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Training Coach

The coach reads a training run and returns a diagnosis, in-whitelist proposals and an experiment plan — and every claim cites one of the cards below. This is that corpus: 22 methodology rules distilled from a real sim2real programme, and 171 episode cards behind them, each with the sentence in the war history it came from.

Doctrine

A report may cite any of these as doctrine-N.

  1. doctrine-1Contract freeze and fingerprint discipline

    The 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.

    contract-freeze-and-checkerlegacy-profile-pinningderived-asset-staleness-checkgain-profile-belongs-in-the-stamprecovery-two-policies-and-a-state-machinewalk-recovery-fsm-handoff

  2. doctrine-2Attribution by resolved training params - never eval-override knobs

    Capability 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.

    kd-bandwidth-mu-law-attributiondeploy-knob-attribution-before-retrainingcycle-time-override-is-oodresolved-config-is-source-of-truth

  3. doctrine-3PASS gates become constraints; FAIL gates become objectives

    Once 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".

    fixed-acceptance-matrix-per-rungpreregistered-stop-criteria-per-rung

  4. doctrine-4One variable per ladder rung - counted against what the checkpoint saw

    A 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.

    resume-state-dr-auditorthogonal-batch-with-ablation-orderfill-the-missing-factorial-cell

  5. doctrine-5Pre-register risks, readings, and stop criteria before the ladder

    Before 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.

    preregister-risks-and-fork-readingspreregistered-stop-criteria-per-rungpreregistered-real-expectationsfeasibility-accounts-lock-design-point

  6. doctrine-6Plant parameters are measured, never invented

    Every 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.

    friction-measured-not-guessedarmature-n2-rotor-inertiatorque-limit-shape-by-measured-peakslatency-lerp-reverse-extrapolationfeasibility-accounts-lock-design-pointsim-api-friction-columnsget-up-feasibility-accounts-before-trainingsingle-support-gain-authority-probe

  7. doctrine-7Sim2sim gate before sim2real - under deployment conditions

    Every 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.

    sim2sim-gate-before-sim2realeval-plant-honesty-contact-paramspipeline-latency-is-plant-not-drbody-frame-velocity-api-audittorque-penalty-bought-by-leg-bracingtorque-disagreement-between-simulators-unresolved

  8. doctrine-8Observation honesty - the actor's inputs are a hardware contract

    The 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.

    observation-honesty-critic-onlyhistory-obs-needs-plant-variationreward-observability-limitdeploy-heading-loop-and-align-training

  9. doctrine-9Reward economics are audited in realized currency

    Reward 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.

    realized-contribution-auditreward-cost-of-ignoring-auditgate-new-reward-terms-by-commandignore-floor-diagnosiscalibrate-threshold-between-healthy-and-sickcalibration-threshold-with-withdrawal-clauseinert-reward-term-auditseated-basin-dead-exp-kerneltail-torque-needs-hinge-on-computed-demand

  10. doctrine-10The zero-cost option must be the desired behavior

    For 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.

    penalize-the-slip-not-the-jointsaturation-cheating-zero-rate-costmoving-gate-42x-stand-taxtermination-closes-degenerate-basinpenalty-gate-is-an-escape-hatchsoft-limit-penalty-charges-nominal-poseunpriced-foot-attitude-is-a-free-variableenumerate-cheapest-cheats-before-trainingbinary-band-reward-fake-touchdown

  11. doctrine-11Measurement discipline: independent referees, signs, distributions

    A 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.

    independent-referee-for-metric-disputesbody-frame-velocity-api-auditsame-sign-response-is-yaw-biasmedian-hides-bimodal-distributionratio-metrics-need-absolute-checkheading-integral-not-body-ratesame-distribution-reward-comparisonmultiseed-sign-test-for-driftsingle-impulse-recovery-is-chaotic

  12. doctrine-12The deployment pipeline is plant

    Irreducible 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.

    pipeline-latency-is-plant-not-drpower-scale-hurts-nonforward-axesdeploy-scaling-not-training-equivalentteleop-command-band-per-axislatency-dr-covers-measured-pipelinedeploy-rate-limiter-windupslew-anchor-is-an-integratorbeta-anchored-action-targetpower-derating-cuts-full-range-contract

  13. doctrine-13DR budget is finite; its distribution is the measured support

    Robustness 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.

    push-dr-conditional-budget-conservationdr-tail-plant-continuationconstant-value-dr-overfits-margintask-shaping-before-plant-hardeningcom-randomization-forces-leg-spreadcom-dr-rollback-on-symptomthin-dr-judged-by-channel-coveragefriction-priority-re-measured-after-plant-change

  14. doctrine-14Gates measure what hardware feels: posture, margins, stripped assists

    Acceptance 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.

    task-metrics-vs-posture-metricsstand-gate-posture-not-survivalconstant-value-dr-overfits-marginsuspension-probe-removes-free-stabilizerhip-roll-sum-predicts-lateral-driftchirality-scored-separatelylow-speed-commands-reward-draggingend-state-confusion-matrixfrozen-acceptance-distribution-and-pinned-seedvideo-as-acceptance-recordepisode-length-bounds-what-a-gate-seesremoved-wall-returns-on-hardware

  15. doctrine-15Fork and root selection: recoverability, maturity, frozen rewards

    Choose 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.

    fork-root-recoverable-shortfallroot-maturity-vs-product-qualityfine-tune-reward-change-falsified

  16. doctrine-16Curricula: verified engagement, lineage counters, disease-phase gating

    Automatic 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.

    auto-curriculum-engagement-checkcurriculum-counter-lineage-stepsgate-penalties-to-the-disease-phaseaggregate-metrics-mask-subgroup-failurebucket-share-is-not-a-gradient-levercurriculum-criterion-conditioned-on-lagging-categoryper-step-income-drives-speed-time-gatetime-gate-vs-wide-stance-retire-the-fix

  17. doctrine-17Probe before training: feasibility first, hypotheses in tables

    After 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`).

    open-loop-probe-before-reward-tuninghypothesis-table-code-auditperiod-doubling-evidence-racesuspended-test-isolates-actuator-authorityconfiguration-probe-wall-not-slopeprone-dead-end-is-foot-placementdof-vel-penalty-is-not-a-pacing-knobamplitude-cut-falsified-yaw-fix

  18. doctrine-18External advice is recomputed locally; values transfer as ratios

    Every 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.

    external-advice-audit-against-own-arithmetictransfer-ratios-not-absoluteslatency-dr-covers-measured-pipelinereference-structure-fk-amplitude-divisioncycle-average-tracking-for-gait-quantitiesadvisor-paraphrase-vs-paper

  19. doctrine-19Hardware sessions are scripted experiments, not tuning sessions

    Real-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.

    risk-ordered-real-deploymentbattery-bracketed-real-abknow-zero-command-behaviorpush-test-chirality-protocolno-field-tuning-protocolreversible-single-variable-field-experimentssim-veto-needs-real-confirmationfirst-real-get-up-violent-stage-one-policystaged-hang-mat-floor-for-get-uppower-cycle-preflighttwo-machine-config-disciplinefall-guard-becomes-a-statehardware-log-is-the-attribution-input

  20. doctrine-20Close questions in writing; restart when the debt is structural

    Audited 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.

    frozen-verdicts-semantic-boundariesstale-verdicts-under-old-stackzero-offset-calibration-shifts-envelopeplant-swap-invariants-vs-shiftsfreeze-lineage-fix-structure-restartminimal-reward-table-with-provenancewrite-hardware-verdicts-back

  21. doctrine-21Name the quantity in the space it lives in

    A 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.

    joint-space-proxy-for-task-space-quantitycontact-detector-single-signal-lieszero-partial-credit-is-not-an-iteration-problemheading-integral-not-body-rate

  22. doctrine-22Continuation needs a live gradient; a release is chosen by a scan

    Continue 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.

    converged-continuation-is-poisoncheckpoint-choice-is-a-full-gate-scanstance-decided-by-get-up-pathstop-stacking-roll-back-and-auditcurriculum-history-is-part-of-the-productcontinuation-budget-not-from-zeroroot-maturity-vs-product-quality

Experience cards

112 cards matching “enumerate-cheapest-cheats-before-training”.

  • Before adding a command mode, compute what ignoring it costs - the lazy optimum must losereward-cost-of-ignoring-audit
    Mechanism understoodomnireward-shapingreward-shaping

    Price the do-nothing policy for every new command or objective: compute reward-per-step for "comply" vs "ignore" from the actual table, and only train once ignoring is decisively unprofitable.

    Symptom

    A new command mode can be silently unlearnable if the reward table makes "ignore the command entirely" nearly free compared to the tracking reward available elsewhere.

    Context

    For each C rung the team computed the per-step cost of completely ignoring the new command versus ignoring forward: ignoring vx=0.25 costs 1.264/step; ignoring wz=0.20 costs 0.984/step (78% of forward - gradient sufficient, so C2 was certified "zero reward surgery"); but ignoring vy=0.10 cost only 0.020/step - 50-60x weaker, because vy entered the table only as an L2 tax, not a tracking term.

    Change

    Rule instituted: a rung may claim "no reward change needed" only after this arithmetic shows the ignore-cost is the same order as forward's. For C4 the audit failed, so track_lin_vel_y_exp (+2.0, std 0.15, same form as vx) was added - raising the ignore-cost at cmd_vy=0.10 from 0.020 to 0.718/step (36x).

    Outcome

    C1/C2/C3 proceeded with zero reward edits, keeping single-variable attribution clean; C4's needed surgery was identified before training instead of after a failed run.

    Mechanism

    PPO converges to whatever costs least; if the reward margin for obeying a new command is a rounding error against existing terms, the "ignore" policy is the optimum and no amount of training fixes it. The audit prices the lazy optimum explicitly before spending compute.

    Applies when

    • adding a command axis or task mode to an existing reward table
    • a new skill trains flat while other skills stay healthy
    • certifying a rung as "no reward change"
    “cmd wz 0.20 → 0.984(coarse .473 + fine .491 + L2 .020)… 对照:忽略 vx=0.25 = 1.264(本级 78%,同量级);忽略 vy=0.10 = 0.020(弱 50 倍——那才是 C4 必须加 track_lin_vel_y_exp 的原因)。本级不动奖励表。”
    train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 4. 原地转级(C2)② 奖励梯度已验够
  • Four consecutive fixes were each continued from the previous fix's degraded state until the user stopped the ladder - "change parameters, don't stack errors" - rolled back to the last good checkpoint and audited the target geometry firststop-stacking-roll-back-and-audit
    Observed oncerecoveryprocessprocessfork-selectionattribution

    When successive rungs each start from the previous rung's output and the target symptom does not move, stop, roll back to the last good checkpoint and re-derive the next change from an audit; keep the measurements, discard the stacked remedies.

    Symptom

    After the real-robot splits, the V2.7 ladder tried to widen the stance: a term swap (A), a new stance knife (b), more iterations (甲), a doubled weight (乙). Stance barely moved while hip yaw ratcheted 46.7 -> 49.9 -> 52.5 deg toward its 60 deg limit.

    Context

    Each rung started from the previous rung's output. The user ruled on 2026-08-11 that things had gone wrong from V2.7-A: go back to v2_6 and rethink which parameters to change instead of stacking errors.

    Change

    乙 was killed at start and not counted; the product baseline rolled back to v2_6c model_29399; every measurement and law learned on the ladder was kept ("the data is real; what stacked was the treatment"). Before any new training, a zero-training kinematic audit of the stance targets was run.

    Outcome

    The audit found the stand_pose target itself rewarding the narrow stance (pose-target-geometric-audit) and showed geometrically why the yawed stance could not be widened with flat feet - so 乙 was proven unnecessary without running it. The next in-lineage attempts still failed, which is what established that the stance is set by the get-up path.

    Mechanism

    A rung continued from a degraded state inherits its compensations, so each new fix answers the previous fix's side effects; the yaw ratchet was the visible trace of that stacking.

    Applies when

    • three or more corrective rungs in a row without progress on the target metric
    • a side-effect metric ratchets in one direction across rungs
    • a new rung is being planned from the latest (not the best) checkpoint
    “用户裁:"从 V2.7-A 开始就出问题了,应该回到 2.6 再思考如何改变参数而不是 错误叠加。"认账:A 的补丁 → b 的新刀 → 甲的加时 → 乙的加权,每级都从上级 的**退化状态**续(yaw 46.7→52.5° 的棘轮就是叠加痕迹)。 … 数据是真的,叠加的是处置。”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §44 方法论裁定(2026-08-11,用户):V2.7 全阶梯叫停,回滚 v2_6
  • Anchoring the action on the measured joint angle (target = q + beta*a), with a beta curriculum down to tau_limit/kp, bounded torque by construction, removed the re-falls and later stood the robot up on hardwarebeta-anchored-action-target
    Mechanism understoodrecoverytraining-runactuator-modelingcontract-freezecurriculum

    For large-motion skills on position-controlled actuators, bound the action relative to the measured joint angle with a per-joint authority of tau_limit/kp, curriculum the authority down from full range, keep the curriculum state out of the observation and pin acceptance at the deployed authority - and make the deployment code refuse to run the anchored contract without a measured q.

    Symptom

    The V0 full-range absolute action produced violent targets; the V1 command-anchored rate limit made standing oscillate. Both failure modes came from how the action becomes a target.

    Context

    V2.0 (user approved, from scratch): BetaAnchorJointPositionAction, target = q_measured + beta_j(m)*a, memoryless per step. beta_j(m) = floor + m*(beta0 - floor), beta0 = the contract half-range (m = 1 reproduces V0 authority), floor = min(tau_limit/kp, beta0): hip_pitch 1.309 -> 0.40, knee 1.047 -> 0.40, hip_yaw -> 0.917, the other joints unchanged - the tightening lands exactly on the joints the V0 torque account convicted. m drops 0.1 per step when a standing-share EMA exceeds 0.35. beta is NOT in the observation, so the 45-dim contract is untouched; acceptance is pinned at m = 0 because the Python curriculum state is not saved in the checkpoint. The deployment chain got a new profile (recovery_v2: action_anchor current_q, explicit per-joint beta written into the contract, independent of the gain profile), and policy_io raises if q is missing rather than silently falling back to the absolute contract; the old profile's check reproduced its pre-change deviation bit for bit.

    Change

    New action term and beta curriculum; later the RS06 floor was lowered 0.40 -> 0.30 -> 0.25 (kp*beta 7.5 N*m) and the stamped deployment profile was synced to 0.25.

    Outcome

    First acceptance at m = 0 (v2_0b): re-falls 0% in every category, the torque gate passed for the first time on the line (worst 69.9%), knee jitter 0.004; supine 98.8 / side 88.8% with prone and mid still failing (fixed by the conditional pull curriculum). MuJoCo showed demand at or under the limits (hip_pitch 11.7/12 against V0's 26.8). Lowering beta cut impact (hip_pitch demand 9.7 -> 8.5 N*m) but barely slowed the get-up - it had become coordination-limited. Enabling the policy moves the target only +/-beta around the current pose, so there is no homing fling; the 08-11 real get-up and the later v3_1p1c both run on this contract.

    Mechanism

    kp*beta caps the proportional torque in a single step with no build-up delay and no memory, giving both a hard impact bound and full balance bandwidth.

    Applies when

    • a skill needs full joint range but hardware torque limits are low
    • absolute position targets cause impacts or saturation
    • changing the action semantics of a contract that deployed policies share
    “**动作项** `BetaAnchorJointPositionAction`:`target = q_实测 + β_j(m)·a`, 逐步无记忆 … **Play/验收钉 m=0(= floor = 部署档)**:python 课程状态不进 checkpoint, Play cfg 显式 `beta_m_start=0` … 判读:**结构赌注兑现** —— 站姿零再摔 + 力矩账首过(kp·β 封顶按构造)”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §33 V2.0 预注册(2026-08-10,用户点头开工):β 锚定动作空间,从零训
  • A pull-assist curriculum keyed to a global success share was satisfied by the categories that already worked and withdrew before prone learned anything - conditioning the criterion on prone took it from 2.5% to 98.7%curriculum-criterion-conditioned-on-lagging-category
    Mechanism understoodrecoverytraining-runcurriculumgate-battery

    Measure a curriculum's advancement criterion on the population the scaffold is meant to help; a global success share is met by whatever already works, and the help is withdrawn before the lagging case learns.

    Symptom

    Under the beta-anchored action, supine and side stood reliably while prone still sat (1.3%). A pull-assist curriculum added to help it was withdrawn completely within ~790 iterations and prone moved only to 2.5% (noise).

    Context

    The pull assist follows HoST: an upward force on the base, active only when the torso is within 30 deg of vertical, scaled by body weight (HoST's 200 N on G1 = 0.583 BW -> 56 N here, steps of 5.6 N, ten levels to zero); the product must pass with no assist. It had already taught sit-to-stand in V1. In V2.1 its advancement criterion was the standing-time share over all envs (threshold raised to 0.55 because the share was already ~0.53).

    Change

    V2.2: PullAssistForce with gate_category = "prone" - only envs whose first step classifies them as prone count toward the criterion - and the threshold back at 0.35. A feasibility signal was pre-registered: if prone's share stayed near zero under the full 56 N, return to the roll-over path instead of adding force.

    Outcome

    The prone-conditioned curriculum withdrew level by level only as prone itself passed: prone 98.7%, and the four-category gate passed for the first time on the line (98.6% overall, re-falls 0%, torque gate PASS).

    Mechanism

    A pooled success share is filled by the categories that already succeed (supine/side ~53%), so the scaffold is removed on their account before the lagging category has used it.

    Applies when

    • an assist, guide force or easier setting is withdrawn by a success threshold
    • one task category lags while the pooled metric looks healthy
    • a curriculum ran to completion without changing the lagging category
    “**教训:全局站立占比阈会被存量类别(supine/side ~53%)凑够,拉力在 prone 学会前就撤光了 —— metric 设计失误,不是拉力机制失效**(它在 V1 教会过 坐→站)。 … **V2.2(已启动)**:`PullAssistForce` 加 `gate_category="prone"` —— 达标判据 只统计 prone 类 env”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §34 V2.1 判决(2026-08-10)
  • The advisor's "runtime five-stage state machine + per-stage reference poses + RL residual" appeared in none of the three papers it cited - reading the originals changed the plan and downgraded two widely repeated industry claimsadvisor-paraphrase-vs-paper
    Replicatedrecoveryprocessprocessattribution

    Read the primary source behind any piece of advice before adopting its architecture; record where the paraphrase and the original differ, downgrade claims the originals do not support to speculation, and adopt what the verified sources actually share.

    Symptom

    After the violent first real run, an advisor proposed re-architecting recovery as a runtime staged state machine with reference poses and an RL residual, citing HoST, HumanUP and StableMimic.

    Context

    The three papers were read in full on 2026-08-09 and tabulated (deployment form, what the "stages" really are, hard constraints, references). HoST: one end-to-end policy, height-gated rewards in training, action anchored as q + beta*a with a beta curriculum. HumanUP: two training stages with the same observation/action; the vendor's three-stage state machine is the baseline it beats (41.7% vs 78.3%); Stage II tracks an 8x slowed Stage I trajectory (4x too violent, 10x does not converge). StableMimic: a learned soft gate. On 08-10 more sources were checked the same way: the Agility page does not say Digit's self-righting was learned in simulation (only step recovery is stated as RL), so the claim was downgraded to speculation; HoST's support for the 12-DoF armless Mini Pi exists in its code repository, not in the paper text.

    Change

    Adopted only what the originals share: a hard action bound or anchored action space, strong smoothing including a second-difference term, a slowed hidden reference, heavy DR and real fallen states. The staged runtime state machine was not adopted.

    Outcome

    The next re-rooting candidates came straight from the verified material, and the beta-anchored action space (HoST, with the Mini Pi configuration as the nearest real-robot precedent) became V2, the lineage that later stood up on hardware.

    Mechanism

    A paraphrase compresses a paper into the advisor's own architecture; only the original shows what was actually deployed, what was a baseline, and which numbers came with which ablation.

    Applies when

    • an advisor, agent or summary proposes an architecture with citations
    • an industry claim ("X learned it in sim") is about to justify a design
    • several papers are cited for one combined recipe
    “⇒ **顾问的核心形态"runtime 五阶段状态机 + 每阶段参考姿态 + RL residual"在三篇引文 里均不存在**,其中 HumanUP 还点名 state machine 是局限。”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §26 三篇引文精读判决(2026-08-09 全文核对;顾问转述与原文有出入)
  • Score left and right separately - averages hide chirality breaking that mirror augmentation does not preventchirality-scored-separately
    Replicatedomnigate-batterygate-batteryreal-acceptance

    Report every mirrored skill as two numbers with an explicit gap budget; never accept an average, and never assume augmentation guarantees symmetry - measure it per lineage and treat breakage as hard to reverse.

    Symptom

    Policies developed quantified left/right asymmetry (e.g. C2-700 turned right at 82% but left at 67% - a 15 pp gap; push tolerance 40/40 symmetric on the root vs 17/40 on a deep-trained descendant), and averaged metrics would have reported healthy midpoints.

    Context

    The repo had policy-level symmetry-breaking evidence strong enough to make separate scoring a battery rule: "左右必须分开打分 … 平均 vy 跟踪会把它掩盖". Notably, chirality broke and never recovered even though mirror augmentation (command-level mirror_prob 0.5) was on the whole time - augmentation reduced but did not prevent asymmetry, and once broken it stayed broken through subsequent rungs. PASS conditions therefore carried explicit symmetry budgets (left/right tracking gap <=10 pp), and sim's predicted asymmetry (700: right faster than left) was flagged for direct real-robot timing confirmation.

    Change

    Battery rule: every directional skill reports left and right (CW/CCW) as separate rows with a max-gap budget; mirror augmentation treated as mitigation, not proof of symmetry.

    Outcome

    The 700-vs-A800 asymmetry gap (15 pp vs 7 pp) became a first-class selection criterion; C4 product shipped with a measured 5 pp gap.

    Mechanism

    Averaging over mirrored conditions cancels antisymmetric error exactly where it matters; and symmetry lost during training is a lineage injury (like plasticity loss) that later rungs do not spontaneously heal, so it must be gated, not assumed.

    Applies when

    • evaluating turn/sidewalk/push-recovery or any mirrored skill
    • relying on mirror/symmetry augmentation
    • selecting between checkpoints with similar average scores
    “左右必须分开打分(left/right lateral、CW/CCW turn 各自一行)—— 本仓已有 policy-level symmetry breaking 的量化证据,平均 vy 跟踪会把它掩盖。”
    train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 5. 固定验收矩阵 (左右分开打分)
  • Close a question with an audit, then freeze the wording - later symptoms may not reopen it without new hard evidencefrozen-verdicts-semantic-boundaries
    Mechanism understoodomniprocessprocessattributionplant-calibration

    When an audit closes a hardware-vs-policy question, record the closing evidence, freeze a citable wording for future recurrences, and set the reopening bar explicitly; separate robustness perturbations from plant-truth questions so a DR rung's failure can never silently reopen a closed measurement.

    Symptom

    Recurring directional bias on the robot kept re-suggesting "maybe the hardware/COM/mechanics are asymmetric", threatening to re-litigate questions that audits had already closed - burning attention each time a descendant policy leaned or drifted.

    Context

    Two boundary decisions were written as permanent: (1) semantic separation - "S2④ COM ±20mm = 纯鲁棒性扰动,不再承担「解释真机后仰」任务" - if the COM-DR rung degrades, the ONLY allowed conclusion is "policy insufficiently robust to COM uncertainty"; reopening "is the CAD COM wrong" is forbidden because the mass audit was completed and closed (@63f9212). (2) a frozen wording for chirality, to be quoted verbatim whenever left/right bias appears in later rungs: observed directional bias = policy-level spontaneous symmetry breaking; plant asymmetry = no supporting evidence after the mass + model symmetry audit; mitigation candidate pi_sym queued, not blocking. The evidential basis was quantitative: the root policy was perfectly symmetric under +/-6 N*s pushes (40/40) while descendants broke (17/40, 13/40) - "手性是 S2 训练中获得的, 根没有; 机械侧已双 PASS 关案, 不重开".

    Change

    Closed questions carry (a) the audit commit that closed them, (b) a frozen citable wording for recurrences, and (c) an explicit evidence bar for reopening ("无新硬证据不得重开").

    Outcome

    Later chirality observations (C2's 15 pp turn gap, hip_roll drift bias) were handled as policy-lineage properties with policy-side mitigations, without a single hardware re-audit cycle.

    Mechanism

    Symptom classes recur under different guises; without a frozen verdict each recurrence re-runs the same expensive investigation and risks a different (worse-informed) conclusion. Freezing verdict plus wording converts recurring symptoms into citations, while the evidence bar keeps the closure honest rather than dogmatic - the root/descendant symmetry comparison is what makes "it's the training, not the machine" checkable at any time.

    Applies when

    • a recurring symptom keeps suggesting an already-audited hardware cause
    • writing conclusions for a completed calibration/audit
    • a DR rung's degradation invites re-measuring the plant
    “若 S2④ 退化,结论只能是「当前 policy 对 COM 不确定性不够鲁棒」,不得重开「CAD COM 是不是错了」… 手性冻结表述 … Plant asymmetry: no supporting evidence after mass + model symmetry audit … 无新硬证据不得重开机械不对称”
    train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 4. 语义分界与手性冻结表述(2026-08-07 用户定,永久)
  • The 1.5 Hz step-frequency gate was retracted - the author had misread his own actuator data, and the limit fought pendulum dynamicsgate-threshold-retracted-frequency
    Mechanism understoodwalkgate-batterygate-batteryactuator-modelingprocess

    Every gate threshold must cite its measurement and survive a first-principles sanity check; when a gate keeps failing otherwise healthy behavior, re-derive the threshold from the raw data before enforcing it again - and retract wrong gates in writing.

    Symptom

    An acceptance criterion "step frequency <= 1.5 Hz" kept failing healthy policies (walk_v4 at 2.33 Hz), and an earlier attempt to force slower stepping (v3) had killed stepping altogether.

    Context

    The threshold had been derived from the author's own actuator frequency-response measurements - but re-reading the raw table showed the misread: amplitude ratio at 2.0 Hz is 0.88 (knee) / 0.83 (ankle), acceptable; the genuinely bad point was walk_v2's 3.8 Hz at 0.58. Mechanism check agreed: the leg as a compound pendulum (L ~ 0.30 m) has a natural frequency ~1.1 Hz, swing half-period 0.45 s - the observed 2.1-2.4 Hz sits near where the leg wants to swing, and forcing 1.5 Hz "是跟摆动动力学对着干" (fights the swing dynamics). The frequency definition itself was pinned by two independent methods (contact-event counting 2.39 Hz vs FFT 2.33 Hz, agreeing): reported numbers are cycle frequency = steps per leg per second.

    Change

    Gate retracted in writing: "步频 ≤1.5 Hz 应删除或放宽到 ≤2.5 Hz"; frequency definition standardized before entering any config.

    Outcome

    walk_v4/v6's 2.1-2.4 Hz reclassified from disease to normal; the v3 failure got its probable explanation (suppressing stepping to meet a wrong gate).

    Mechanism

    A gate is only as good as the measurement and the reading behind it; thresholds inherited from a misread plot become invisible design constraints that later training obeys at real cost. Cross-checking a threshold against first-principles dynamics (pendulum frequency) is a cheap way to catch such misreads.

    Applies when

    • an acceptance threshold repeatedly fails policies that look healthy
    • thresholds were set from a single person's reading of raw data
    • a forced compliance with a gate degrades the behavior it guards
    “我当初依据自己测的执行器频响定的,但看错了区间。… 2.0~2.4 Hz 的幅值比 0.83~0.88 是可接受的;真正不行的是 walk_v2 的 3.8 Hz。… 腿按复摆算(L≈0.30 m)自然频率约 1.1 Hz … 把它压到 1.5 Hz 是跟摆动动力学对着干(walk_v3 把迈步压没了,可能正是这个原因)。”
    train/WALK_DIAGNOSIS.md § ② 撤回"步频 ≤1.5 Hz"这条验收标准 —— 是我定错了
  • Compare the achieved reward to the computed ignore-floor to tell "never learned" from "learned but unprofitable"ignore-floor-diagnosis
    Mechanism understoodomniattributionattributionreward-shaping

    For any skill that trains flat, compute the reward the null policy would earn on that term; achieved==floor means the behavior never paid out (find why: exploration, reward observability, or feasibility) - do not tune weights first.

    Symptom

    C4 sidewalk failed on both arms; the question was whether the policy had found sidewalk and rejected it as unprofitable, or never found it at all - two diagnoses with opposite fixes.

    Context

    The theoretical value of the sidewalk tracking term for a policy that completely ignores the command was computable from the command distribution: 0.189. Trained final values landed at 0.187 (arm A) and 0.204 (arm B) - sitting exactly on the ignore-floor - while the honest balance at the optimum actually favored sidewalking (net +0.88/step inside the side bucket). Later the same arithmetic closed the whole saga: for the true reward landscape, doing real sidewalk scored 0.153 vs 0.944 for ignoring - the policy's refusal "是理性最优,不是探索失败" (rational optimum, not exploration failure) under one hypothesis, and under the final measurement-corrected account the policy had "每一次都在 做理性选择" (made the rational choice every time).

    Change

    Diagnostic rule adopted: compute the ignore-floor for the new term; if the achieved value sits on it, the behavior was never expressed in useful volume (or the reward cannot distinguish it - check both); if the achieved value is above floor but the behavior is absent at deployment, the policy sampled it and priced it out - then the reward balance, not exploration, is the lever.

    Outcome

    Correctly identified that PPO had not merely under-valued sidewalk; each subsequent hypothesis (waveform sign, regularization cage, exploration form, reward kernel) was tested against this floor arithmetic, which kept the search honest through three reversals.

    Mechanism

    Every reward term has a computable value under the null behavior; the achieved-vs-floor gap is a one-number audit of whether the optimizer ever monetized the target behavior. It converts "training failed" into one of two mechanistically distinct states with different fixes.

    Applies when

    • a new skill's tracking reward plateaus early
    • deciding between exploration fixes and reward-weight fixes
    • post-mortem of a failed curriculum rung
    “track_lin_vel_y_exp 训练终值恰好坐在「完全无视指令」的底分上(A 0.187 / B 0.204,理论值 0.189),而终点 balance 明明有利(side 桶内净 +0.88/步)。不是学会了不划算,是根本没学到。”
    train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3e. 为什么首战 FAIL
  • Narrowing the speed range to stop high-speed falls entrenched crouch-shuffling - judge gait quality at the speed that demands a gaitlow-speed-commands-reward-dragging
    Mechanism understoodwalkcurriculumcurriculumreward-shapinggate-battery

    Set command ranges to include speeds that physically demand the target behavior, and evaluate behavior-quality gates at those speeds; when a restriction is added to suppress a failure, check what new optimum it creates at the remaining commands.

    Symptom

    After the command range was narrowed to (0.15, 0.35) m/s (to treat walk_v1's 134% overspeed and 8.3 s fall at 0.5), the policy settled into crouched foot-dragging; tracking rose monotonically with speed (63% at cmd 0.2, 76% at 0.3, 87% at 0.45), showing low speeds were where the degenerate gait was optimal.

    Context

    The narrowing advice was the author's own and is retracted in the file: it treated the symptom (falls at speed) while reinforcing the root cause (at 0.15-0.35 m/s, shuffling in a crouch is globally optimal - the Froude number is so low that even humans would not lift their feet). A zero-cost experiment confirmed the flip side: at cmd 0.5 the same policy met BOTH tracking (81%) and clearance (23.0/23.2 mm) standards.

    Change

    Speed range widened back toward (0.15, 0.5) - upper bound deliberately slightly above the mechanically feasible ~0.44 m/s so the policy finds the boundary itself; acceptance re-pointed: gait-quality criteria (tracking, clearance) judged at 0.45-0.5 m/s, low speed kept only as a survival check.

    Outcome

    v4 -> v6 progression under the widened range delivered 87% tracking with 34 mm clearance; the "low command = drag" account was confirmed by the monotone tracking-vs-speed curve.

    Mechanism

    Command distribution is part of the reward: physics prices gaits per speed, and at very low speed the energetic optimum is no swing phase at all. Restricting training to that regime makes the degenerate gait the correct answer to the posed problem - and grading a gait at a speed that does not require stepping measures nothing.

    Applies when

    • a gait degenerates after a command-range restriction
    • quality metrics improve monotonically toward the range boundary
    • writing acceptance criteria for gait quality vs survival
    “现在看那个建议可能起了反作用:0.15~0.35 m/s 下蹲着蹭就是全局最优,抬腿反而亏。收窄治的是"高速摔倒"的症状,却强化了拖地的病根。… 验收标准里的 cmd 0.2 本身就是拖地速度(Froude 数极低,人在那个速度下也不抬脚)。accept_v2 应把速度跟踪与 clearance 的判定点改到 0.45~0.5 m/s”
    train/WALK_DIAGNOSIS.md § ② 放宽速度区间 / ① 零成本实验
  • Ungated phase shaping made standing 42x more expensive than stepping - and the stepping was cooking the hip motorsmoving-gate-42x-stand-tax
    Mechanism understoodomnireward-shapingreward-shapinghardwarereal-acceptanceprocess

    Gate every phase/clock-driven shaping term on the command that justifies motion, price the cmd=0 case explicitly during design - and when a reward flaw is sim-only, book it with trigger conditions instead of operating immediately on a working lineage.

    Symptom

    At cmd = 0 the sim policy never stood still - it stepped in place and crept 0.98 m per 20 s; on the real robot the same lineage's stepping made hip_roll motors run 20 degC hotter than every other joint (43-48 degC vs 25-28).

    Context

    The arithmetic closed it: the three phase-shaping terms (joint_pos_ref 1.6, feet_contact_number 1.2, feet_clearance_swing 1.6) are driven by the gait clock with NO command gating, so standing at cmd=0 forfeits 3.32/step of shaping while honest standing earns only 0.078 of tracking - stepping wins 42x. The heat chain: perpetual stepping = perpetual single support = one hip_roll stalled at ~4.3 N*m (25% of torque limit) carrying the torso's frontal-plane moment - two hip_rolls = 90% of whole-machine steady-state I2R; measured stand-vs-step comparison: total heat -71% when actually standing. The suspended test acquitted the actuator (0.21 rad sag -> 0.0008 rad in air) and mechanics vetoed the easy fix ("降 kp 救不了热" - equilibrium torque equals the external load regardless of kp). The fix (moving_gate: hard-gate the three shaping terms on |cmd| > eps) was designed - then DEFERRED by the user because the real robot at the time stood fine: "真机不表现该问题, 为真机不存在的病改奖励表不划算", with written trigger conditions (C-ladder stand row persistently failing, or real robot starting to step/drift at cmd=0) and the known hazard tag (this is exactly the reward-change class that triggers the B-arm signature). When the real robot later DID step and cook, the booked trigger fired and moving_gate moved from debt to to-do with its benefit re-priced: "停止空烧 hip_roll,稳态发热降 ~71%".

    Change

    moving_gate designed with the gate_by_cmd convention; deferral, triggers, and expected heat recovery all pre-registered instead of patching the reward for a then-sim-only symptom.

    Outcome

    The cmd=0 stepping went from mystery to closed arithmetic; the thermal measurement (hip_roll +20 degC) quantitatively confirmed the 90%-of-heat prediction; the reward change waited for real-world justification instead of spending a risky revision early.

    Mechanism

    Clock-driven shaping terms define a perpetual-motion bounty unless gated by command; the resulting idle gait is not a training bug but the table's optimum. Its cost surfaces on hardware as stall-torque heating set by statics (mass x lateral offset), which no gain change can remove - only removing the motion (gating) or widening the stance can.

    Applies when

    • the policy steps in place or creeps at zero command
    • specific joints run hot in idle behaviors
    • deciding when a known reward flaw justifies a risky mid-lineage fix
    “塑形合计 −3.32/步 … 净: 站定亏 42 倍 … 两颗 hip_roll 4.29 / 4.09 N·m(各占限扭 25%),占全机稳态 I²R 的 90% … 吊挂实测 hip_roll 跟踪误差 0.21 rad → 0.0008 rad … 降 kp 救不了热 … 真机不表现该问题, 为真机不存在的病改奖励表不划算”
    train/README.md § C1 FAIL 节 (cmd=0 的 sim/真机分歧记账) / C2 真机 A/B 三b 发热定性
  • Oversized lateral COM randomization (+/-5 cm) deliberately forces leg spreadcom-randomization-forces-leg-spread
    Observed oncewalkdr-tuningdomain-randomizationreward-shaping

    DR ranges can be behavior-shaping tools, not just robustness padding: oversize a randomization axis to force a strategy the reward struggles to express - and expect a compensating behavior to appear as the cost.

    Symptom

    Feet drift toward the centerline and even collide; policy has no incentive to keep a lateral support base.

    Context

    COM randomization ranges were chosen asymmetrically by axis: lateral +/-5 cm ("比常规大,故意的" - larger than usual, on purpose), fore-aft +/-2 cm, vertical +/-2 cm. The oversized lateral range is not robustness padding but a behavioral forcing function. Lucen logged it as directly relevant to its own roll-channel / sideways leg-kick symptom.

    Change

    Set COM randomization to lateral +/-5 cm, fore-aft +/-2 cm, vertical +/-2 cm, with the lateral band intentionally oversized to make narrow stances fail during training.

    Outcome

    Effective at separating the feet on the reference robot; side effect - the base began swaying left-right, which then required a foot-centerline distance penalty (see reward-chain-foot-height-landing-spacing).

    Mechanism

    Randomizing COM laterally makes narrow-stance policies fall for some draws, so PPO discovers wide stances as the only strategy robust across the band - DR used as an implicit reward. The sway side effect appears because the policy hedges against unknown COM by active lateral correction.

    Applies when

    • feet too close / self-collision in a learned gait
    • roll-axis instability suspected to come from narrow stance
    • choosing COM or mass-offset DR ranges
    “两脚太近甚至互撞 → 先试质心横向随机化 ±5 cm,逼迫策略把脚分开;有效但引发新问题——基座开始左右摇摆 … 横向 ±5 cm(比常规大,故意的,用来逼出分腿)/ 前后 ±2 cm / 垂直 ±2 cm”
    Experience.md § 质心随机化范围 (lines 75, 84-86)
  • Design the next run to complete the 2x2 - either outcome then convicts or acquits a factor cleanlyfill-the-missing-factorial-cell
    Mechanism understoodwalkprocessprocessattributionreward-shaping

    When two config factors are jointly suspected, lay out the factorial of existing evidence, spend one run on the missing cell with both interpretations and an early-abort tripwire written in advance - and treat either outcome as a verdict, not a disappointment.

    Symptom

    Hip joints froze at the action clamp in v7, but the history could not say whether the culprit was the raised action_rate (-0.2) or the halved reference amplitude (scale 0.15): existing versions covered only three corners of the (rate x scale) space - v5 (-0.03, 0.30) healthy, v6 (-0.03, 0.15) healthy, v7 (-0.2, 0.15) frozen.

    Context

    v9 was designed explicitly as the missing cell (-0.2, 0.30), with the readings pre-registered: v9 not frozen -> the real anti-freeze force was always the reference amplitude and -0.2 may stay; v9 frozen -> -0.2 is convicted beyond appeal (freezes at both amplitudes) and the next version goes straight to a structural fix. "两个结局都是干净的信息" - both endings are clean information.

    Change

    One training run allocated purely to complete the factorial, with freeze tripwires (joint_pos_ref telemetry <0.1 at iter 1000-1500 -> abort, do not run to 6000) so a conviction costs the minimum compute.

    Outcome

    v9 froze - the rate weight was convicted at both amplitudes ("−0.2 铁案定罪"), and v10 moved to the structural saturation fix with the weight question closed instead of re-litigated.

    Mechanism

    Three corners of a 2x2 leave the two factors confounded in the failure corner; the fourth observation makes each factor's marginal effect identifiable. Pre-registering both readings turns the run into a guaranteed-informative experiment regardless of outcome.

    Applies when

    • two config changes are confounded in a failure
    • version history already covers some corners of a factor grid
    • deciding what single experiment buys the most attribution
    “这恰好补齐一个 2×2 实验矩阵的缺格 … v9 不冻 → 真正的抗冻结主力一直是参考摆幅,−0.2 可以留;v9 仍冻 → −0.2 铁案定罪(两种摆幅下都冻),v10 直接上结构修复 … 两个结局都是干净的信息。”
    train/WALK_V9_SPEC.md § 0. 设计原则 (2×2 实验矩阵)
  • Two simulators disagreed 1.8x on one policy's torque demand - four explanations were eliminated with numbers, the surviving suspect was never tested, and neither reading was allowed to cancel the othertorque-disagreement-between-simulators-unresolved
    Hypothesisrecoverysim2sim-gatesim2simactuator-modelingattribution

    When two simulators disagree on a safety-relevant quantity, eliminate the measurement explanations one at a time with numbers, name the survivor as a hypothesis, keep the pessimistic reading binding, and run the direct test (replay one action sequence open-loop through both plants) before the quantity is used to pass a gate for hardware.

    Symptom

    For R3.0, Isaac read hip_pitch torque demand at 75-80% of the limit (PASS); MuJoCo read the same policy at 148-152% (1.5x over the limit).

    Context

    Candidates were eliminated one by one: PD gains (identical, RS06 kp 30 / kd 1.5), the settle window (both skip the first 0.5 s), the statistic (worse-of-two-legs vs per-joint - explains ~15%), self-collision (the no-contact subset still read 152%), sampling (500 Hz peak vs 50 Hz sample - ~9%). About 1.8x remained. The prime suspect - Isaac's implicit actuator (PD solved inside the PhysX integration, chosen to mimic kHz firmware PD) against MuJoCo's 500 Hz explicit PD - was named but untested.

    Change

    The Isaac PASS was recorded as valid for the Isaac plant only; the prescribed decider was an open-loop replay of one action sequence through both plants, compared step by step, needing no training. It was upgraded to a precondition of R3.1.

    Outcome

    R3.1 ran in parallel with, not after, the replay, and the replay never appears as done. By §40 it was "the oldest open account" on the line, to be fed by real-robot logs - which the spec also never records. Meanwhile the 50 Hz sample under-read the peak by 34% as smoothing narrowed the spikes, so Isaac-side readings grew more optimistic exactly when the comparison mattered more.

    Mechanism

    Each measurement artifact explained a slice of the gap; what remained is a plant difference, and an untested plant hypothesis cannot license discarding the pessimistic simulator on a safety-relevant quantity.

    Conflicts

    The spec prescribes the open-loop replay (§23), upgrades it to an R3.1 precondition, then records that R3.1 ran in parallel without it (§24), and lists it as the oldest open account before hardware (§40); nothing through §50 (2026-08-14) records a result. Every later "torque gate PASS" on this line is an Isaac-plant reading plus a MuJoCo check, never a reconciled one.

    Applies when

    • Isaac and MuJoCo (or sim and hardware) report different torques, contacts or slips
    • implicit vs explicit actuator models are in play
    • a gate passes on one simulator only
    “**同一个策略,一侧判 PASS 一侧判超限 1.5 倍。** … 口径项全部扣掉后仍剩 **~1.8×** 没有解释。 … 但**这条没有验证,不能拿它当结论去抵消 MuJoCo 的读数**。 … (做法:拿同一条 动作序列在两边开环回放,逐拍比 τ —— 不需要重训)”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §23 MuJoCo 复核门:成功率更稳,但 τ 与 Isaac 差 ~1.8× 没收敛
  • The deploy-side walk/recovery switch - into recovery at tilt > 65 deg held 0.3 s, back at tilt < 15 deg with angular rate < 1 rad/s and straight knees held 1 s, a 15 s timeout, last action cleared both ways - and the handoff steps the design required are only partly implementedwalk-recovery-fsm-handoff
    Observed oncerecoveryreal-deployreal-acceptancecontract-freezeprocess

    Specify a deploy-time controller switch as hysteretic, time-filtered predicates the robot can measure (proxy what it cannot, e.g. straight knees for height), a timeout that ends in a safe stop, and a complete handoff (history, clock, last action, command ramp) - then test that the code performs every handoff step, because the design document is not the implementation.

    Symptom

    With a recovery policy and a locomotion policy as separate networks, the robot needs a switch: when is it "fallen", when is it "up", and what state must be reset so the next policy does not act on the previous one's history.

    Context

    The 08-09 design: enter recovery when fallen (tilt > 55 deg or height < 0.60 x 0.384 m) for 150 ms, leave for a stand-hold when upright (tilt < 12 deg, height > 0.85 x 0.384 m, feet steady, |omega| < 0.8) for 400 ms - wide entry, strict exit, hysteresis - then a mandatory handoff trio before walking resumes (reset the walking policy's observation history, restart its phase clock at 0, clear its previous action and latency buffer) and a command ramp instead of a jump. The 08-14 implementation in deploy_policy (--recovery-policy): each policy under its own manifest contract (walk: nominal + scale; recovery: beta-anchored), the same rl_default gains, the tilt cutoff disabled; RECOVERY at tilt > 65 deg for 0.3 s; LOCO again at tilt < 15 deg and |omega| < 1 and knees straight (< 0.35 rad) for 1 s - the robot's computer has no height estimate, and straight knees stand in for height so a V3.0-style upright kneel cannot pass as standing; RECOVERY longer than 15 s ends in a safe stop; last_action cleared on both switches; command forced to 0 during RECOVERY; power scaling applies to LOCO only.

    Change

    An open account was written down with it: the recovery end state (0.355 m stance, hip yaw -/+27 deg) is outside the walking policy's training start distribution, so the first test must use stand / zero command as LOCO, and the long-term fix is to widen the walking policy's initial states rather than bend recovery's stance to suit walking.

    Outcome

    The spec records only a successful compile (py_compile); the hang test was left to be done on site. The operator runbook carries the three-step procedure (hang with stand as LOCO, mat and push, then omni walk as LOCO) but no outcome.

    Mechanism

    Two policies trained separately each assume their own history, clock and last action; a switch that carries any of them across feeds the next policy a state it never saw - the design called this "the walking policy seeing a ghost history".

    Conflicts

    The 08-09 design requires resetting history, clock and previous action plus a command ramp; the 08-14 implementation records last_action clearing and a zero command during recovery; the one-leg spec of 2026-09-14 lists the handoff hygiene as specified but not implemented - reset_history() is called by nothing (a 215-dim policy would carry four frames of pre-fall history), the phase clock is not zeroed, and there is no command ramp back to LOCO. No hardware run of the FSM is recorded in either source.

    Applies when

    • switching between separately trained policies on hardware
    • a policy with history or phase observations is re-enabled mid-run
    • the robot lacks a sensor the switching criterion was designed around
    “**判据**:进 RECOVERY = 倾角 >65°(`--fall-tilt-deg`)持续 0.3 s;回 LOCO = §5 真机可测子集:倾角 <15° ∧ |ω|<1 ∧ **膝直 <0.35 rad(NX 无高度观测, 高度门用膝直代理 —— 防 V3.0 型"跪坐但直立"误判)** 持续 1 s (`--recover-hold`);RECOVERY 单次 >15 s(`--recovery-max-time`)安全停。 … **切换卫生**:两向切换 last_action 清零;RECOVERY 态 cmd 强制 0”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §50 FSM 双策略调度(2026-08-14,用户令):deploy_policy --recovery-policy
  • action_rate weight is the sim2real bandwidth knob - re-tune it whenever a rate limiter is removedaction-rate-weight-vs-bandwidth
    Observed oncewalkreward-shapingaction-ratereward-shapingactuator-modeling

    Set action_rate weight relative to real actuator bandwidth, and re-tune it any time another smoothing/limiting element (filter, slew limiter, gain) changes - reward weights are load-bearing parts of the actuator model.

    Symptom

    With a low action_rate_l2 weight the policy learns fast actions; the unmodeled part of the actuator response is then excited hardest, and sim2real "直接崩" (collapses outright). With too high a weight, actions become so slow the robot cannot maintain balance.

    Context

    The reference developer called action_rate_l2 the single most important reward for transfer, with side-by-side video evidence that the high-penalty, slower policy is clearly better on hardware. Lucen context: the team had just removed the SOFT_SPD=1.0 velocity limiter, which had been an implicit actuator-bandwidth constraint - leaving action_rate as the only remaining constraint on action speed.

    Change

    Decision recorded: after removing SOFT_SPD, re-evaluate the action_rate weight rather than keep the old value, since its effective role changed from "additional smoother" to "sole bandwidth constraint".

    Outcome

    Logged as a priority follow-up ("重新评估 action_rate 权重 - 拆掉 SOFT_SPD 之后这一项的作用变了"); the failure mode it guards against is training high-frequency actions the real actuators cannot track.

    Mechanism

    Slower actions stay inside the frequency band where the ideal-PD sim actuator and the real actuator agree; fast actions probe the band where unmodeled delay, inductance, and bandwidth limits dominate, so model error is amplified in exact proportion to action speed. Any removed external rate limit transfers that constraint's entire job onto the action_rate penalty.

    Conflicts

    The low/high tradeoff evidence is the external developer's report (with video); the Lucen-side entry is a pre-registered risk and decision, not yet an on-robot A/B at the time of writing.

    Applies when

    • removing or adding an action filter, slew limiter, or low-level speed cap
    • real robot shows high-frequency chatter or overheating absent in sim
    • tuning smoothness rewards before a hardware deployment
    “权重低 → 动作快 → 执行器模型不准的部分被放大,sim2real 直接崩 / 权重高 → 动作慢 → 好迁移,但可能慢到无法维持平衡 … 我们刚拆掉 SOFT_SPD=1.0 的限速器,等于把执行器带宽约束整个移除了。action_rate 惩罚现在是唯一还在约束动作速率的东西,需要重新评估权重”
    Experience.md § action_rate_l2 是他认为最关键的 reward (lines 61-70)
  • Armature must be N^2 x rotor inertia, never 0 - measure it no-loadarmature-n2-rotor-inertia
    Mechanism understoodwalkplant-calibrationplant-calibrationactuator-modeling

    Every geared actuator carries N^2 * I_rotor of reflected inertia at the joint; set armature from a no-load measurement, never leave it 0 and never guess it.

    Symptom

    Sim joints accelerate more easily than real joints; old MJCF had armature = 0 (rotor reflected inertia entirely unmodeled), a systematic sim2real gap on every joint.

    Context

    Original hand-written MJCF plant used armature 0. The team derived and then measured the correct value: torque needed at the rotor is I_rotor * N * alpha; after the N:1 gearbox the output shaft "feels" an extra N^2 * I_rotor of inertia. With a 9:1 reduction that is an 81x amplification of the rotor inertia, far too large to ignore.

    Change

    Set per-motor armature from no-load (motor out of the robot) measurement instead of 0: RS06 = 0.0070 kg*m^2, RS02 = 0.0032 kg*m^2, RS00 = 0.0015 kg*m^2. Landed together with measured friction as the first fully-measured plant parameter set.

    Outcome

    Plant parameters "第一次全部来自实测" (first time all from measurement); became the frozen plant baseline for all subsequent training generations.

    Mechanism

    Reflected inertia scales with the square of the gear ratio: the rotor spins N times faster than the joint, so its kinetic energy (and the torque needed to accelerate it) appears N^2 larger at the output. Omitting it makes simulated joints unrealistically fast/light, so policies learn action rates the real actuator cannot deliver.

    Applies when

    • building or auditing a simulation plant model for a geared/QDD actuator
    • sim policy moves joints faster or snappier than the real robot can
    • MJCF/URDF review shows armature or rotor inertia set to 0 or a default
    “armature 转子反射惯量有问题 在sim里面一定要处理 不能是0,空机测试。转子处需要的力矩 = I_rotor × N × α 经减速箱放大 N 倍后 = N² × I_rotor × α 所以输出轴"感觉到"多了一个 N² × I_rotor 的惯量。 这就是 armature。… 关键是那个平方。减速比 9:1 就放大 81 倍。”
    Experience.md § # armature 转子反射惯量有问题 (line 9)
  • Calibrate a wall penalty by measuring healthy and sick policies - healthy pays ~0, the disease pays a wallcalibrate-threshold-between-healthy-and-sick
    Mechanism understoodwalkreward-shapingreward-shapinggate-battery

    Calibrate every threshold penalty by evaluating its exact formula on replays of at least one healthy and one sick policy: place the threshold between their distributions, size the weight so the sick policy pays a decisive fraction of tracking while the healthy one pays ~0, and pre-compute neighboring thresholds for cheap adjustment.

    Symptom

    Real walk_v7 occasionally clipped its own legs (stance narrowed to 133 mm mean vs nominal 214.5); a foot-distance penalty was needed, but an uncalibrated threshold/weight risked either doing nothing or becoming a reverse barrier.

    Context

    The term (relu(d_min - lateral foot distance), measured in the base yaw frame because world-frame y is meaningless after turning) was calibrated before training by replaying three known policies through the exact reward formula at the acceptance operating point: healthy v5 (183 mm) pays 0.6% of tracking - effectively free; narrowed v7 (133 mm) pays 22% - effective widening pressure; collapsed v8 (93 mm) pays 55% - a wall. d_min 0.16 was placed deliberately between healthy and sick, with alternative thresholds (0.14/0.18) pre-computed in the tool output for later adjustment. The shape self-check was named as a standing question: "先问'零代价的选项是什么'" - the zero-cost region must be exactly the desired behavior.

    Change

    feet_lateral_distance added at d_min 0.16 / weight -10, with telemetry expectation pre-registered (should decay toward 0 as stance learns >160 mm; if bow-legged over-widening >214 appears, only then discuss an upper bound).

    Outcome

    v9_probe on hardware: no leg contact ("没碰腿(N2 兑现)"), stance min 145/126 mm green; the term's zero-cost design left healthy gait untaxed.

    Mechanism

    A relu threshold penalty defines a free region and a priced region; its correctness is entirely in where the boundary sits relative to the healthy and pathological distributions. Replaying known-good and known-bad policies through the exact formula measures both distributions in the term's own currency, making the threshold and weight a placement decision instead of a guess.

    Applies when

    • adding any relu/threshold-style wall penalty
    • a safety margin (foot distance, joint limit, clearance) needs enforcement without taxing normal behavior
    • choosing between candidate thresholds for a new term
    “形状自检 (v6 横向组/v8-B 的教训 —— 先问"零代价的选项是什么"): 标称站距付 0, 健康步态付 ~0, 收窄才付费 … v5(健康) 183 mm … 0.6% ≈ 免费 | v7(收窄) 133 mm … 22% —— 有效推宽 | v8(塌陷) 93 mm … 55% —— 墙 … d_min=0.16 恰在 v5(183)与 v7(133)之间”
    train/WALK_V9_SPEC.md § 2. N2 —— 脚距惩罚(已完成权重预标定)
  • Drop the frozen policy into chosen configurations - a squat 2.7 cm lower than the stuck pose stood 52% of the time, the stuck W-sit 0%, and the interpolation between them showed a wall, not a slopeconfiguration-probe-wall-not-slope
    Mechanism understoodrecoveryattributionattributionmeasurementcurriculum

    When a policy is stuck, probe the frozen policy from a grid of hand-placed start configurations, including interpolations between the stuck state and a nearby state it escapes from; one read-only experiment separates height, torque, sampling and configuration and tells you whether to prevent entry or train the exit.

    Symptom

    After R0.3 the policy stood from 62% of starts and never from the W-sit it fell into; height, torque, missing samples and reward were all plausible suspects.

    Context

    A read-only probe placed the R0.3 policy directly into specified configurations. Squats (hip, knee, ankle) = (-.65,-1.3,-.65) stood 100%, (-1.0,-2.0,-1.0) 89.8%, (-1.2,-2.4,-1.2) at 0.176 m 52.3%; the measured W-sit at 0.203 m 0.0%; the account-(3) hand-over state (146 deg tilt) 34.4%; linear interpolations from the W-sit toward the squat at 25/50/75% stood 0.0/0.0/3.1%. The squat family's quasi-static torque is 16% of the limits, and the W-sit was visited ~9 s per episode in training. FK showed the squat family (-a,-2a,-a) keeps the torso vertical, the feet flat and the COM over the feet all the way from 0.146 m to 0.384 m.

    Change

    Height, torque and sampling were eliminated in one experiment; the next rungs targeted entering the W-sit (foot placement) instead of escaping it, and seeding the dead point itself was ruled out because it was already visited every episode.

    Outcome

    Pure configuration: the W-sit (hips externally rotated +/-47 deg, knees folded 110 deg, shins flat, feet beside the body) is a different place from the sagittal squat (feet flat under the COM). The policy's standing skill was bound to a narrow sagittal family, and the wall was confirmed by the interpolation. The foot-placement rungs that followed took prone from 0/159 to 158/159.

    Mechanism

    A learned skill covers the neighbourhood of the states it succeeded from; a start state outside that neighbourhood fails regardless of height or torque, and an interpolation that stays at zero until close to a working state shows the boundary is sharp.

    Applies when

    • a policy stalls in a specific posture and several causes are plausible
    • deciding between reverse-curriculum seeding and entry-prevention shaping
    • a feasibility account says a path exists but the policy does not take it
    “**决定性对比:比死点矮 2.7 cm 的蹲姿站立 52.3%,死点 0.0%。** 所以不是高度、 不是力矩(蹲姿族准静态力矩膝 1.96/12、踝 1.24/17,只占 16%)、也不是训练采样 (死点每局被访问 ~9 s)。**是纯位形问题** … 插值实验进一步显示这**不是坡是墙** —— 走到 75% 仍只有 3.1%”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §15 死点位形实验(只读探针,同一个 R0.3 策略放进指定位形)
  • Freeze the deployment contract, stamp every export, and let an automated checker catch wiring bugscontract-freeze-and-checker
    Replicatedomniprocesscontract-freezeprocesssim2sim

    Freeze and fingerprint the policy I/O contract; ship contract changes as new versioned profiles that leave old artifacts bit-identical; and extend the automated contract checker with every pipeline change, forcing the new path to execute in the check.

    Symptom

    Contract-level changes (observation layout, action pipeline) are where silent sim/real divergence is born; two real wiring bugs appeared the one time the action pipeline was extended.

    Context

    The 215-dim observation contract was frozen ("纪元 3,三机 digest" - an era number plus a digest agreed across three machines); proposals that would break it (e.g. a GRU memory) were rejected on contract grounds. Every exported ONNX is stamped and verified with a manifest (onnx_manifest --stamp / --verify), and deployment refuses mismatched combinations. When C4 added the lateral feed-forward, it went in as a NEW profile (omni_ff) leaving the existing omni profile's behavior bit-identical; the checker (check_contract) was extended to force the feed-forward path to actually execute (cmd_vy=0.13) and promptly caught two genuine bugs: (1) re-clamping with soft_joint_pos_limits after the feed-forward (0.23 rad deviation) instead of reusing the parent's clip; (2) indexing processed actions by asset.joint_names instead of the action term's own contract-ordered _joint_names, which landed the feed-forward on the wrong joints (l_hip_yaw / r_ankle_pitch).

    Change

    Contract discipline as implemented: frozen dims + digest; manifest stamping and refusal; contract changes only via new versioned profiles; checker updated in the same commit as any pipeline change, with inputs chosen so new code paths are exercised.

    Outcome

    Both wiring bugs caught before any training or deployment ("两个都是 check_contract 当场抓出来的 —— 这次它值回票价"); old deployments provably unaffected by the new profile.

    Mechanism

    The contract is the only interface the policy and robot share; freezing plus fingerprinting makes divergence detectable, and an executable checker turns "the contract holds" from a belief into a test - but only if its inputs actually drive the new code path.

    Applies when

    • modifying the action or observation pipeline of a deployed policy
    • exporting policies for hardware
    • proposals that would change observation dims or history structure
    “契约校验抓到的两个真错误(记账,别再犯):1. 前馈后误用 soft_joint_pos_limits(URDF 限位 ×0.9)重钳 → 0.23 rad 偏差 … 2. 用 asset.joint_names 索引 _processed_actions → 前馈落到 l_hip_yaw/r_ankle_pitch 上 … 两个都是 check_contract 当场抓出来的 —— 这次它值回票价。”
    train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3j. 契约级改动 / 契约校验抓到的两个真错误
  • The first real-robot get-up was "very violent, kicking on the floor, dangerous" - a sim-perfect policy with no reason to be slow, unbounded absolute targets, no domain randomization and a rate limiter that filtered nothing; the task was restated as "safe, slow, transferable"first-real-get-up-violent-stage-one-policy
    Observed oncerecoveryreal-deployreal-acceptanceactuator-modelingattribution

    Do not put a get-up policy on hardware until its action is bounded (hard bound or state-anchored targets), smoothed, randomized and tested at the real pipeline's latency, and say explicitly that the task is "safe, slow and transferable" - a simulation-perfect policy optimizes only "gets up".

    Symptom

    On 2026-08-09 the user ran a V0-lineage recovery policy on the real robot and stopped it: very violent, kicking on the floor, dangerous. The planned next rung (a heavier torque_headroom) was never started.

    Context

    The spec had pre-registered that R0/R1 products stay in simulation and that the real-robot precondition was the R3 smoothing rungs plus a bridge-slew check plus a hanging protocol; the robustness (DR) rungs had not run. In simulation the policy passed 100% with a get-up of about a second. Which ONNX, which gain profile and whether a torque/joint log existed were left "to be recorded later" and never were.

    Change

    The V0 ladder was stopped at its best product (R3.1, sim only) and a re-rooting proposal was put to the user. The spec's four-layer account: style (the reward pays for standing early and nothing pays for slowness - HumanUP's "Stage I" get-up, "fast but unsafe ... infeasible for real-world deployment"); impact (full-range absolute targets with no hard bound, raw |a| up to 4.77, action saturation 100%, a single-step change of 0.306 saturating hip_pitch); transfer (zero DR, friction pinned at 1.0, the learned leg bracing); link (the bridge's RL slew equals vel_limit, 0.2-0.66 rad per step, while the real pipeline has 1-2 steps of time-varying latency and acceptance ran at delay 0).

    Outcome

    The line was re-rooted twice (training-side rate limit, then the beta-anchored action space) and gained a hang protocol before the next real attempt; on 08-11 a beta-anchored policy produced the line's first real get-up.

    Mechanism

    A task reward that pays for standing early selects the fastest feasible get-up; with absolute full-range targets every large target jump is a torque impulse bounded only by the clip; zero DR and braced-leg solutions do not transfer; and a limiter set at the velocity limit does nothing at 50 Hz.

    Conflicts

    The four layers are the spec's reconstruction from simulation probes and the literature; the real run's policy file, gain profile and log were never recorded, so no layer was confirmed against hardware data.

    Applies when

    • a first hardware trial of a high-effort skill is being scheduled
    • sim success is high but the policy saturates actions or torques
    • pre-registered hardware preconditions are not all met
    “用户真机反馈:**非常猛、地上乱踢、危险**,叫停(R3.3 torque_headroom 加档已选型 weight −0.5→−1.5,未启动)。真机细节(哪个 onnx、什么档、有无 τ/q log)**待补记** … 任务从"能起来"变成 **"安全、慢、可迁移"** … **链路层**:桥层 slew RL 档 = vel_limit(10/20/33 rad/s ≈ 每拍 0.2~0.66 rad), 对 recovery 形同虚设;真机 1~2 拍时变延迟,验收默认 delay 0。”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §26 真机叫停与换根判决(2026-08-09)
  • Measure yaw rate by integrating heading, not by averaging body-frame angular velocity - the two differed 15xheading-integral-not-body-rate
    Mechanism understoodwalksim-evalmeasurementsim2simattribution

    For any secular rate (turn gain, drift), integrate the world-frame angle over the window; never average instantaneous body-frame rates during oscillatory motion - and when code comments warn about a measurement, believe them before re-measuring.

    Symptom

    Two measurements of the same turn gain disagreed by a factor of ~15: time-averaged body-frame omega_z gave -0.05 while the sim2sim harness's heading-angle integration gave +0.473.

    Context

    The harness code comment had already documented and predicted the failure: during gait the torso oscillates (body-frame omega_z std up to 0.7); projecting world angular velocity onto a swaying body axis and then averaging biases the estimate systematically - "实测体系均值 −0.04 而实际在以 +0.15 转" (measured body-frame mean -0.04 while actually turning at +0.15). The author's own -0.05 measurement was declared void and the training machine's 1.58/2.45 turn gains confirmed valid.

    Change

    Measurement doctrine fixed: yaw rate for evaluation = net heading change by integration over the window; instantaneous body-frame rates are unusable for averaged directional statistics during legged gait.

    Outcome

    Subsequent friction sweeps and turn-gain accounting were all conducted in the heading-integral currency, making cross-simulator comparisons (MuJoCo vs Isaac 1.04/1.02) meaningful.

    Mechanism

    Averaging a vector quantity expressed in an oscillating frame couples the frame's oscillation into the mean (a rectification bias); the heading integral is computed in the world frame where the gait oscillation integrates to ~zero, leaving the secular component.

    Applies when

    • measuring turn gain, heading drift, or any secular angular rate
    • a body-frame-averaged statistic disagrees with trajectory-level truth
    • writing evaluation code for oscillating platforms
    “我用体坐标系 ωz 的时间均值测,得 −0.05;sim2sim 用航向角积分,得 +0.473。差 15 倍。… 步态中躯干摇晃(体系 ωz std 可达 0.7),把世界角速度投到摇摆的体轴上再取均值会系统性偏掉 … 结论:偏航率必须用航向积分,体系瞬时角速度取均值不可用。”
    train/WALK_DIAGNOSIS.md § ③ 转向增益 —— 我的测法是错的,训练机的 1.58/2.45 成立
  • Privileged signals (true velocity, foot force, foot height) go to the critic onlyobservation-honesty-critic-only
    Mechanism understoodwalkobservation-designobservation-honesty

    Treat the actor observation vector as a hardware contract: every element must exist on the real robot with realistic noise; privileged simulator truths belong in the critic only.

    Symptom

    Policies trained on ground-truth base linear velocity work in sim and fail on hardware, where only a drifting IMU and encoders exist - the policy has learned to depend on a signal that does not survive deployment.

    Context

    Many open-source locomotion stacks feed simulator ground-truth linear velocity to the actor. The reference team refused: the real robot has no ground-truth velocity. Asymmetric actor-critic keeps the training benefit of privileged information without deploying the dependency.

    Change

    Route ground-truth velocity, foot contact forces, and foot heights to the critic only; the actor observes exclusively signals that exist on hardware (IMU-derived quantities, encoders, commands, previous actions).

    Outcome

    Recorded as adopted doctrine in Lucen's experience log; the trained actor's input contract matches what the real robot can actually produce.

    Mechanism

    The critic is discarded at deployment, so it may consume any privileged state to reduce value-estimation variance; the actor's observation set is a deployment contract - anything in it that hardware cannot supply (or supplies with different noise/drift) becomes a train/deploy distribution shift the policy was never trained to handle.

    Applies when

    • designing actor/critic observation spaces
    • reviewing a config where the actor sees base_lin_vel or contact forces
    • sim policy is strong but real robot drifts, oscillates, or falls without obvious actuator cause
    “很多开源代码库把真值线速度喂给策略,Asimov 团队没有,因为真机上没有真值速度,只有会漂的 IMU 和编码器;用完美速度训练出来的策略会依赖它,然后在硬件上失效。真值速度、足底力、足高统统只给 critic”
    Experience.md § 观测空间的诚实性 (line 7)
  • The real robot's right-leg kicking was over-trained-delay times loop gain - irreducible pipeline latency is plant, model it fully from day onepipeline-latency-is-plant-not-dr
    Mechanism understoodomniactuator-modelingactuator-modelingreal-acceptanceattributionsim2sim

    Measure the end-to-end action pipeline delay and build it into the nominal plant and every acceptance gate from day one; treat power/scale deratings that "fix" oscillation as gain-reduction crutches flagging an unmodeled delay, and expect higher-feedback-gain policies to be MORE delay-fragile.

    Symptom

    On hardware, s1c/s1d at action scale 1.0 always kicked wildly with the right leg (s1c only ran as SOTA at power 0.8; s1d only at 0.7) - while sim showed nothing under default evaluation.

    Context

    Sim reproduced the incident item by item once the real pipeline delay was injected: s1d@1.0 with --delay 1 fell at 10.2 s, --delay 2 at 5.2 s; s1c@1.0 stressed (r_hip_roll saturation 5 -> 16%; "右脚" = the policy's chirality makes the right leg its high-gain leg); and the combos that worked on hardware (s1c@0.8+delay2, s1d@0.7+delay2) all survived in sim. Mechanism: the real pipeline is ~1-2 ticks (BusWorker next-cycle pickup + CAN round trip) but S1.1 trained only to 1 tick - "超训延迟 × 全环路增益 = 振荡;衰减 = 压环路增益换稳定" (delay beyond training x full loop gain = oscillation; the power derating had been buying stability by compressing loop gain). s1d was MORE fragile than s1c because its yaw 3-layer stack had learned higher feedback gain - higher gain, lower delay tolerance. Three changes: latency DR widened to cover reality; acceptance gates and smoke runs moved permanently to --delay 2 ("门必须在真机条件下预测 真机"); and the doctrine written twice-paid: "不可约的管线属性(延迟、 限速)不是'随机化选项',是 plant 本体,第一天就该全额建模" - S1's nominal-then-robust staging falsified by hardware for the second time. The later s1e hardware run at power 1.0 (no kicking, normal force) closed the loop: "0.8 = 旧代拐杖" - the derating had been a crutch for the under-modeled delay, not a real requirement.

    Change

    Latency modeled as plant from day one of any lineage (measured 1-2 ticks covered, bridge-layer rate limits likewise modeled by default); every gate and smoke evaluation issued under --delay 2.

    Outcome

    Kicking reproduced, explained, and eliminated in the s1e generation at full scale and full power; the deploy-side crutches (0.7/0.8) retired for the new lineage.

    Mechanism

    Feedback oscillation onset is a product of loop gain and phase lag; a policy trained below the real delay learns gains that sit past the real stability margin, and any output derating masks it by scaling gain down. Since pipeline delay is deterministic hardware property - not an uncertainty - it belongs in the nominal plant, and every evaluation must include it or the gate predicts a robot that does not exist.

    Applies when

    • hardware oscillation/kicking that sim only reproduces with added delay
    • a policy only runs on hardware at reduced power/scale
    • defining what belongs in the nominal plant vs the DR list
    “真实链路延迟 ~1~2 拍 … S1.1 只训到 1 拍——超训延迟 × 全环路增益 = 振荡;衰减 = 压环路增益换稳定。s1d 比 s1c 更脆 = yaw 三层栈学出更高反馈增益,增益越高延迟容忍越低。… 教训入账:S1「先标称后鲁棒」第二次被真机证伪——不可约的管线属性(延迟、限速)不是"随机化选项",是 plant 本体,第一天就该全额建模。”
    train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 3. S1.4(真机右脚乱踢事故强制)
  • Every power cycle starts with the same read-only pre-flight - read the buses, check the torque limits against 12/17/11, verify the IMU axes, check the ports after any new USB device - and any reassembly re-measures the joint zerospower-cycle-preflight
    Observed onceinfrareal-deployreal-acceptancehardwareprocess

    Start every powered session with a fixed, read-only pre-flight - bus responses, torque limits equal to the simulated ones, IMU axes, device identities - and re-measure joint zeros after any mechanical reassembly before running a policy.

    Symptom

    Hardware state drifts between sessions in ways no policy can see: a motor that stops answering after a power cycle, a torque limit that differs from the one simulated, an IMU axis flipped, two USB devices swapping identities, a joint zero moved by reassembly.

    Context

    The runbook's session order before any policy runs: read every motor on both CAN buses without enabling them (the first command after every power cycle); set_torque --check, all twelve motors must read 12/17/11 N*m, and any difference is written back; imu_reader --verify-axes, where the operator tilts the robot forward and to the right and every check must pass before continuing; check_ports after plugging in any new USB device (the IMU and a CAN adapter once collided on USB identity). After re-mounting motors: read the buses, then re-measure the calibration offsets (three repeats, written back) - "skipping it means running everything on the wrong zero". Hanging checklists repeat the torque-limit check (the deploy script also self-checks at start).

    Change

    A fixed, read-only pre-flight run in the same order every session.

    Outcome

    The runbook records one earlier hardware check in the same spirit: all 12 motors' implied kp fell within 18.4-22.0 for a commanded 20, inside the kp randomization range used in training.

    Mechanism

    A policy transfers only if the plant matches the one it was evaluated on; the pre-flight turns silent hardware drift into a failed check before the robot moves.

    Applies when

    • the first command after powering a robot on
    • after swapping adapters, cables or motors
    • a policy that worked last session suddenly behaves differently
    “python tools/set_torque.py --check # 12 颗应全对 12/17/11, 有 diff 就 --write … 插任何新 USB 设备后都先跑一次 check_ports.py(IMU 和 CANable 的 USB 身份撞过车) … python tools/calib_stance.py --repeat 3 --write # 重标 offset —— 8/9/10 重新装, 机械零位变了”
    RL系统/FOLLOW THIS copy 2.md § WALK / STAND 每次开始前 / 换CAN / 装回后必做两件
  • Fall recovery was defined as the whole chain - any fallen pose, a stable stand, a clean hand-back to walking - and built as a second policy behind a deploy-side switch, not folded into the walking PPOrecovery-two-policies-and-a-state-machine
    Observed oncerecoveryprocessprocesscontract-freezereal-acceptance

    Define a recovery skill by the whole chain it must complete, including the hand-back to the next controller; if it is built as a separate policy, make the switching logic and its handoff contract a deliverable of their own, and keep the recovery observation contract a subset of the locomotion one so a unified policy stays possible later.

    Symptom

    A walking robot that falls needs a human to stand it back up. The design question on 2026-08-09 was whether to teach getting up inside the existing omni walking policy or beside it.

    Context

    The user set the goal as "any fallen pose -> stand up alone -> stand stably", and the spec named the real difficulty as the full chain fall -> recovery -> stable stand -> correctly initialised walking history and clock -> walking, making the deploy state machine a first-class deliverable. A unified single policy had a real-robot precedent (arXiv:2605.18611, a state-dependent gate near 37 deg tilt) but was deferred until a recovery policy and an omni policy were each reliable. The line ran on its own branch and worktree with every walk/stand/omni/run config path untouched. The development path copied the G1 learned get-up logic (arXiv:2502.12152): first find any feasible get-up (ugly accepted), then add smoothing, torque and real-robot constraints. The recovery contract kept the base 45-dim observation (command slice held at 0, no gait phase, no frame history - their reasons do not apply to a skill without a clock or a velocity task), so it stays a prefix of the 215-dim omni contract and a later merge is not foreclosed.

    Change

    Two policies and a deploy-side switch instead of one retrained walking policy; recovery got its own minimal contract (45 dims, full-range action, later the beta-anchored profile) and its own acceptance battery.

    Outcome

    The split held for the whole line: on 08-14 deploy_policy gained a second (PolicyIO, ONNX) pair behind --recovery-policy, each loaded under its own manifest contract, and the runbook runs stand_v1b or omni_c4_ff800 as the locomotion side with recovery_v3_1p1c. The literature scan of 08-10 found that every verified get-up implementation deploys one end-to-end policy (or softly gated experts) and stages only on the training side - so the runtime state machine here is the walk/recovery switch, not a staged get-up.

    Mechanism

    A separate policy keeps each reward table single-purpose and lets a proven walking lineage stay byte-frozen; the cost moves to the handoff, where every piece of state one policy leaves behind (history, clock, last action, command) must be reset for the other.

    Applies when

    • adding fall recovery or get-up to a robot that already walks
    • choosing between one unified policy and a switched pair of policies
    • designing the observation/action contract of a secondary skill
    “先做 recovery policy + omni policy 两个策略,部署侧状态机切换;不把 recovery 硬塞进现有 omni PPO。 … 任务定义:**任意跌倒姿态 → 自己站起来 → 稳定站立**。真正的难点不只是"起身", … omni walk**(§6 部署状态机是本 spec 的一等公民,不是附录)”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §0 目标口径与架构判决(用户 2026-08-09 定)
  • A reward on a quantity the actor cannot observe teaches "produce less of it", never "correct it" - closed-loop correction needs an outer loopreward-observability-limit
    Mechanism understoodomniobservation-designobservation-honestyreward-shapingcontract-freeze

    Before adding a reward, check the actor can observe (or infer) the quantity: unobservable-error rewards buy only average suppression - route correction tasks to an outer loop whose commands stay in distribution, and do not break a frozen contract to add an observation a deploy-side loop can supply.

    Symptom

    Heading kept drifting despite world-frame yaw rewards, and a reviewer proposed heading-error rewards - raising the question of what yaw shaping can even teach this actor.

    Context

    The adopted architectural verdict: the actor's 45-dim base observation cannot see accumulated heading at all - projected_gravity is invariant to rotation about the gravity axis, and omega_z is a rate, not an angle. World-frame yaw-rate rewards are therefore privileged shaping that can only teach "少产生旋转" (generate less rotation), never "偏了以后拉回原线" (pull back to the line after drifting) - the policy cannot represent the error it would need to correct. The S1 gate (<=5 deg / 10 s) demands exactly the former, so the stack is right for its gate; active heading correction is assigned to the deployment outer loop (--heading P-loop converting heading error into in-distribution wz commands) plus small-wz training - and the 215-dim contract is explicitly NOT extended with a heading observation ("契约不加 heading 观测,冻结不动"). The reviewer's companion bias hypothesis was adjudicated with data: drift is bimodal - a basin mechanism decides whether you leave (seeds vary +/-16-46 deg vs -385 to -391 deg), and once out, rotation direction is constant (weight chirality; candidate root: the phase clock always swings left first).

    Change

    Yaw shaping kept as rate-tracking (three-layer stack); heading correction owned by the deploy outer loop; contract frozen; the "which behaviors need an outer loop" question settled by observability analysis rather than reward tuning.

    Outcome

    Stopped a contract change and a futile reward direction; drift work split correctly into rate-suppression (trainable) and error correction (outer loop), consistent with the earlier measured 10x drift reduction from the deploy-side loop.

    Mechanism

    A policy can only condition on its observation sigma-algebra; rewards on functions outside it shift the marginal action distribution (open-loop average effects) but cannot create feedback on the unobserved variable. Whether to add an observation, an outer loop, or accept average-shaping is decided by the task's gate: suppression gates need shaping, correction gates need the variable in some loop's view.

    Applies when

    • adding rewards on accumulated/世界-frame quantities (heading, position)
    • deciding between a new observation, an outer loop, and shaping
    • a drift symptom persists across reward-weight changes
    “actor 的 45 维基座观测不到累计航向(projected_gravity 对绕重力轴旋转不变,ωz 是速率不是角度)——世界系 yaw 奖励是特权塑形,只能教「少产生旋转」,不能教「偏了以后拉回原线」。… 主动纠偏闭环 = S3 把小 wz 进分布 + deploy --heading 外环 … 215 契约不加 heading 观测,冻结不动。”
    train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 3. 评审④判决(2026-08-06,S1.3 开训前)
  • Isaac splits Coulomb friction into static and dynamic columns - wiring only static means zero loss during motion, silently discarding the identified valuesim-api-friction-columns
    Mechanism understoodinfraplant-calibrationplant-calibrationactuator-modelingdomain-randomization

    When installing identified actuator parameters, map each measured quantity to the simulator's exact API column for the operative regime (dynamic for moving loss, viscous for damping), verify per joint after landing, and audit how randomization intervals fall on each column's nominal.

    Symptom

    The hardware-identified Coulomb friction (tau_c) was about to be installed into the trainer through the friction= field alone - which in Isaac 5 populates only STATIC friction, so during motion the joints would lose no torque at all: "只给 static 则运动中不损耗, 辨识的 τ_c 走路时等于没接" (the identified tau_c would effectively not be connected while walking).

    Context

    The v12 integration wired all three columns deliberately: armature= and friction= from the 2026-08-04 hardware identification, PLUS dynamic_friction= (Isaac 5 splits Coulomb into static/dynamic; the moving-loss column is dynamic) and viscous_friction= (= the measured joint damping 0.02, aligned to MJCF's damping). Each value was re-checked per joint after landing. A DR interaction was audited and booked rather than hidden: randomize_joint_parameters jitters ALL friction columns with ONE interval - the [-0.05, +0.10] band was calibrated against the Coulomb nominal, and landing on the viscous nominal 0.02 it becomes [0, 0.12], "偏宽但保守" (wide but conservative), accepted with the note that pre-viscous behavior was already [0, 0.10] on a base of 0.

    Change

    Measured actuator parameters installed across all applicable API columns (armature, static, dynamic, viscous), with the DR side effect on shared randomization intervals audited and recorded.

    Outcome

    The first generation where the identified plant actually acts during motion in the trainer; the silent-column failure mode documented before it cost a training run.

    Mechanism

    Physics engines decompose "friction" differently (single coefficient vs static/dynamic/viscous columns); a measured parameter is only installed when it reaches the column the solver reads in the regime that matters (motion, not stiction). Randomizers that share one interval across columns rescale the band by each column's nominal - a hidden unit change.

    Applies when

    • installing identified friction/armature into any trainer
    • porting plant parameters between simulators or engine versions
    • joint losses in sim do not match bench measurements during motion
    “并额外传 dynamic_friction=(Isaac 5 把库仑拆 static/dynamic 两列,只给 static 则运动中不损耗,辨识的 τ_c 走路时等于没接)与 viscous_friction=(= joint_damping 0.02,对齐 MJCF damping)。… randomize_joint_parameters 用同一个 friction 区间抖三列, [-0.05,+0.10] 是按库仑标称标的,落到粘滞标称 0.02 上成了 [0,0.12]”
    train/WALK_V12_SPEC.md § 7. 核查单 (Isaac 接 V.ACTUATORS 新字段)
  • A sim veto needs real confirmation too - the worst sim cell was scheduled as the most informative hardware runsim-veto-needs-real-confirmation
    Mechanism understoodomnireal-acceptancereal-acceptancesim2simattributionprocess

    Never let sim alone both condemn a purpose-built configuration and escape audit: spend one cheap, safeguarded hardware run on the condemned cell, pre-registering what agreement and disagreement would each imply about the proxy.

    Symptom

    The fric-2400@kd1.0 combination was sim's worst cell across the board (survival 17/20 - the only miss, mu0.4 1/20, push 103/160, zero-cmd 2/20), yet it was the only product specifically trained for the kd1.0 deployment gain - discarding it on sim evidence alone would leave the sim's own validity untested exactly where it mattered.

    Context

    The team had been burned in the other direction before ("Isaac 指标三次 零预警" - training-side metrics gave zero warning three times), so the symmetric rule was written: sim's rejection also needs hardware confirmation ("sim 判被支配 ≠ 真机被支配 … sim 的否决也要真机确认"). The run was pre-registered with a dual reading: real matches sim -> the S2f ladder closes and the fork root is settled; real clearly better than sim -> the MuJoCo proxy has a systematic bias in the kd1.0/low-margin region, "那比选型本身重要得多" - and every S2f sim acceptance would need re-scoring.

    Change

    The condemned configuration was kept on the hardware roster (last, spotted, minimal exposure) explicitly as a proxy-validation probe, not as a deployment candidate.

    Outcome

    Session design captured either result as progress: selection confirmed, or a proxy bias discovered that would re-price the whole ladder's verdicts.

    Mechanism

    Every sim verdict is a joint statement about the policy AND the proxy; cells where a policy was purpose-trained for the exact condition sim condemns are where proxy error is most likely and most costly. Testing the veto converts a selection decision into a calibration measurement of the evaluator itself.

    Applies when

    • sim rejects the configuration that targets the actual deployment condition
    • the eval proxy's calibration has never been checked in that regime
    • deciding which hardware runs are worth their risk
    “但它也是唯一为 kd1.0 部署档专门训的产物 —— sim 判被支配 ≠ 真机被支配, 「Isaac 指标三次零预警」的教训反过来同样成立: sim 的否决也要真机确认。… 若真机明显好于 sim → MuJoCo 代理在 kd1.0/低裕度区有系统性偏差, 那比选型本身重要得多。”
    train/REAL_RUN_S2.md § 上机名单 note / 2. sim 侧预注册预期 ⑤
  • The smoke watcher panicked at the wrong operating point and its score goes blind when gates saturate - treat it as a survival sentinel, not a judgesmoke-watcher-operating-point
    Replicatedomnisim-evalmeasurementprocessgate-battery

    Configure every automated evaluator at the lineage's declared deployment operating point, give it graded metrics that cannot saturate, and until then scope its authority to catastrophe-detection - never let a mis-configured watcher stop or rank a rung on its own.

    Symptom

    Two watcher misfires in one ladder: (1) during the friction rung the watcher (evaluating at kd 1.0) reported panic-level 1/3 survival from iter 3300 - falsified by the official kd 1.2 scan, because the lineage's design operating point was kd 1.2 and the watcher lacked the --kd-scale passthrough; (2) during the PD rung the watcher's early-stop score froze at iter 1050 despite ongoing drift improvements, because with all eight gates passing (constant 0/3 failures) the score has no gradient left - "八门全过恒 0/3 时 score 对漂移改善盲, s1f 课文三现".

    Context

    Both are the same category: the in-training smoke loop is an instrument with its own configuration (operating point, score design), and its verdicts are only as aligned as that configuration. The booked doctrine: "冒烟只当存活哨兵" - until the watcher evaluates at the deployment operating point with graded metrics, its role is detecting catastrophes, not ranking checkpoints; ranking belongs to the full battery at the design operating point (and the watcher's scoring was separately patched to weight survival 3x so recoveries during hard phases are not early-stopped away).

    Change

    Watcher debt booked (--kd-scale passthrough); score saturation acknowledged with graded columns planned; selection authority kept with 20-seed batteries at the declared operating point.

    Outcome

    A false panic did not abort a rung that was actually passing at its design point; a frozen score did not hide real drift gains; the instrument's authority was scoped to what its configuration can actually see.

    Mechanism

    An evaluator is itself configured (gain profile, delay, metrics); evaluating a policy away from its design operating point measures a counterfactual robot, and bounded scores saturate once binary gates pass, losing all sensitivity. Instruments need the same operating-point discipline as deployments and graded outputs to retain gradient.

    Applies when

    • an automated smoke loop contradicts the official battery
    • early-stop scores freeze while graded metrics still improve
    • lineages with non-default deployment gain/delay profiles
    “watcher (kd1.0 口径) 3300 起 1/3 恐慌被 kd1.2 正式扫描证伪为考纲外假象 —— 工作点评测口径教训: watch_ckpt 缺 --kd-scale 透传 (待补), 冒烟只当存活哨兵。… watcher score 饱和误停 @1050(八门全过恒 0/3 时 score 对漂移改善盲, s1f 课文三现)”
    train/README.md § omni_s2e_fric (watcher 恐慌被证伪) / omni_s2e_pd (500 臂)
  • Fix the task first, harden the plant second - DR budget spent on a dying task is wastedtask-shaping-before-plant-hardening
    Mechanism understoodomniprocessdomain-randomizationprocesscurriculum

    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)
  • A torque-tail penalty was paid for by bracing the legs against each other - the second simulator's leg-contact count caught it, and the first explanation ("the trainer can't see self-collision") was retracted from the run's own configtorque-penalty-bought-by-leg-bracing
    Observed oncerecoverysim2sim-gatesim2simreward-shapingattribution

    When a penalty lowers a demand metric, look for what the policy traded to get there - keep self-contact frames and foot spacing as standing sim2sim readouts - and check any "the trainer cannot see X" explanation against the run's resolved config before it enters the record.

    Symptom

    After R3.1's torque_headroom term collapsed the demand tail, MuJoCo success fell 100 -> 98% and leg-leg contact frames at mu 1.0 rose 750 -> 2,190 (worst rollout 177 -> 450). The one failure (prone seed 2) had the legs crossed, one foot on the other leg, trapped at 0.067 m - visible on video.

    Context

    Across the ten prone seeds, foot spacing and leg-leg contact frames were monotonically anti-correlated, and the failure was the extreme of the series. Pulling the legs toward the midline shortens the hip_roll lever arm and lowers torque demand. At the time the spec explained it as Isaac training without self-collisions ("a free lunch in a simulator without self-collision").

    Change

    Leg-leg contact frames and foot spacing were tracked in every MuJoCo gate; R3.2's candidates were "train with self-collision on" or "a minimum leg spacing term" - not stacked.

    Outcome

    The next rung's joint-velocity penalty incidentally erased the dependency (2,190 -> 86 frames). On 08-10 the runs' logged env.yaml showed enabled_self_collisions true in both r3_1 and v2_2 (inherited from walk v10): the tangle was physically learned bracing, visible to both simulators, and the Isaac/MuJoCo contact-count gap was mesh and contact fidelity. The "self-collision debt" narrative was withdrawn for the whole line.

    Mechanism

    A penalty on demand rewards any configuration that lowers demand; legs pressed together act as a mutual support that fails when contact geometry shifts slightly.

    Conflicts

    §24 attributes the dependency to self-collisions being disabled in training; §36 retracts that from the runs' env.yaml ("§24's mechanism explanation was wrong") and keeps the older sections unedited as history.

    Applies when

    • a torque, impact or energy penalty improves its metric and cross-sim success drops
    • legs or links approach each other after a regularization change
    • an explanation relies on a simulator setting nobody checked in the run config
    “prone 十个 seed 逐条看,脚距与腿-腿接触帧数单调反相关, 而唯一失败的那条正是最极端的一条 … 机制上说得通:把腿收到身体中线附近能缩短 `hip_roll` 力臂、降低力矩需求”
    git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §24 代价:MuJoCo 成功率 100% → 98%,病因是两腿卡住