackets, briefing, and anomaly plays; refuse improvised parameter changes on the floor.
doctrine-20Close questions in writing; restart when the debt is structuralAudited questions get frozen verdicts with citable wording and an explicit reopening bar; hardware verdicts are dated by deployment-stack and calibration state and expire when those change; and when successive rungs shuffle symptoms without net progress, freeze the lineage as regression baselines, pay the structural debts, and retrain minimal - carrying laws and instruments, not weights.
Case. The chirality and COM questions were closed with frozen wording and "no reopening without new hard evidence" (`frozen-verdicts-semantic-boundaries`); v5/v6's condemnations expired with the deploy stack (`stale-verdicts-under-old-stack`); a 2-degree calibration fix moved the whole runnable envelope (`zero-offset-calibration-shifts-envelope`); plant upgrades are era boundaries with paired re-baselining (`plant-swap-invariants-vs-shifts`); and the 2026-08-05 reset froze v5-v11, fixed the latency FIFO / manifest / sampling / reward-table debts, and restarted - producing the lineage that reached hardware SOTA (`freeze-lineage-fix-structure-restart`, `minimal-reward-table-with-provenance`). The recovery line's real-robot verdicts ended up in three places that disagree, one of them an undated note in a command file (`write-hardware-verdicts-back`).
Coach application. Maintain the closed-questions ledger and quote it when symptoms recur; stamp verdicts with stack/calibration versions; when a team is three rungs into symptom-shuffling, raise the restart question explicitly with the freeze-fix-restart pattern.
doctrine-21Name the quantity in the space it lives inA goal, reward term or acceptance criterion about the feet, the base or the contact state is computed from the quantity itself - world poses, forces, per-category outcomes - never through a joint-angle, single-signal or pooled stand-in that assumes everything else sits at nominal; and every detector is validated on a behaviour known not to contain the event before it becomes a gate.
Case. The recovery line was caught three times: |ankle roll| as "flat feet" sold stance width and the real robot slid into the splits, a hip-roll criterion was confounded by 50 deg of yaw, and the joint table said 0.271 m where the feet were 0.159 m apart; task-space terms produced the first flat, wide stance (`joint-space-proxy-for-task-space-quantity`). Flight detection lied in both directions across two lines - foot height flagged 40% false flight on a walking gait, contact force alone flagged slip chatter as hops (`contact-detector-single-signal-lies`). A pooled height average described a robot that did not exist - six in ten standing, four in ten sitting (`zero-partial-credit-is-not-an-iteration-problem`) - and the walking line had learned the same lesson on yaw rate (`heading-integral-not-body-rate`).
Coach application. For every reward term and gate row, ask what physical quantity it stands for and whether it is measured directly; flag joint-space or single-signal stand-ins for task-space goals, ask for a detector validated on a negative control, and split pooled metrics by category before reading them.
doctrine-22Continuation needs a live gradient; a release is chosen by a scanContinue a converged policy only on a change that creates a live gradient, on a short budget, with every checkpoint scanned on the transfer axis; choose a release by running the full battery over a band of checkpoints and stop on signals, never by taking the last one; and when edits to the terminal phase cannot move a behaviour, roll back and retrain with the constraint present from the start, keeping the order in which the lineage acquired its mechanisms as explicit curriculum phases.
Case. A continuation with no new gradient drifted MuJoCo transfer from 100/98% to 80/28% while every Isaac gate stayed perfect, and a live-gradient continuation at the same depth kept it (`converged-continuation-is-poison`). One-leg checkpoints 100 iterations apart failed 1 and 38 of 40 cells, and late ones degraded (`checkpoint-choice-is-a-full-gate-scan`). Four in-lineage stance fixes failed because the stance was the end of the get-up path, and from scratch it grew right (`stance-decided-by-get-up-path`); fixes stacked on degraded states were rolled back by the user (`stop-stacking-roll-back-and-audit`); and the lineage's final recipe, trained from scratch in one run, sat at 0% because the order of its curriculum was part of the product (`curriculum-history-is-part-of-the-product`). The omni line's short adaptation budgets and mature roots are the same law seen from the other side (`continuation-budget-not-from-zero`, `root-maturity-vs-product-quality`).
Coach application. Before approving a continuation, ask for the new gradient, the budget and the transfer axis in the scan; before approving a release, ask for the scan; after three rungs without progress on the target, propose rolling back to the last good checkpoint and a from-scratch phase plan instead of a fourth patch.
Experience cards
45 cards matching “power-scale-hurts-nonforward-axes”.
Sort external training advice into adopt / already-have / modify / would-trap by recomputing it on your own config
external-advice-audit-against-own-arithmeticNever apply external tuning advice directly: recompute each claim on your own reward table and probe data, classify it adopt / have / modify / trap, and record why - and verify external citations actually exist.
Symptom
External AI/literature advice for the omni ladder arrived plausible-sounding but was written without knowledge of this robot's actual reward table, contract, and history; following it blindly would have broken single-variable discipline and, in one case, made sidewalk unlearnable.
Context
Before the C ladder, every external suggestion was audited: 3 adopted (ellipsoid command sampling; staged wz bands; command-switch acceptance), 3 already present (unified reward; frame history - the frozen 168-dim 5-frame window; per-100-iter acceptance), 2 modified (stand share kept at 20% to avoid a second variable; back share NOT raised because the probe showed backward works untrained 20/20@67%, so oversampling would only crowd out forward), and 1 flagged as a trap: "start vy very small (0.06-0.15)" - on THIS reward table vy was only an L2 tax, so ignoring a vy=0.06 command costs 0.4% of the vx tracking scale, 28-180x cheaper than ignoring forward, with quadratic shrinkage making small commands weaker still. A separate retrieval-reliability note: two search agents returned fabricated verbatim quotes from arXiv PDFs (2 papers, verified fake and discarded); only HTML/abstract/source-verifiable material was used.
Change
Advice classified only after recomputing each claim with local numbers; the "start small" trap was replaced by adding a gated lateral tracking term (the ladder's only true reward surgery) instead of shrinking the command.
Outcome
The adopted items (ellipsoid modes, staged wz, transition acceptance) entered the ladder; the trap was avoided; one external factual error (calling s1g the mainline start - it was falsified 0/20) was caught. Later, one initially-dismissed item (sigma=0.15 too narrow) turned out right for a different reason than claimed - see cycle-average-tracking-for-gait-quantities.
Mechanism
External advice encodes the advisor's reward table and robot, not yours; the transfer-validity test is whether the claim survives recomputation under your own arithmetic (reward margins, probe baselines, contract freeze). Items that survive become experiments; items that don't become documented traps.
Applies when
- incorporating LLM or literature advice into a training plan
- advice conflicts with locally measured baselines
- an external claim depends on reward-table details the advisor cannot know
“其建议 C4「先很小，vy = ±0.06~0.15」—— 在我们这张奖励表下会让侧走学不起来 … 忽略侧走比忽略前进便宜 28~180 倍，且指令越小激励越弱（平方缩放）—— "先很小"在稳定性上对、在梯度上正好把信号缩没了。”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 1. 外部 AI 训练建议的评估（采纳 / 已有 / 要改 / 会踩坑） PPO's Gaussian noise cannot compose phase-locked oscillations - deliver them as feed-forward and let the policy learn the residual
feedforward-for-phase-locked-skillsIf a skill needs a temporally coherent (phase-locked) action component, do not expect step-wise exploration to find it: inject a verified feed-forward and train the policy as a residual stabilizer, keeping the feed-forward inside the deployment contract.
Symptom
Four different reward arrangements (no reference / wrong-sign reference / correct-sign reference / cage released) all failed to elicit sidewalk, while open-loop probes proved the behavior existed and was safe on the same platform with the same policy as base.
Context
Producing lateral velocity requires a phase-locked hip_roll oscillation synchronized to the gait clock. PPO's exploration is per-step, zero-mean, uncorrelated Gaussian noise - it can never compose a sustained phase-locked component, so the behavior is unreachable by exploration regardless of how it is rewarded. The fix changed the delivery channel: target = default + scale*action + lat_ff(cmd_vy, phi). The policy's action becomes a residual on top of the feed-forward, retaining full balance authority (it can even cancel the feed-forward); the feed-forward supplies exactly the component exploration cannot. This mirrors why the sagittal joint_pos_ref worked (it also delivered phase structure), just via a different channel.
Change
Contract-level change, done cleanly: new profile omni_ff (= omni + lat_ff_gain -0.5), existing omni profile bit-identical; feed-forward applied after the action delay stage; missing cmd/phase raises instead of silently dropping; deployment must use the same phi as build_obs (recomputing gives a one-tick phase misalignment).
Outcome
From C2-700, +100 iterations sufficed: product omni_c4_ff800 scored vy +120%/+125% (from +4%/-1%), 260/260 cells at 20/20 survival, zero old-skill regression, left/right gap 5 pp - the entire C4 saga resolved by changing the delivery mechanism, not the reward.
Mechanism
Exploration noise spans only the subspace its correlation structure can express; skills requiring coherent oscillation lie outside the span of i.i.d. per-step noise. Feed-forward moves the required structure into the action pipeline where it needs zero probability mass to appear, reducing the learning problem to stabilizing around a demonstrated behavior - which PPO does well.
Applies when
- a periodic/oscillatory skill trains flat under every reward variant
- open-loop injection of the behavior already works
- considering GRU/curriculum/exploration tricks for a rhythmic skill
“病因不在奖励，在探索形式：产生侧向速度需要相位锁定的 hip_roll 振荡，PPO 的逐步高斯噪声零均值无相关，合不出相位锁定分量。… target = default + scale·a + lat_ff(cmd_vy, φ)。策略动作因此是前馈之上的残差，保留全部平衡权限”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3j. C4-redo4：唯一变量 = 侧步参考改为前馈注入（契约级） The action-delay was implemented as lerp - beyond one step it extrapolated BACKWARD, so a whole lineage trained on a fictitious actuator
latency-lerp-reverse-extrapolationUnit-test plant-model code (delays, filters, randomizers) against hand-computed truth across its FULL configured range, not just the nominal case - a delay must be a queue, and any interpolation used outside [0,1] is a silent plant corruption that training will faithfully absorb.
Symptom
Every walk/stand model up to v11 had been trained on a silently wrong plant: the action-latency implementation lerp(cur, prev, lag) is only an interpolation for lag <= 1 - at lag 3 it computes 3*prev - 2*cur, a REVERSE extrapolation. With the configured (0, 0.06) s at 50 Hz (lag in [0,3]), about 2/3 of environments were adapting to actuator dynamics that do not exist.
Context
Listed as evidence item #1 for the full restart: "全部旧模型训在错误 plant 上" and the head suspect for the real robot's wild kicking. The fix replaced it with a true FIFO delay line (commit 7f13793) plus its own regression test (tests/test_action_latency.py) - but every exported ONNX predated the fix, which is part of why the lineage was frozen rather than patched.
Change
Delay implementation rewritten as an honest FIFO with unit tests; the restart baseline trained on the corrected plant from day one.
Outcome
A generation-scale training investment was revealed to have a corrupt plant underneath; the class of bug (plausible-looking math that silently changes meaning outside its valid range) got a permanent test.
Mechanism
lerp(a, b, w) leaves the segment for w > 1; used as a delay it fabricates high-gain inverted dynamics precisely in the largest-delay draws, so the policy learns compensation for an actuator that cannot exist - and DR then trains robustness to the artifact rather than to reality. No training metric can catch this: the sim is self-consistent, just wrong.
Applies when
- implementing or auditing action delay / filtering in a trainer
- a lineage behaves as if compensating dynamics nobody modeled
- deciding whether old checkpoints are salvageable after a plant bug
“动作延迟旧实现 lerp(cur, prev, lag) 在 lag>1 时是反向外插(w=3 → 3·prev−2·cur),配置 [0,0.06]s@50Hz 即 lag∈[0,3],约 2/3 env 在适应不存在的执行器动态。7f13793 已换真 FIFO,但所有 ONNX 均训于修复之前 —— 真机"乱踢"的头号嫌疑。”
train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 0. 为什么从零 (1) Add a single-point-suspension test to acceptance - the ground is a free stabilizer that hides divergence
suspension-probe-removes-free-stabilizerInclude at least one acceptance condition that strips the environment's free stabilization (suspension, or equivalent) - the sim-passing policy that fails on hardware is often failing a condition the battery never posed.
Symptom
walk_v5 looked healthy in every on-ground sim test yet diverged on the real robot - the acceptance battery had never measured a condition that would have revealed it.
Context
The battery gained a single-point-suspension probe (robot hung, feet free): measure torso tilt while the policy runs without ground contact. v5 scored 45.9 deg mean tilt suspended - wildly unstable - which the file calls "最灵敏的失稳探针(拿掉地面这个免费稳定器)": ground reaction forces passively stabilize a marginal policy, so on-ground metrics saturate long before the policy's internal balance is actually sound. v6 halved it (23.0 deg, target <10 deg) - progress visible on a scale where on-ground numbers showed nothing.
Change
Suspended-tilt added as a standing acceptance row; run under the honest contact parameters battery (accept_v2 with measured condim 4 / torsional friction 0.035), under which v5 correctly FAILS in agreement with the real robot.
Outcome
The sim battery's verdict on v5 flipped from pass to fail, matching hardware; suspended tilt became the discriminating metric between v5 and v6 (45.9 vs 23.0 deg) when ground metrics differed little.
Mechanism
Contact with the ground closes a stabilizing feedback loop the policy gets for free; removing it exposes the policy's own attitude control authority. A metric measured only in the assisted condition cannot rank policies by the unassisted quantity that hardware will actually demand during perturbations and flight phases.
Applies when
- sim acceptance passes but hardware diverges
- designing an acceptance battery for a legged robot
- two candidates tie on ground metrics
“单点吊那条是最灵敏的失稳探针(拿掉地面这个"免费稳定器"), v5 在地上一切正常却在真机发散, 就是因为验收从没测过这个工况。”
train/WALK_V6_MINIMAL.md § 5. 验收 The run policy never left the ground and fell in the second simulator from the frontal plane - its DR (gains and latency only) covered the actuator axis, not the frontal-plane contact and inertia disturbances the doubled stride amplified; "is DR on" is the wrong question
thin-dr-judged-by-channel-coverageJudge a DR recipe by whether its randomized terms cover the channel where the skill can lose stability, not by whether DR is enabled; when a new skill lengthens single support or enlarges motion in one plane, add disturbances in the plane it destabilizes before training.
Symptom
run R1 (6,000 iterations, 78 min): no flight phase ever appeared, and every one of 13 checkpoints failed the eight-gate MuJoCo smoke. In Isaac: zero terminations in 6,000 iterations, 4.2 deg tilt. In MuJoCo at delay 2: 1/6 survived, falls within 1.9-6.2 s at 50.8-58.7 deg, the most saturated joints all roll joints.
Context
The run contract doubled sagittal travel (knee action scale 0.9, knee swing peak 1.14 rad) with a 0.60 s period and 0.40 duty - long single support - while roll/yaw scales were deliberately left at 0.5. DR copied the s1e recipe: kp/kd (0.9, 1.1) and latency on; mass, COM, joint friction and push all off; ground friction pinned at (1.0, 1.0). Flight was read two independent ways: Isaac's per-foot contact reward stayed 0.845-0.857, never above 0.87 - the arithmetic ceiling of a gait with zero flight - and 30 of 36 MuJoCo seeds had flight fraction exactly 0 (the nonzero six were all tumbling falls). Foot lift itself worked (46-59 mm against a 50 mm design point): the walk-era "not enough travel" failure did not recur.
Change
Verdict FAIL, with the pre-registered first knob (exploration noise 1.0 -> 1.2) explicitly rejected as aimed at a different axis. The lesson was generalized and applied at the next line's design review: the one-leg spec made push, body mass, base COM and friction DR mandatory for its permanent single support and banned the thin recipe.
Outcome
The run line did not continue past R1 in the sources. The one-leg V0 with the wider DR passed its friction-variant gate (mu 0.4 and 1.2) inside a 40/40 acceptance.
Mechanism
Randomizing gains and latency covers the actuator's axis; a skill whose failure lives in frontal-plane contact and inertia needs randomization on that channel (push, mass, COM, friction), or the trainer's exact plant becomes the only one the policy can stand on - the omni_s1 transfer trap a second time, this time with DR switched on.
Applies when
- a policy is flawless in the trainer and falls immediately in a second simulator
- reusing a DR recipe from a skill with a different support pattern
- failures concentrate on one axis (roll, yaw) the DR does not touch
“**机理**: 矢状面行程翻倍 (膝摆动峰 1.14 rad) + T 0.60 + duty 0.40 的长单支撑, 把额状面扰动放大了一个量级; 而 roll/yaw 通道按 §3 **刻意没有放大** (仍 0.5), DR 又是 s1e 复刻的薄配方 (mass/COM/关节摩擦/push **四关全关**, 地面摩擦钉死 (1.0, 1.0))。 … 说明**薄 DR 的判据不能只看"有没有开 DR"**, 要看**开的那几项 是否覆盖失稳所在的通道** —— kp/kd 与延迟是执行器轴向的, 对额状面接触/惯性 扰动零覆盖。 … 0.87 正是「零腾空的走路步态」的天花板算术”
git:Lucen V2@origin/run-line:train/README.md § run R1 FAIL (2026-08-09, run 21-30-30_run_r1): 腾空零, 但病根在额状面不在探索