Training Coach
Doctrine
A report may cite any of these as doctrine-N.
doctrine-1Contract freeze and fingerprint disciplineThe policy I/O contract (observation layout, scales, history semantics, action pipeline) is frozen and fingerprinted; every exported policy is stamped and verified; contract changes ship as new versioned profiles that leave old artifacts bit-identical, and old policies run forever under their era's pinned profile.
Case. The 215-dim omni contract was frozen with a three-machine digest; the one contract-level extension (lateral feed-forward) went in as a new `omni_ff` profile with the old profile provably untouched, and the contract checker caught two real wiring bugs before any training (`contract-freeze-and-checker`). A silently changed gait-clock default would have fed old policies a 25% slower clock - closed by pinned legacy profiles (`legacy-profile-pinning`). A stale derived USD forked plant mass 2.2% until an automated source-vs-derived instrument gated it (`derived-asset-staleness-check`). A gain profile is part of the closed loop a policy was trained in and belongs in its stamp; the recovery line's anchored authority was left out of its manifest and recorded as the gap not to repeat (`gain-profile-belongs-in-the-stamp`), and a second policy behind a deploy-side switch made the handoff state itself a contract (`recovery-two-policies-and-a-state-machine`, `walk-recovery-fsm-handoff`).
Coach application. On any proposal touching obs/action semantics, defaults, or derived assets: demand the version/profile plan, the fingerprint update, and the checker extension in the same change; flag any old artifact that would run under new defaults.
doctrine-2Attribution by resolved training params - never eval-override knobsCapability differences between lineages are explained only by digging each lineage's *resolved* training configuration and eliminating columns; evaluation-side override knobs (kd-scale, power-scale, cycle-time) act on the plant for *every* policy and may serve as deployment mitigations but never as explanations.
Case. Low-friction robustness across 8 lineages x 3840 cells was traced to kd DR *bandwidth* - every lineage had ground friction pinned to (1.0,1.0), so "trained friction" could not be the axis; the parameter axis and the plant axis were explicitly separated after the first attribution conflated them (`kd-bandwidth-mu-law-attribution`). "Weak turning" on hardware was a power-scale plant effect, not a training gap (`deploy-knob-attribution-before-retraining`); slowing the deploy clock was out-of-distribution, not a feature (`cycle-time-override-is-ood`). The ground truth for what a run trained under is the logged per-run config, not the source tree (`resolved-config-is-source-of-truth`).
Coach application. Whenever asked "why is lineage A better", require the resolved-param table first; kill zero-variance columns; refuse explanations phrased in eval-knob terms; when a knob helps, label it deployment mitigation.
doctrine-3PASS gates become constraints; FAIL gates become objectivesOnce a skill passes its gate, that gate converts into a standing regression constraint (budget <= 2/20 against the parent baseline) for all later training; gates currently failing are the only legitimate objectives of the next rung.
Case. The C ladder ran one frozen 13-cell x 20-seed matrix at every rung with promotion = "new skill PASS and old skills within regression budget"; C1 was stopped and re-rooted precisely because it trained away the root's backward PASS (`fixed-acceptance-matrix-per-rung`, `preregistered-stop-criteria-per-rung`). The C4 product shipped only at 260/260 cells with zero regression.
Coach application. Keep the ledger: every PASS adds a constraint row; propose rungs only against FAIL rows; treat any constraint violation as stop-and-attribute, never "the next rung might win it back".
doctrine-4One variable per ladder rung - counted against what the checkpoint sawA rung changes one variable, where "one" is counted against the checkpoint's actual training state, not against the current config's diff; batching is allowed only when each change owns a disjoint symptom space with a pre-registered ablation order.
Case. Two rungs failed identically because resuming s1e-500 under the evolved config silently added four plant variables the checkpoint had never seen ("单变量纪律不只看「我改了什么」,还要看「checkpoint 见过什么」" - `resume-state-dr-audit`). v8 legally batched four orthogonal fixes with a written ablation order (`orthogonal-batch-with-ablation-order`); v9 spent one run completing a 2x2 factorial so either outcome convicted a factor (`fill-the-missing-factorial-cell`); v10b's three-way ablation wrongfully convicted the clock and had to be retried fairly.
Coach application. Before any resume: diff cfg against the checkpoint's logged training state. Before any batch: require the symptom-ownership map and ablation order in writing.
doctrine-5Pre-register risks, readings, and stop criteria before the ladderBefore a ladder or risky rung, write down the known risks, the interpretation of every plausible outcome, and hit-any-one stop criteria - frozen before training, tightened when priors say results should come fast.
Case. The C ladder opened with three numbered risks including the exact falsification condition for its own root choice; A/B arms carried "预注册读法(事后不改)" tables; a level expected to fail was run anyway for its pre-registered diagnostic value (`preregister-risks-and-fork-readings`). Stop criteria caught C4-redo rungs at +200 instead of full caps (`preregistered-stop-criteria-per-rung`); hardware sessions pre-registered per-config expected signatures and the disagreement rule "不改结论改账" (`preregistered-real-expectations`, `feasibility-accounts-lock-design-point`).
Coach application. Refuse to open a rung without the written risk/reading/ stop block; after results, read conclusions off the pre-registered table and flag any post-hoc reinterpretation.
doctrine-6Plant parameters are measured, never inventedEvery plant number carries measurement provenance: armature = N^2 x rotor inertia from no-load tests, friction split by rig and by API column, torque limits shaped by per-joint gait peaks, latency traced through the real pipeline, masses weighed - and DR bands are additive around the measured nominal, sized to the measured dispersion.
Case. Guessed friction was 2.5x low and guessed damping 5x high (`friction-measured-not-guessed`); armature had been 0 with a 9:1 gearbox (81x reflected inertia, `armature-n2-rotor-inertia`); a uniform torque derating was "the wrong shape" vs measured peaks (`torque-limit-shape-by-measured-peaks`); the delay implementation itself was a wrong plant for a whole lineage (`latency-lerp-reverse-extrapolation`); the run design point was locked by three accounts including the tau_limit/kd speed ceiling (`feasibility-accounts-lock-design-point`); identified friction had to land in the right simulator API columns to act at all (`sim-api-friction-columns`). The recovery and one-leg lines opened with the same kind of accounts before any reward existed - a connected static path and the torque along it for an armless get-up, and the gains single support needs to be holdable at all (`get-up-feasibility-accounts-before-training`, `single-support-gain-authority-probe`).
Coach application. For any plant value in a config review, ask "measured how?"; reject absolute ranges with no nominal; check API column mapping and derived-asset regeneration whenever measured values land.
doctrine-7Sim2sim gate before sim2real - under deployment conditionsEvery checkpoint passes a second, independently built simulator before hardware, and both the gate and the smoke loop run under the measured deployment conditions (real pipeline delay, honest contact parameters, the deployment gain/power profile).
Case. The standing order "先sim2sim 再sim2real" (`sim2sim-gate-before-sim2real`); acceptance flipped to match hardware only under measured condim/torsional friction (`eval-plant-honesty-contact-params`); gates moved permanently to `--delay 2` after the kicking incident (`pipeline-latency-is-plant-not-dr`); and the harness itself must be audited - a frame-convention bug in the cross-sim evaluator invalidated a whole line of verdicts (`body-frame-velocity-api-audit`). The recovery line's second simulator caught a torque penalty paid for by bracing the legs together (`torque-penalty-bought-by-leg-bracing`), and a 1.8x torque disagreement between the two plants stayed binding because its one surviving explanation was never tested (`torque-disagreement-between-simulators-unresolved`).
Coach application. Block any hardware request lacking a second-sim PASS at deployment conditions; when sim2sim and training-side metrics disagree, treat the evaluator as a suspect too.
doctrine-8Observation honesty - the actor's inputs are a hardware contractThe actor observes only signals the real robot produces with realistic noise; privileged truths go to the critic; history windows are estimators and must train under plant variation; rewards on quantities the actor cannot observe buy only average suppression, never closed-loop correction.
Case. Ground-truth velocity/forces went critic-only (`observation-honesty-critic-only`); frame_hist under zero DR memorized the trainer's plant fingerprint - 0/20 transfer (`history-obs-needs-plant-variation`); world-frame yaw rewards could not teach pull-back because heading is unobservable to the actor - correction was routed to the deploy outer loop instead of breaking the contract (`reward-observability-limit`, `deploy-heading-loop-and-align-training`).
Coach application. Audit every actor-obs element for hardware existence; require minimal plant jitter whenever history/recurrence exists; for each reward, ask "can the actor see this error?" and route correction tasks to outer loops.
doctrine-9Reward economics are audited in realized currencyReward design decisions are made on realized per-step magnitudes under the actual policy and command distribution: price the do-nothing optimum before adding a mode, compare achieved values to the computed ignore-floor, calibrate thresholds between measured healthy and sick distributions, and ship every new penalty with a withdrawal clause.
Case. feet_air_time at weight 2.0 realized 0.038 vs tracking 1.2 - drag was rational (`realized-contribution-audit`); ignoring a vy command cost 28-180x less than ignoring vx until a gated tracking term was added (`reward-cost-of-ignoring-audit`, `gate-new-reward-terms-by-command`); achieved-vs-floor separated "never learned" from "priced out" (`ignore-floor-diagnosis`); the foot-distance wall was placed between measured healthy (0.6% tax) and sick (55%) policies (`calibrate-threshold-between-healthy-and-sick`); the landing penalty carried a pre-registered stand-down condition and actually stood down (`calibration-threshold-with-withdrawal-clause`); two clearance terms were inert until zero-points and gate occupancy were checked (`inert-reward-term-audit`). A get-up policy sat because three gated terms paid the seated pose 84% of the return and the one term that could tell sitting from standing was an exp kernel reading 4.6e-5 at the real error (`seated-basin-dead-exp-kernel`); a torque-tail term was weighted by its measured steady value beside a peer term after the estimate proved 12x off (`tail-torque-needs-hinge-on-computed-demand`).
Coach application. Never discuss weights in the abstract: demand the realized-contribution table, the ignore-floor number, and the healthy-pay calibration before any reward edit is approved.
doctrine-10The zero-cost option must be the desired behaviorFor every penalty, name what the zero-cost option is; penalize failure events (slip, saturation excess, contact in flight windows), never the motion or joints that healthy behavior uses; make degenerate strategies fatal via termination where penalties cannot price them out.
Case. Joint-usage penalties for drift taxed a 1.4%-of-momentum channel 2.7/step and collapsed training; the slip penalty costs a non-slipping gait exactly zero (`penalize-the-slip-not-the-joint`). A frozen-at-clamp joint pays zero action-rate forever - only a pre-clip saturation penalty flips the cheat economics (`saturation-cheating-zero-rate-cost`). Ungated phase shaping made standing 42x more expensive than stepping and cooked the hip motors (`moving-gate-42x-stand-tax`); crouch-shuffling lived until a height termination deleted it (`termination-closes-degenerate-basin`). A gated penalty is an exit: the policy parked just outside an uprightness gate, then just under a height gate, to stop paying a stance tax, and only a positive band plus an always-on guard closed both (`penalty-gate-is-an-escape-hatch`); a soft-limit penalty that charged the standing pose itself bought a 4.1 deg lean (`soft-limit-penalty-charges-nominal-pose`); an unpriced foot attitude was spent on edge-standing (`unpriced-foot-attitude-is-a-free-variable`); and the one-leg line listed its cheapest cheats before training and still met one through a zero-gradient band (`enumerate-cheapest-cheats-before-training`, `binary-band-reward-fake-touchdown`).
Coach application. Run the "零代价的选项是什么" audit on every proposed term; convert motion taxes into event-conditional penalties; check the termination set against each known degenerate strategy.
doctrine-11Measurement discipline: independent referees, signs, distributionsA disputed measurement is adjudicated only by an independent algorithm from raw state; directional ability requires sign-antisymmetry under command reversal; bimodal metrics are reported as mode shares (never medians, never 3 seeds); ratios are not comparable when totals change; reward values compare only within one command distribution; single chaotic events never cross machines.
Case. The triple reversal - a good metric was "refuted" by a sibling metric that shared the disease (`independent-referee-for-metric-disputes`, `body-frame-velocity-api-audit`); same-signed +/- responses were bias, not turning (`same-sign-response-is-yaw-bias`); the swing median sat in a bimodal gap (`median-hides-bimodal-distribution`); "v6 is jitterier" died on absolute energies (`ratio-metrics-need-absolute-check`); yaw gain measured 15x wrong in an oscillating frame (`heading-integral-not-body-rate`); a 44% improvement evaporated under same-distribution comparison (`same-distribution-reward-comparison`); drift direction was a limit cycle (`multiseed-sign-test-for-drift`); a cross-machine push cliff was chaos (`single-impulse-recovery-is-chaotic`).
Coach application. Before accepting any surprising number: ask for the independent recomputation, the sign pair, the distribution shape, and the comparison conditions. Retract in writing when a metric falls.
doctrine-12The deployment pipeline is plantIrreducible pipeline properties - action latency, rate limits, power/torque scaling, teleop command mappings - are part of the nominal plant, modeled from day one and reproduced in every gate; deploy-side scalings are crutches that flag unmodeled plant, and they cannot be algebraically folded into training constants.
Case. Right-leg kicking was over-trained-delay x loop gain; power 0.8 was a gain-reduction crutch that retired when the delay was modeled (`pipeline-latency-is-plant-not-dr`); power derating damages non-forward axes first (`power-scale-hurts-nonforward-axes`); training at 0.4 scale as the "twin" of deploying 0.5 x 0.8 collapsed 0/20 (`deploy-scaling-not-training-equivalent`); one shared teleop speed sent an out-of-band lateral command and the robot clipped its own foot (`teleop-command-band-per-axis`); the latency DR range had not even covered the measured pipeline (`latency-dr-covers-measured-pipeline`). A rate limiter added at deployment only clipped a policy that kept commanding (`deploy-rate-limiter-windup`); moved into training and anchored on the last command it became an integrator in the balance loop (`slew-anchor-is-an-integrator`); anchored on the measured angle it bounded torque and kept the bandwidth (`beta-anchored-action-target`). The walking lines' safe setting, power-scale 0.8, cut the ends of the recovery policy's full-range travel and left its spikes alone; a gain inside the trained band did the job (`power-derating-cuts-full-range-contract`).
Coach application. Demand the measured pipeline latency/limits in the plant model and in gate conditions; treat every deploy-side derating as a question ("what is this compensating?"); block per-axis command sources that exceed training bands.
doctrine-13DR budget is finite; its distribution is the measured supportRobustness is a conserved budget: disturbance training on an already-hardened lineage borrows from existing margins; DR ranges span the measured deployment support - no fictitious tails (they buy degenerate gaits), no single constants (they allow thin-margin specialization); harden the plant only after the task distribution is final.
Case. The same push dose helped a narrow lineage and damaged a balanced one - budget conservation (`push-dr-conditional-budget-conservation`); wide latency tails bought drag-glide, constant values shipped 60% thinner tilt margins - the answer is a narrow band on the measured support (`dr-tail-plant-continuation`, `constant-value-dr-overfits-margin`); task-first ordering because hardening a soon-to-change task wastes budget (`task-shaping-before-plant-hardening`); COM randomization used deliberately as a behavior-shaping tool, and rolled back on symptom per its own contract (`com-randomization-forces-leg-spread`, `com-dr-rollback-on-symptom`). DR that is switched on can still be thin: the run policy fell in the frontal plane its gain-and-latency randomization never touched (`thin-dr-judged-by-channel-coverage`), and a friction priority settled under one action contract had to be re-measured under the next (`friction-priority-re-measured-after-plant-change`).
Coach application. Before any DR rung: check the untrained policy against the spec, the lineage's current DR load, and the measured real-world range; after it: audit retained margins, not just the new tolerance.
doctrine-14Gates measure what hardware feels: posture, margins, stripped assistsAcceptance batteries carry posture-class rows (tilt max median, per-joint L/R asymmetry, temperature) beside task rows, graded margin columns beside binary gates, chirality scored per side, at least one condition that removes the environment's free stabilization, and validated predictive scalars promoted into the gate.
Case. Three same-shaped judging errors - survival, displacement, wz-difference - all missed what the operator felt; posture metrics had the predictive power (`task-metrics-vs-posture-metrics`, `stand-gate-posture-not-survival`); binary survival saturated and hid a 60% margin gap (`constant-value-dr-overfits-margin`); v5 passed everything on the ground and failed suspended (`suspension-probe-removes-free-stabilizer`); the hip_roll (l+r) scalar predicted real drift direction and ordering and entered the battery (`hip-roll-sum-predicts-lateral-drift`); averages hide chirality (`chirality-scored-separately`); gait-quality gates are judged at speeds that demand a gait (`low-speed-commands-reward-dragging`). The recovery line added the rest of the kit: where failed episodes end, not only where they started (`end-state-confusion-matrix`); a frozen acceptance distribution with a pinned seed (`frozen-acceptance-distribution-and-pinned-seed`); video of the metric rollout itself (`video-as-acceptance-record`); and the admission that a 10 s episode cannot see a stance that fails after a minute (`episode-length-bounds-what-a-gate-sees`). The one-leg line removed a foot-spacing wall that no gate measured, and the feet met on hardware (`removed-wall-returns-on-hardware`).
Coach application. Review every battery for posture rows, margin columns, per-side scoring, and an assist-stripped condition; when operator feel and gates disagree, suspect the metric class first.
doctrine-15Fork and root selection: recoverability, maturity, frozen rewardsChoose fork roots by which candidate's deficits the coming training can pay back (precision is recoverable; lost plasticity, symmetry, and margins are not); prefer mature checkpoints as roots even when younger ones score better as products; never fine-tune through a reward change - continuation is legal only with the reward frozen and plant/DR widening one rung at a time.
Case. s1e-500 beat higher-precision candidates because its exclusive strengths were unrecoverable (`fork-root-recoverable-shortfall`); the b300 arm proved maturity is capital against adaptation shock (`root-maturity-vs-product-quality`); the B-arm scatter/half-recover/collapse signature falsified reward-change fine-tuning and drew the legal boundary for S2 continuation (`fine-tune-reward-change-falsified`).
Coach application. For root debates, build the exclusive-strengths table and ask "which side can be trained back?"; require dual-arm evidence for maturity claims; classify any proposed continuation as reward-frozen or not before approving.
doctrine-16Curricula: verified engagement, lineage counters, disease-phase gatingAutomatic curricula must prove they engage (a saturated ratchet is constant DR wearing a curriculum's name); every ramp counts lineage-cumulative progress, not per-process steps; penalties aimed at late-stage pathologies ramp in after exploration noise decays; difficulty rises on measured per-stratum success, never on schedule.
Case. The s1f ratchet capped at iter 248 and never engaged (`auto-curriculum-engagement-check`); the saturation ramp re-fired at +600 after every resume and no shipped product ever saw the penalty (`curriculum-counter-lineage-steps`); the same penalty worked once gated to the disease phase and became an untouchable mechanism (`gate-penalties-to-the-disease-phase`); record-high aggregate reward hid a fully-failing delay stratum (`aggregate-metrics-mask-subgroup-failure`); bucket share is not a gradient lever (`bucket-share-is-not-a-gradient-lever`). An assist curriculum keyed to a pooled success share was withdrawn on the strength of the categories that already worked (`curriculum-criterion-conditioned-on-lagging-category`); a pace set by per-step income moved only when that income was time-gated (`per-step-income-drives-speed-time-gate`), and the same gate had to be retired in a lineage without the disease (`time-gate-vs-wide-stance-retire-the-fix`).
Coach application. Ask every curriculum three questions: does it engage (show the internal state)? what does it count (process or lineage)? when is it present (against the pathology's phase)? Check where shipped checkpoints sit relative to every ramp.
doctrine-17Probe before training: feasibility first, hypotheses in tablesAfter two failed training attempts at a skill, stop training: demonstrate the behavior open-loop, enumerate hypotheses in a written table audited against actual configs cheapest-first, race one probe per side of the sim2real boundary for hardware-only pathologies, and use suspended tests to acquit or convict actuators before blaming authority.
Case. "在黑暗里试钥匙" - four sidewalk rungs failed until an open-loop probe separated exploration/waveform/authority in one experiment (`open-loop-probe-before-reward-tuning`); the foot-drag mystery fell to a seven-hypothesis config audit (`hypothesis-table-code-audit`); the period-doubling was resolved by racing a reward-side and a plant-side evidence line - and both paid off, one per sub-case (`period-doubling-evidence-race`); the suspended test acquitted the roll actuator in one measurement (`suspended-test-isolates-actuator-authority`). A read-only configuration probe told a wall from a slope in the recovery line's seated basin (`configuration-probe-wall-not-slope`), and the fix it pointed to - where the feet are - took prone from 0/159 to 158/159 (`prone-dead-end-is-foot-placement`); a knob that did not move its variable was recorded as no test of the idea (`dof-vel-penalty-is-not-a-pacing-knob`).
Coach application. When a skill resists training, prescribe the probe before any further reward edits; require verified target trajectories before imitation terms; keep a falsified-fixes list so closed roads stay closed (`amplitude-cut-falsified-yaw-fix`).
doctrine-18External advice is recomputed locally; values transfer as ratiosEvery external suggestion is classified adopt / already-have / modify / trap by recomputing its claim on the local reward table and probe data; numeric values transfer only as dimensionless ratios (to tracking weight, leg length, sqrt(gL), control rate); citations are verified to exist.
Case. "Start vy very small" would have destroyed sidewalk learning on this reward table - the gradient scales quadratically (`external-advice-audit-against-own-arithmetic`); swing-height targets and weights transferred correctly only through leg-length and tracking-ratio scaling (`transfer-ratios-not-absolutes`); the "6-step delay" was refused for lacking a control rate (`latency-dr-covers-measured-pipeline`); a borrowed reference's structure was FK-verified and its amplitude re-derived from the division of labor (`reference-structure-fk-amplitude-division`); retrieval agents fabricated verbatim arXiv quotes - only source-verifiable material was used; and one dismissed suggestion later proved right for a different mechanism, and was credited (`cycle-average-tracking-for-gait-quantities`). An advisor's staged state machine turned out to exist in none of the three papers it cited, and reading them changed the plan (`advisor-paraphrase-vs-paper`).
Coach application. Intercept every "paper X does Y" with the local recomputation; convert absolutes to ratios before comparison; verify quotes; revisit dismissed advice when new mechanisms appear.
doctrine-19Hardware sessions are scripted experiments, not tuning sessionsReal-robot time executes a pre-registered matrix: risk-ordered (baseline first, fragile last with a spotter), stage-gated (suspended smoke before ground), A/B sessions bracketed by a repeated reference run, operators briefed on measured zero-command and untrained-axis behavior, chirality-aware disturbance protocols, no field tuning - the only legal field changes are scripted, single-variable, and self-reversing.
Case. The S2 acceptance sheet (`risk-ordered-real-deployment`, `battery-bracketed-real-ab`, `know-zero-command-behavior`, `push-test-chirality-protocol`, `no-field-tuning-protocol`); the RAM-only torque experiment with automatic power-cycle rollback (`reversible-single-variable-field-experiments`); and the sim-veto rule - even sim's condemnations get one safeguarded hardware check when they judge the purpose-built configuration (`sim-veto-needs-real-confirmation`). The recovery line's first real run went ahead with its preconditions unmet and was stopped as dangerous (`first-real-get-up-violent-stage-one-policy`); after it: a staged hang, mat and floor protocol (`staged-hang-mat-floor-for-get-up`), a fixed power-cycle pre-flight and two-machine discipline (`power-cycle-preflight`, `two-machine-config-discipline`), a fall guard replaced rather than switched off (`fall-guard-becomes-a-state`), and logs that are part of the run (`hardware-log-is-the-attribution-input`).
Coach application. Turn every hardware request into a runbook with order, gates, brackets, briefing, and anomaly plays; refuse improvised parameter changes on the floor.
doctrine-20Close questions in writing; restart when the debt is structuralAudited questions get frozen verdicts with citable wording and an explicit reopening bar; hardware verdicts are dated by deployment-stack and calibration state and expire when those change; and when successive rungs shuffle symptoms without net progress, freeze the lineage as regression baselines, pay the structural debts, and retrain minimal - carrying laws and instruments, not weights.
Case. The chirality and COM questions were closed with frozen wording and "no reopening without new hard evidence" (`frozen-verdicts-semantic-boundaries`); v5/v6's condemnations expired with the deploy stack (`stale-verdicts-under-old-stack`); a 2-degree calibration fix moved the whole runnable envelope (`zero-offset-calibration-shifts-envelope`); plant upgrades are era boundaries with paired re-baselining (`plant-swap-invariants-vs-shifts`); and the 2026-08-05 reset froze v5-v11, fixed the latency FIFO / manifest / sampling / reward-table debts, and restarted - producing the lineage that reached hardware SOTA (`freeze-lineage-fix-structure-restart`, `minimal-reward-table-with-provenance`). The recovery line's real-robot verdicts ended up in three places that disagree, one of them an undated note in a command file (`write-hardware-verdicts-back`).
Coach application. Maintain the closed-questions ledger and quote it when symptoms recur; stamp verdicts with stack/calibration versions; when a team is three rungs into symptom-shuffling, raise the restart question explicitly with the freeze-fix-restart pattern.
doctrine-21Name the quantity in the space it lives inA goal, reward term or acceptance criterion about the feet, the base or the contact state is computed from the quantity itself - world poses, forces, per-category outcomes - never through a joint-angle, single-signal or pooled stand-in that assumes everything else sits at nominal; and every detector is validated on a behaviour known not to contain the event before it becomes a gate.
Case. The recovery line was caught three times: |ankle roll| as "flat feet" sold stance width and the real robot slid into the splits, a hip-roll criterion was confounded by 50 deg of yaw, and the joint table said 0.271 m where the feet were 0.159 m apart; task-space terms produced the first flat, wide stance (`joint-space-proxy-for-task-space-quantity`). Flight detection lied in both directions across two lines - foot height flagged 40% false flight on a walking gait, contact force alone flagged slip chatter as hops (`contact-detector-single-signal-lies`). A pooled height average described a robot that did not exist - six in ten standing, four in ten sitting (`zero-partial-credit-is-not-an-iteration-problem`) - and the walking line had learned the same lesson on yaw rate (`heading-integral-not-body-rate`).
Coach application. For every reward term and gate row, ask what physical quantity it stands for and whether it is measured directly; flag joint-space or single-signal stand-ins for task-space goals, ask for a detector validated on a negative control, and split pooled metrics by category before reading them.
doctrine-22Continuation needs a live gradient; a release is chosen by a scanContinue a converged policy only on a change that creates a live gradient, on a short budget, with every checkpoint scanned on the transfer axis; choose a release by running the full battery over a band of checkpoints and stop on signals, never by taking the last one; and when edits to the terminal phase cannot move a behaviour, roll back and retrain with the constraint present from the start, keeping the order in which the lineage acquired its mechanisms as explicit curriculum phases.
Case. A continuation with no new gradient drifted MuJoCo transfer from 100/98% to 80/28% while every Isaac gate stayed perfect, and a live-gradient continuation at the same depth kept it (`converged-continuation-is-poison`). One-leg checkpoints 100 iterations apart failed 1 and 38 of 40 cells, and late ones degraded (`checkpoint-choice-is-a-full-gate-scan`). Four in-lineage stance fixes failed because the stance was the end of the get-up path, and from scratch it grew right (`stance-decided-by-get-up-path`); fixes stacked on degraded states were rolled back by the user (`stop-stacking-roll-back-and-audit`); and the lineage's final recipe, trained from scratch in one run, sat at 0% because the order of its curriculum was part of the product (`curriculum-history-is-part-of-the-product`). The omni line's short adaptation budgets and mature roots are the same law seen from the other side (`continuation-budget-not-from-zero`, `root-maturity-vs-product-quality`).
Coach application. Before approving a continuation, ask for the new gradient, the budget and the transfer axis in the scan; before approving a release, ask for the scan; after three rungs without progress on the target, propose rolling back to the last good checkpoint and a from-scratch phase plan instead of a fourth patch.
Experience cards
83 cards matching “ratio-metrics-need-absolute-check”.
A ratio metric flipped the verdict - spectral share rose while absolute high-frequency energy fell 16%
ratio-metrics-need-absolute-checkNever compare share/percentage/centroid metrics across conditions whose totals differ; pair every ratio with its absolute numerator before issuing a verdict, and log retracted judgments so they are not re-derived.
Symptom
walk_v6 was provisionally judged "more jittery" than v5 because the joint-velocity spectral centroid rose 2.91 -> 3.62 Hz and the >4 Hz energy share rose 12.6% -> 17.8%.
Context
Absolute measures said the opposite: first differences of actions fell 1.54 -> 1.31, second differences 2.55 -> 2.19, and absolute high-frequency energy fell 16% (0.490 -> 0.413). The shares and centroid rose only because low-frequency content fell even more - the denominator shrank. The interim judgment was retracted in writing so it would not be reused.
Change
Metric discipline noted: "占比类指标在总量变化时不能直接比较" - share/ratio metrics are not comparable across conditions when the total changes; verdicts about smoothness must cite absolute energies or difference norms.
Outcome
v6 correctly classified as smoother, not jitterier; the retracted judgment logged under "被推翻的一个中间判断(记下来免得复用)".
Mechanism
A ratio confounds numerator and denominator; any intervention that removes low-frequency content raises every high-frequency share without adding a single joule of jitter. Only absolute quantities support cross-condition comparison when totals move.
Applies when
- comparing smoothness/jitter/spectral metrics across versions
- any percentage-based metric moves after an intervention
- writing an eval report that includes normalized quantities
“我一度说"v6 动作更抖" … 错了: 动作一阶差 1.54→1.31、二阶差 2.55→2.19 都在降 … 谱质心升高只是因为低频成分掉得更多, 绝对高频能量实际下降 16%(0.490→0.413)。占比类指标在总量变化时不能直接比较。”
train/WALK_DIAGNOSIS.md § 过程中被推翻的一个中间判断(记下来免得复用) Three same-shaped judging errors - task metrics (survival, tracking, displacement) cannot stand in for posture metrics
task-metrics-vs-posture-metricsKeep validated posture-class rows (tilt, per-joint L/R asymmetry, temperature) in every acceptance battery alongside task rows; when operator feel contradicts the gates, suspect the metric class before the operator - and never build a new skill on what is actually an asymmetry defect.
Symptom
The C2 product judged "full pass" on task metrics (A800: turn-gap 7 pp, vx+0.30 19/20) felt WORSE in the operator's hands than the half-pass 700: A800 tilted up to 12.90 deg (700: 6.64), drifted left while standing, showed larger per-joint asymmetries, and ran its hip_rolls 5 degC hotter.
Context
The re-judgment catalogued three same-type metric errors in one campaign: (1) stand judged by SURVIVAL - missed 0.5-1.4 m wandering; (2) stand ranked by DISPLACEMENT - ordering was opposite to real feel (tilt ordering matched); (3) chirality judged by wz-tracking GAP - measured turning symmetry while the robot's actual disease was postural left/right asymmetry, "两个不同的东西,且结论相反". Common pattern named: "我一直用「任务指标」当判据,而真机手感对应的是「姿态 指标」… 任务类指标不能替代它". The fix was already in the data: the per-joint left/right asymmetry table (printed identically by sim2sim and deploy) agreed with hardware in direction on every row - "判据可用、有预测力,我只是没把它写进 PASS 条件". Shipping decision followed the posture read: product reverted to 700 ("又一次「买到 精度、卖掉别的」"), and the C4 root moved to 700 as well, with the sharpest line of the episode: A800's left-drift "like sidewalking" is probably its frontal-plane asymmetry defect, not a capability - "在缺陷上建能力是危险的".
Change
Two posture quantities with demonstrated real-robot predictive power promoted into every PASS battery: tilt-max median and per-joint left/right asymmetry (both sim-computable, deploy-homologous); motor-temperature readout added to session close-out.
Outcome
Deployment flipped to the posture-better checkpoint; the hip_roll temperature table (43-48 degC vs 25-28) confirmed the earlier 90%-of-heat account; the run-line acceptance battery inherited the posture rows from birth ("任务类替代不了姿态类").
Mechanism
Task metrics measure goal attainment under the evaluator's episode definition; posture metrics measure the body state trajectory that operators, motors, and downstream skills actually experience. The two can rank candidates oppositely because task success tolerates postural pathology - so a battery without posture rows is blind to exactly what hardware feel reports first.
Applies when
- hardware feel disagrees with a green acceptance table
- choosing between checkpoints that split task vs posture metrics
- selecting the root for a skill that resembles an existing defect
“共同模式:我一直用「任务指标」(存活 / 跟踪率 / 位移)当判据,而真机手感对应的是「姿态指标」(倾角、逐关节左右不对称)。→ 验收判据里必须有姿态类指标,任务类指标不能替代它。… A800 的「左飘像 side walk」很可能 … 是它更大的额平面不对称的表现 —— 在缺陷上建能力是危险的。”
train/README.md § C2 选点改判 (2026-08-09): 手性判据第三次选错指标 When the eval proxy has a known systematic bias, gate on within-proxy differences, not absolutes
relative-metrics-survive-proxy-biasWhere the evaluator is known-biased, design gates as within-evaluator contrasts (left vs right, A vs B, pre vs post) that cancel common-mode error; reserve absolute thresholds for quantities whose proxy calibration has been checked.
Symptom
MuJoCo systematically overestimated yaw turn gain (1.58/2.45 where Isaac measured 1.04/1.02), and friction alignment recovered only part of the gap (mu 1.0 -> 0.6 pulled it to 1.43/2.27) - so any absolute turn-gain acceptance threshold in MuJoCo would be judging the proxy's bias, not the policy.
Context
The acceptance criterion was rewritten to use only the left/right difference of the turn gain (standard: <20%): both directions pass through the same biased proxy, so the bias largely cancels in the difference while the policy's chirality - the thing being gated - survives. The absolute-gain row was dropped: "转向只判左右差,不判绝对值". A parallel task was still opened to align MuJoCo contact parameters to Isaac's (mu, restitution), since drift proved highly friction-sensitive (straight-line drift -65 deg at mu 1.0 vs +1 deg at mu 0.4) - bias reduction and bias-robust metrics proceeded together.
Change
Gate metric changed from absolute turn gain to left-right gain difference; proxy-alignment work scheduled separately rather than blocking acceptance.
Outcome
Turn acceptance became meaningful across proxy versions (v5 70% -> v6 19% difference measured the real improvement) while the absolute bias question was pursued without holding the ladder hostage.
Mechanism
A systematic multiplicative or additive proxy bias applies to both arms of a mirrored measurement; differencing (or ratioing) mirrored conditions cancels the common-mode bias to first order, leaving the asymmetry signal. Metrics built this way remain valid while the proxy is imperfect - which it always is somewhere.
Applies when
- a sim proxy disagrees with the trainer or hardware in absolute terms
- writing acceptance thresholds for direction-paired skills
- proxy calibration work would otherwise block a ladder
“转向只判左右差,不判绝对值 —— MuJoCo 的偏航增益系统性高估(实测 1.58/2.45 vs Isaac 1.04/1.02),摩擦只能解释一部分(μ 1.0→0.6 仅拉到 1.43/2.27)。差值是相对量。”
train/WALK_V5_SPEC.md § 6. 验收 Borrow reward values from other robots as ratios (to tracking weight, to leg length) - never as absolute numbers
transfer-ratios-not-absolutesWhen importing any numeric from another robot's config or paper, identify its natural normalizer (tracking weight, leg length, sqrt(g*L), body mass) and transfer the dimensionless ratio; sanity-check against a same-scale robot when one exists.
Symptom
Published configs offered tempting absolute values (swing height target 0.06-0.08 m, weight -20) that would have been wrong for a robot with half the leg length and a different tracking weight.
Context
The cross-check normalized before transferring: G1's feet_swing_height weight -20 against tracking +1.0 is a 20x ratio, so with local tracking at 1.5 the equivalent is -30, not -20. G1's 0.06 m target on a ~0.70 m leg scales to ~28 mm on the local 0.325 m leg (Humanoid-Gym converts to ~23 mm), confirming the locally chosen 0.03 m and explicitly rejecting copying 0.05-0.08 absolutes. A same-class robot (Menlo's 16 kg) was used to sanity-check feet_air_time (+0.5 vs the local 2.0, flagged over-high). A nondimensional check of the same kind later validated the sidewalk speed target (v/sqrt(gL) = 0.081 vs hardware-verified 0.101 - 0.104 - inside the envelope, conservative).
Change
All borrowed values converted through ratios (weight/tracking-weight, height/leg-length, dimensionless speed) before entering the config.
Outcome
The scaled values worked (0.03 m target matched both the scaling law and measured 22-23 mm baseline); no cross-robot absolute was ever copied raw.
Mechanism
Reward economies are scale-relative (only ratios to the tracking term matter to the optimum) and kinematic quantities are morphology-relative (clearance scales with leg length, speed with sqrt(g*L)); absolutes encode the source robot's scale, ratios encode the design intent.
Applies when
- copying reward weights/targets from open-source configs or papers
- setting clearance heights, speed targets, or impact thresholds
- comparing your weights to published tables
“G1 的 feet_swing_height 是 tracking 的 20 倍(−20 vs +1.0)。我们 tracking 是 1.5,按同比例应为 −30 … G1 目标 0.06 m / 腿长 ~0.70 m,换算到我们 0.325 m 腿长约 28 mm;Humanoid-Gym 换算约 23 mm。故 target 取 0.03 m 是对的 … 不必抄 0.05~0.08 的绝对值。”
train/WALK_DIAGNOSIS.md § 修正 ②(权重放大) / 修正 ③(目标高度按腿长缩放) Audit which joints your imitation term constrains - a task that needs deviation is fighting the reference
imitation-term-scope-auditList which joints your imitation/deviation terms actually constrain and check the new skill's required motion against that list; for balance-coupled joints deliver references as feed-forward residuals, not absolute-position targets - and never assume "reference = 0" is neutral.
Symptom
Sidewalk would not learn despite a dedicated tracking reward; meanwhile the gait-shaping imitation term (joint_pos_ref) computed its error norm over ALL 12 joints while its reference covered only the 6 sagittal joints - roll/yaw reference was constantly 0.
Context
Two prior generations had shown the forward gait itself was taught by joint_pos_ref, not discovered by PPO (v6 halved the shaping and swing height collapsed 35 mm -> 4 mm). So the reference is load-bearing - but sidewalk requires hip_roll to deviate from nominal, and the all-joints norm punished exactly that deviation: "一边悬赏一边罚过程" (posting a bounty while punishing the process). A follow-up experiment (C4-redo3, free_roll=True releasing the 4 roll joints from the norm) raised the regularization headroom 6x -> 27x yet sidewalk stayed flat and released hip_roll wandered, killing other skills - net negative, withdrawn. A --roll-absolute probe showed the converse failure: pinning roll to a clock-driven absolute trajectory drove tilt 6.9 -> 13.7 deg. Conclusion recorded: absolute-position imitation cannot teach actions that must be superimposed on state feedback.
Change
The audit reframed the problem: neither punishing roll deviation nor freeing roll nor absolute roll tracking works; the reference for a balance-coupled joint must be delivered as feed-forward under the policy's residual control (see feedforward-for-phase-locked-skills).
Outcome
free_roll rung: joint_pos_ref term rose 0.887 -> 1.104 (release confirmed effective) but vy stayed flat; regularization hypothesis eliminated by experiment.
Mechanism
An imitation error norm defines a cage: joints inside it are pulled to the reference in absolute position, so any skill requiring systematic deviation is taxed per step; but joints carrying active balance cannot follow absolute references either, since their correct position depends on state. The scope and the delivery mechanism of the reference are therefore design decisions per joint, not defaults.
Applies when
- adding a skill that moves joints your reference sets to zero/nominal
- an imitation or deviation penalty coexists with a new tracking reward
- considering releasing joints from a shaping term mid-lineage
“前进步态也不是 PPO 自己发现的，是 joint_pos_ref 教出来的（v6 砍半塑形 → 抬脚 35 mm 塌到 4 mm…）。而 ref_joint_offset 原本只写 6 个矢状面关节，roll/yaw 参考恒 0 —— 侧走既没被教，roll 一偏离 nominal 反被 joint_pos_ref 扣分。一边悬赏一边罚过程。”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3e. 为什么首战 FAIL / 3i. 解锁笼子 After installing the measured plant, re-run all generations paired on old and new plant - identity metrics carry verdicts, physics metrics re-baseline
plant-swap-invariants-vs-shiftsTreat every plant upgrade as an era boundary: re-run the retained policy set paired (same seeds/flags) on both plants, carry forward only verdicts whose metrics proved plant-invariant, re-baseline the rest - and mine the systematic shifts as measurements of the old plant's biases.
Symptom
With the plant finally fully measured (weighed masses 9.792 kg, bench-identified armature, in-situ friction), no historical sim number was comparable to new runs - "历史 sim 数字跨纪元不可比" - and it was unknown which historical verdicts still held.
Context
The era-2c cross-test ran all seven walk generations on the complete plant under one harness (14/14 survived), then re-ran the same 14 configurations on the OLD plant retrieved from git, same flags and seeds, with a self-check (one historical record reproduced digit-for-digit). The split was clean. Policy-identity metrics moved essentially zero across the plant swap - dominant frequency (v7's period-doubling 1.20 -> 1.20), knee amplitude (9.9 -> 10.0), foot distance (+/-2 mm), saturation (100 -> 100, 0 -> 0) - so all seven cross-generation verdicts (freeze signature, saturation-line closure, knee-collapse location, slip-penalty accounting, N2 lineage, v6's balance, v11's triad) were re-confirmed on the honest plant. Plant-physics metrics shifted systematically with ordering preserved: slip down 10-25% (measured friction makes ground-twisting costlier), landing vertical velocity down 15-50% ("旧 plant 高估落地 凶度"第二次独立证实), landing force mixed (mass up 2.2% vs friction braking the swing - two effects fighting). Exactly ONE behavior-level change: v8's low-speed period-doubling vanished (1.30 -> 2.50, lift normalizing) - confirming it had been machine-dependent bifurcation-edge behavior that armature+friction push off the knife edge, while v7's period-doubling stood untouched: saturation-freeze-driven, a policy property, not a numerical accident.
Change
Era re-baselining protocol: after any plant upgrade, one paired same-seed sweep of all retained generations on old and new plant; verdicts keyed to identity metrics carry over, thresholds re-read against the new-plant table, and the differences themselves become plant-physics findings.
Outcome
Seven verdicts survived with evidence rather than assumption; two causes of the period-doubling family were separated with plant-side proof; and the sim's landing-violence overestimate was independently confirmed a second time.
Mechanism
A policy's structural properties (frequencies, amplitudes, frozen joints) are functions of its weights and survive plant changes; contact-mediated quantities are joint properties of policy and plant and shift when the plant becomes honest. Pairing seeds across plants isolates the plant's contribution exactly, so the sweep both validates history and measures what the old plant had been lying about.
Applies when
- installing measured masses/armature/friction into the sim
- historical thresholds are cited across a plant change
- a hardware-only behavior might be bifurcation-edge sensitivity
“策略身份指标逐位不动:主频(v7 1.20→1.20)、膝摆 … 这些是策略属性,plant 换代携带无损,历史定论因此全部成立。… 唯一行为级变化:v8@0.15 的倍周期消失(主频 1.30→2.50…)——印证当时"分岔边缘、机器相关"的判定:armature+摩擦把 v8 推离刀锋;v7 的倍周期纹丝不动(1.20→1.20),它是饱和冻结驱动的深层属性,不是数值巧合。”
train/README.md § 纪元 2c 全代同机横测 (2026-08-04): 完全体 plant 上历史结论全部存活 A quadratic clearance reward stalled for 3500 iters near target - switch to an indicator on accumulated height
indicator-reward-avoids-gradient-decayWhen a shaped term plateaus near its target, check the gradient profile: replace vanishing-gradient forms with threshold/indicator forms for the final approach, and prefer delta-accumulation over absolute positions to immunize against frame offsets.
Symptom
The quadratic-error clearance term froze at -0.002 from iteration 2000 to 5500 - thousands of iterations with no progress on foot lift.
Context
Diagnosis: a quadratic penalty's gradient vanishes as the error approaches target, so exactly where the last millimeters must be earned the incentive fades to nothing. The replacement (Humanoid-Gym form): accumulate the swing-phase height climb per foot, reward a BINARY indicator |accumulated - target| < 0.01 masked to the planned swing window, reset on contact, weight +1.6 as a positive reward. Two properties: the indicator's incentive is constant until the threshold is crossed (no decay zone), and accumulating height DELTAS makes any constant sole-frame offset cancel automatically - which structurally sidesteps the earlier 0.0585 m zero-point bug ("顺带绕开我先前那个'忘了减 0.0585 导致惩罚恒为 0'的坑").
Change
Clearance reformulated from quadratic penalty on instantaneous height to indicator on per-swing accumulated climb (target 0.03 m by leg-length scaling, weight +1.6).
Outcome
Part of the v5 package under which lift finally moved (v5 29 mm, v6 34 mm vs the stalled 18-24 mm era); the offset-cancellation property removed one whole bug class from the term.
Mechanism
Policy-gradient learning follows the reward's local slope; quadratic shaping concentrates slope far from target and starves it near target, so convergence stalls precisely at the finish line. An indicator pays a constant bounty until the goal is met; formulating on deltas rather than absolutes removes sensitivity to reference- frame constants.
Applies when
- a reward term's value freezes short of target for thousands of iters
- designing clearance/height/precision terms
- reward code depends on absolute link positions
“现行二次型在接近 target 时梯度趋零 —— 这正是 clearance 从 iter 2000 到 5500 卡在 −0.002 不动的原因。… 二值指示在跨过阈值前梯度恒定,没有衰减区 … 累积 delta 让 SOLE_OFFSET 自动抵消”
train/WALK_V5_SPEC.md § 3. clearance 改峰值型(去掉二次型的梯度衰减) The median of a bimodal metric lands in the empty gap - check the distribution, and never judge swing on 3 seeds
median-hides-bimodal-distributionBefore quoting a median or mean, look at the distribution; report suspected-bimodal metrics as mode share plus per-mode ranges, use small-seed smoke runs only to screen trends, and size the seed count for decisions by the share resolution you need (here: 20).
Symptom
Years of "high swing variance" and undecidable 3-seed swing readings turned out to be one fact: the metric was bimodal all along - "历代 swing 高方差与 3-seed 不可判由此定性:一直在测双稳态系统" - and every median reported from it (e.g. 12.1 mm) described a value no seed ever produced.
Context
Concrete instances: s2e_pd-1400's 20 seeds split 2.6-4.9 mm vs 19.3-24.0 mm with zero seeds between; s1e-500 read 3.9 mm on seeds 0-2 but 23.1 mm median over 20 seeds; a 3-seed reading of 19.3 was logged as "double-peak optimism, lesson recurrence #4". The selection re-audit codified the sampling rule: "3-seed 的 swing 读数不可判点, 只能筛带,选点必须 20-seed" - 3 seeds may screen a band, only 20 seeds may pick a point.
Change
Swing (and any suspected multi-modal metric) reported as mode shares plus per-mode ranges instead of a bare median; 3-seed smoke numbers demoted to band-screening; all shipping/selection decisions moved to 20-seed batteries.
Outcome
The "swing debt" bookkeeping was reinterpreted as basin probability (see swing-bistability-damping-switch), and checkpoint selection stopped being whipsawed by which basin the first three seeds happened to fall into.
Mechanism
Central-tendency statistics presuppose unimodality; on a bimodal distribution the median tracks the mode SHARE, not any achievable behavior, and small samples alias the share entirely. Mode-aware reporting (share + per-mode stats) is the only faithful summary, and the needed sample size is set by the share resolution required.
Applies when
- a quality metric shows chronic high variance across seeds
- 3-seed smoke readings contradict 20-seed batteries
- reporting swing height, clearance, or any basin-prone metric
“中位数落在空档里,「swing 债 −11mm」实为「50% 概率掉进拖地吸引子」。历代 swing 高方差与 3-seed 不可判由此定性:一直在测双稳态系统。… swing 跨 seed 双峰 (500 在 seed0~2 只读 3.9mm, 20-seed 中位 23.1) —— 3-seed 的 swing 读数不可判点, 只能筛带, 选点必须 20-seed。”
train/README.md § swing 双稳态定性 / s1e 选点重审 Record-high training reward hid a fully-failing DR subgroup - aggregate metrics average over draws, gates must test per condition
aggregate-metrics-mask-subgroup-failureNever gate on metrics aggregated across DR draws: evaluate at fixed representative conditions (especially the deployment-critical stratum), and if a difficulty axis matters, ramp it on measured per-stratum success rather than sampling the full range from iteration zero.
Symptom
omni_s1e trained under constant-wide latency DR (0, 0.06 s) posted the lineage's highest-ever Isaac reward (129) - while the --delay 2 smoke evaluation showed 3/3 falls from iter 1500 onward, persisting to early stop; the usable checkpoint window shrank to iters 500-1000.
Context
Diagnosis written plainly: "聚合奖励掩盖重延迟尾部子群体失败" - the aggregated reward averages over latency draws, so the majority of light-delay environments can mask the total failure of the heavy-delay tail. The remedy for the training side was a survival-gated ratchet curriculum (survival_gated_latency): the sampling cap starts at 0.02 s and rises +0.01 only when a 4096-reset window's survival (time_out share) reaches >=90%, capped at 0.06, ratchet up-only - "增益与延迟耐受一起长,不升到策略撑不住的 地方" (gain and delay tolerance grow together; never raise past what the policy can hold). The detection side was already in place from the noise-crutch episode: the per-condition smoke curve, not the training reward, is the health readout.
Change
Latency exposure made curriculum-gated on measured subgroup survival instead of uniform-from-zero; per-condition (--delay 2) smoke evaluation kept as the authoritative curve; watcher scoring adjusted (survival weighted 3x) so recovery during hard phases is not early-stopped away.
Outcome
The failure mode was caught by the smoke curve within one generation; the follow-up redesign (deterministic staged latency) superseded the ratchet, but the aggregate-masking lesson held through both.
Mechanism
Expected-return training weights each DR draw by probability, so a subgroup can contribute bounded loss while being catastrophically failed; any scalar averaged over the randomization cannot distinguish "uniformly decent" from "great on easy draws, dead on hard ones". Only conditioning the evaluation on the stratum reveals the split, and curricula should raise difficulty on measured stratum success, not on schedule.
Applies when
- training reward hits records while a fixed-condition eval degrades
- wide DR on an axis where deployment sits at one known value
- designing curricula for difficulty axes (delay, push, terrain)
“常量 latency DR (0,0.06) 从零训被证伪——Isaac reward 129 历代最高,但 --delay 2 冒烟 iter1500 起 3/3 全摔持续到早停(聚合奖励掩盖重延迟尾部子群体失败,可用窗口只剩 500/1000)。… 采样上限 0.02 起步 … ≥90% 才 +0.01s,0.06 封顶,棘轮只升不降。”
train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 3. S1.5(s1e 训练塌方复盘) Guessed joint friction was 2.5x low and damping 5x high - measure, then DR around nominal
friction-measured-not-guessedMeasure frictionloss and damping separately (they need different rigs), put the measured value at DR center, and express DR as an additive band around that nominal - a DR range around a guessed value can exclude the real robot entirely.
Symptom
Old MJCF friction values were invented, not measured; when finally measured, every guessed value was wrong by a large factor in some direction.
Context
Joint friction split into Coulomb (frictionloss, tau_c) and viscous (damping b). Measured with the robot hung from a crane (吊机测) while armature was measured no-load; the two measurements are deliberately separated. Old MJCF: frictionloss 0.05, damping 0.1, DR joint_friction range [0, 0.1] "凭空拍的" (made up out of thin air).
Change
Replace guessed values with measured ones - frictionloss: RS06 0.15 / RS02 0.12 / RS00 0.13 N*m (old 0.05, i.e. 2.5x too low); damping: 0.02 N*m*s/rad on all three motor types (old 0.1, i.e. 5x too high). DR reshaped from an absolute made-up range [0, 0.1] to an additive band around measured nominal: joint_friction_add [-0.05, +0.10].
Outcome
"摩擦定稿(与 armature 一起, plant 参数第一次全部来自实测)" - friction frozen as part of the first fully-measured plant; DR now brackets a measured truth instead of spanning an invented interval.
Mechanism
Coulomb friction and viscous damping have opposite behavioral signatures (constant-torque threshold vs velocity-proportional drag); guessing both wrong in opposite directions gives a plant that is simultaneously too easy to start moving and too hard to move fast. DR centered on a wrong nominal makes the policy robust to a family of plants that does not contain the real one.
Applies when
- plant friction/damping values have no measurement provenance
- DR ranges are absolute intervals rather than bands around a nominal
- policy is over- or under-damped on hardware relative to sim
“测关节摩擦。吊机测，而armature应该空机测试。… frictionloss τ_c (N·m) │ 0.15 │ 0.12 │ 0.13 │ 0.05(低 2.5×) … damping b (N·m·s/rad) │ 0.02 │ 0.02 │ 0.02 │ 0.1(高 5×) … DR │ joint_friction_add: [−0.05, +0.10] 叠标称 │ 旧 [0, 0.1] 凭空拍的”
Experience.md § 摩擦定稿表 (lines 12-25) 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 judge
smoke-watcher-operating-pointConfigure 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) The walking lines' safety setting, power-scale 0.8, broke the recovery policy's full-range contract - it cut the ends of the joint travel (4/50 could not get up) and left the torque spikes untouched; a kp x 0.9 gain profile inside the trained kp band did the job
power-derating-cuts-full-range-contractA deployment derating knob means something only relative to the action contract: before reusing a line's "safe setting" on a new skill, check what it does to that skill's reachable range and to the term that makes the spikes, prefer a gain change inside the band the policy was randomized over, verify it in simulation, and re-decide when the contract changes.
Symptom
After the violent first real get-up (2026-08-09), the recovery policy needed a gentler setting for its next hardware test, and the walking and omni lines' standard derating - deploying at power-scale 0.8 - was the obvious candidate.
Context
The V0 recovery contract maps actions to absolute targets over the full joint range: a = +/-1 lands exactly on the URDF limits, and standing puts the knee at the clip. Candidates were compared on R3.1 in MuJoCo (5 categories x 10 seeds) on 2026-08-10 before any hardware time was spent.
Change
A new gain profile, rl_kp090 (kp x 0.9, kd unchanged), recorded in robot.yaml as the recovery hardware-test setting, with power-scale 0.8 explicitly banned for recovery.
Outcome
kp x 0.9: 48/50 got up; median torque demand on hip_pitch/knee fell from 120-125% to 100-104% of the deployment limit; leg-leg contact frames 2,152 -> 1,095; the change sits inside the +/-10% kp randomization the policy trained with. power-scale 0.8: 4/50 could not get up, because under the full-range contract it removes the ends of the travel (the deep squat's tucked legs, the straight standing knee), and the torque spikes (kp x error) did not fall at all. When the line moved to the beta-anchored contract, rl_kp090 was declared a V0-era choice that does not fit (beta is calibrated at kp 30) and deployment returned to rl_default; the deploy switch applies power scaling to the walking side only.
Mechanism
A power scale multiplies the action, which under an absolute full-range mapping shrinks the reachable workspace instead of softening the actuator; the spikes come from the proportional term on large errors, which only a gain change reduces - and a gain change inside the trained randomization band stays in distribution.
Conflicts
The undated operator runbook still carries an R3.1 "B comparison" command at power-scale 0.8 beside the rl_default baseline; the sources do not say whether it was written before the ban or was ever run.
Applies when
- reusing a power, torque or action scale from one skill on another
- a policy whose actions map to absolute targets over the full joint range
- choosing a gentler setting for a first or second hardware trial
“kp×0.9 / kd 不动 —— recovery_r3_1 成功 48/50, τ 需求中位 hip_pitch/knee 120~125% -> 100~104% 部署限, 腿-腿接触 2152 -> 1095 帧; ±10% 在训练 kp DR 带内. ⚠️ power-scale 0.8 对 recovery **禁用**: 全 ROM 契约下 0.8 砍的是行程 端点 (深蹲收腿/站直够不到), 实测 4/50 起不来, 且尖峰 (kp·err) 一点不降 —— 它是 walk/omni 的安全档, 不是 recovery 的.”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:robot.yaml § gain_profiles 注释: recovery 真机测试安全档 (2026-08-10) / rl_kp090 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 hardware
beta-anchored-action-targetFor 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 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-policyDo 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) A reward on a quantity the actor cannot observe teaches "produce less of it", never "correct it" - closed-loop correction needs an outer loop
reward-observability-limitBefore 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) 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 zeros
power-cycle-preflightStart 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 A stand gate judged by survival passes a robot that wanders a meter - judge posture instead
stand-gate-posture-not-survivalFor every gate, ask what behavior the metric is a proxy for and validate its ordering against real observations; replace metrics whose ordering disagrees with reality, and demote them explicitly rather than silently.
Symptom
Real robot "standing" drifted 0.5-1.4 m across the floor while the sim stand gate scored a clean 20/20 - because the gate's metric was episode survival, which wandering does not violate.
Context
C2's stand condition was originally written as "survival regression <=2/20". A real-robot counter-example on 2026-08-08 forced the re-judgment: wandering robots survive. Cross-checking candidate sim metrics against real-robot feel showed max-tilt median ordering agreed with hands-on ranking, while displacement ordering was actually OPPOSITE to real impressions - so displacement was demoted to a reference quantity, not a gate.
Change
Stand PASS criterion rewritten from survival to posture: "stand tilt max median <= root baseline +1.5 deg"; displacement kept only as reference. Applied to all subsequent rungs (C4 and redo levels inherit it).
Outcome
Later rungs gated stand on tilt (e.g. C4 product: 7.7 deg vs parent 7.1 deg, +0.6 deg PASS); the wandering failure mode became visible to the battery instead of hidden by survival.
Mechanism
A gate metric is a proxy for an intended behavior; survival is a proxy for "did not fall", not "stood still". Metric choice must be validated against ground truth (real-robot feel/measurement), and a proxy whose ordering disagrees with reality on real data is worse than no metric - it steers selection backwards.
Applies when
- writing PASS conditions for stand/idle/hold behaviors
- a gate passes policies that visibly misbehave on hardware
- choosing between candidate metrics for an acceptance battery
“stand 必须用位姿判，不能用存活判（2026-08-08 真机反证改判）：站着乱走 0.5~1.4 m 时存活照样 20/20 —— C2 的 stand 条件原写「存活退化 ≤2/20」，选错了指标。改为: stand 倾角 max 中位 ≤ 根基线 +1.5°（倾角与真机手感排序一致；位移排序与真机相反，降为参考量）”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3b. PASS 条件 ⚠️ stand 必须用位姿判 Knee swing collapsed because it directly trades against the slip penalty - price the conflict explicitly and clamp what reward cannot hold
knee-swing-vs-slip-pricingWhen a behavior collapses as another metric improves, look for the term pair trading them and set their price ratio deliberately (with escalation and reverse tripwires pre-registered); where the policy actively spends action budget to undo your target, stop paying more reward and clamp the target space structurally.
Symptom
Knee peak-to-peak swing collapsed across generations - v5 33 deg, v10 26-30, v10b 7-8, v11 6.5-8.6 - and rolling the clock back did not recover it, acquitting the clock; the collapse tracked the gated slip penalty instead: "屈膝与不打滑在当前奖励里直接对抗" - v10b's excellent 93 deg slip was purchased with knee amplitude.
Context
Reward-side flexion fixes had failed three times: raising reference amplitude backfired twice (v9/v11), and v11's deep-squat default was actively fought by the policy - it spent 0.68 of action budget pulling the squat straight ("被策略花 0.68 动作拉直反杀"). v12's design accepted the conflict as real and attacked on two tracks: (1) ECONOMICS - a direct knee_swing_amplitude reward (+0.3, target 0.55 rad, capped at 0.6/step = 55% of tracking), explicitly opposed to the slip penalty by design ("显式对立——这正是设计:v12 就是这场对抗的定价实验"), with an escalation ladder (K +0.3 -> +0.5, then slip -0.5 -> -0.3, one layer at a time) and a reverse tripwire (slip telemetry back at v10 levels -> slip weight to -0.8, accept ~20 deg knee compromise); (2) STRUCTURE - knee target bounds [0.2, 0.9] rad so full straightening is physically impossible (straightest 11.5 deg) and the 0.68 fighting budget is released. A bonus falsifiable prediction was attached: phase-lock strength tracks amplitude (v9_probe 48 deg locked 2.5 Hz; v11 low-amplitude 1.36 Hz unlocked), so if K works, hardware phase-lock should return - one change, two verdicts.
Change
knee_swing_amplitude reward + knee target clamp + pre-registered escalation/reverse levers; the failed reward-side-only approach retired.
Outcome
The lineage was frozen before v12 trained (strategic reset), but the diagnosis stands as the walk line's clearest example of two reward terms trading a behavior between them, with the pricing experiment and structural clamp fully designed and calibrated.
Mechanism
When two terms price opposite aspects of one motion (swing amplitude creates yaw momentum that becomes slip), the optimizer settles wherever the price ratio puts it - patching one side moves the equilibrium, not the conflict. Explicit pricing makes the trade a designed quantity; structural clamps remove the regions where the policy spends budget fighting the designer.
Conflicts
The pricing experiment (K vs slip) was designed and calibrated but never trained - the 2026-08-05 reset suspended v12; the collapse attribution table and the 0.68-action counterattack are measured, the remedy's效果 is untested.
Applies when
- one gait quality degrades in lockstep with another's improvement
- the policy visibly fights a default pose or reference
- repeated reward-side fixes for the same behavior have failed
“膝摆塌在 v10→v10b,头号嫌疑是门控滑移罚(四代实测膝 p2p:v5 33° / v10 26~30° / v10b 7~8° / v11 6.5~8.6°;退时钟没救回 → 非时钟)——"屈膝"与"不打滑"在当前奖励里直接对抗 … 奖励侧修屈膝已三败 … v11 深蹲 default 被策略花 0.68 动作拉直反杀”
train/WALK_V12_SPEC.md § 0. 定位 / 2. K —— 膝摆经济(与滑移罚的对偶) The best checkpoint to SHIP is not the best checkpoint to CONTINUE FROM - maturity is capital against adaptation shock
root-maturity-vs-product-qualityDecide shipping points and fork roots separately: gates rank products, but a root candidate must prove itself by surviving a continuation under the next rung's shift (dual-arm if in doubt) - and prefer the more-trained point as root when product metrics conflict with maturity.
Symptom
A band re-audit found s1e-300 beat the incumbent root s1e-500 on nearly every quality gate (stepping 19/20 vs 13/20 with historically-best 26.9 mm swing, speed gate 14/20 vs 2/20, heading 26 vs 54 deg/20 s) - suggesting the root had been mis-picked and the younger point should take over.
Context
The dual-arm control settled it the other way: continuing the S2 PD rung from s1e-500 adapted smoothly (3/3 smoke throughout), while the b300 control arm (same config, from s1e-300) fell into a survival valley under the PD shock (+100 iters: 1/3 -> 0/3), never climbed out within budget, and its 800-iter product scored 13/20 survival - eliminated. Verdict: "幼年点自身指标再好也扛不住新 DR 适应冲击, 成熟度是本钱,s1e-500 根被数据背书" - a young point's own metrics, however good, do not survive new-DR adaptation shock; maturity is capital. The audit still yielded value: the band scan (200-1000, per-100) mapped the lineage's arc (200 dragging -> 300 peak -> 400+ decay -> 900+ drift blowout), and 300 remains the better PRODUCT answer for shipping-as-is questions.
Change
Selection doctrine split into two questions with different answers: best-product point (quality gates at the point itself) vs best-root point (survives adaptation shocks; more training age = more capital), each decided by its own evidence - and root claims settled by a dual-arm continuation test, not by point metrics.
Outcome
s1e-500 kept the root role with data behind it; the S2e ladder built on it passed rung after rung, while the b300 line was closed at the cost of one control arm.
Mechanism
Early checkpoints sit near sharp optima with less accumulated robustness structure; their headline metrics reflect the narrow training distribution, not resilience to distribution shifts. A continuation rung is itself a distribution shift, so the root property being selected for is shock tolerance - observable only by actually continuing, never by static gates.
Applies when
- a younger checkpoint outscores the current root on quality gates
- choosing the base for a robustification or command ladder
- a continuation run stalls in an early survival valley
“b300 对照臂 … PD 冲击下存活谷(+100 起 1/3→0/3),预算尽未爬出,800 档 20-seed 存活 13/20 出局——幼年点自身指标再好也扛不住新 DR 适应冲击,成熟度是本钱,s1e-500 根被数据背书”
train/README.md § omni_s2e_pd (b300 对照臂) / s1e 选点重审 Narrowing the speed range to stop high-speed falls entrenched crouch-shuffling - judge gait quality at the speed that demands a gait
low-speed-commands-reward-draggingSet 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 mj_objectVelocity returns inertial-principal-axis frame - one API assumption poisoned eval and observations for a whole line
body-frame-velocity-api-auditVerify every frame-sensitive API against a hand-computed truth (rotate raw qvel yourself, or command a known world velocity and check where it lands) before trusting any evaluation or observation built on it - especially when a model's inertial frame is rotated from its body frame.
Symptom
Sidewalk vy read ~0 under every condition; separately, whole-policy performance was mysteriously mediocre in sim2sim while training-side numbers looked fine. Four training rungs were declared FAIL partly on these readings.
Context
base_link's URDF inertial frame is rotated 90 deg about x relative to the body frame (iquat = [0.7071, 0.7071, 0, 0]). mj_objectVelocity(flg_local=1) rotates into ximat - the inertial principal-axis frame - not the body frame, and returns center-of-mass point velocity, not body-origin velocity. Consequences measured: the "vy" column was actually vertical velocity vz (walking at cmd 0.25: old reading +0.0093 vs true -0.0424); the angular velocity fed to the policy in sim2sim was [wx, wz, -wy] - a different quantity than Isaac and the real IMU provide. RMS check over 8 s of walking: y/z axes swapped between v6[:3] and the qvel truth.
Change
Fixed sim2sim and both probes to compute ang_b = qvel[3:6] and lin_b = xmat.T @ qvel[0:3] (identical quantity to Isaac's root_ang_vel_b / root_lin_vel_b), with a standalone reproduction script (frame_bug_repro_0809.py).
Outcome
Re-scoring the "failed" C4 lineage under correct coordinates reversed the verdicts: c4r4 checkpoints showed vy 80-126% tracking (old reading: +/-2%) and vx+0.30 at 91-95% where the old metric said 0/5 - the bad frame both mis-measured vy and, via corrupted policy observations, systematically depressed all measured performance. Final product passed 260/260 cells.
Mechanism
A simulator API's frame convention is part of the observation contract; when the model's inertial frame is rotated relative to the body frame, frame-agnostic use of a "local" velocity silently permutes axes. Feeding a policy an axis-permuted angular velocity is an observation corruption that degrades behavior everywhere, not just on the axis being studied.
Applies when
- building or auditing a cross-simulator evaluation harness
- one measured axis reads near-zero under all conditions
- sim2sim scores are inexplicably worse than training-side metrics
- URDF/MJCF inertial frames are rotated relative to body frames
“base_link 的 iquat = [0.7071, 0.7071, 0, 0] … mj_objectVelocity 用的是这个 … 喂给策略的 base_ang_vel 是 [wx, wz, −wy] —— MuJoCo 侧观测与 Isaac / 真机 IMU 不是同一个量；vy_mean 报的是竖直速度 vz —— 前进 cmd 0.25 时旧读数 +0.0093，真值 −0.0424。”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3l. ⚠️ mj_objectVelocity 读的是惯性主轴系 / 3m. 一 bug 坐实 Every acceptance run records video of the very rollout that produced the numbers - the seated basin, edge-standing feet, tangled legs and the narrow stance were all seen on video before, or instead of, a metric catching them
video-as-acceptance-recordMake video a default output of every acceptance run, rendered from the same rollout the metrics come from (fixed views including the feet), and watch it - posture failures are visible before any gate row exists for them; never let video replace or override the numeric gate.
Symptom
Posture failures in the recovery line kept arriving as things the numbers had no row for: a kneeling W-sit, feet standing on their outer edges, crossed legs, a stance too narrow to hold on hardware.
Context
From 2026-08-09 (user decision) accept_recovery renders offscreen by default, following one env for the whole episode and archiving the clip. The MuJoCo gate's --video renders three views (side, front, feet) of the same rollout the metrics come from, with all plant modelling (delay, push); the older replay-based renderer produced an independent trajectory without delay and was not used for acceptance. Video never gates: if rendering breaks, --no-video keeps the numeric gate running.
Change
Video as a default acceptance artifact, named per policy, category and view, reviewed by the user.
Outcome
The R0.1 prone clip showed the same kneel-sit as R0; the R3.1 failure clip showed the crossed legs; the v2_5 feet view showed edge standing and led to V2.6; the v2_6 videos led the user to order a real-robot A/B between v2_5b and v2_6. Once, the recorder did not start (P1c final acceptance) and the visual material had to be produced separately.
Mechanism
Metrics exist only for failure modes someone anticipated; video shows the unanticipated ones, and rendering the metric rollout itself guarantees the picture and the numbers describe the same episode.
Applies when
- setting up an acceptance pipeline for posture-sensitive skills
- numbers pass but a human reviewer is uneasy
- sim videos are rendered by a separate replay tool
“**验收存视频(用户定 2026-08-09)**:`accept_recovery.py` 默认开 Isaac 离屏 渲染,跟拍一个 env 的整局并归档 … 跪坐这类盆地在数字表出现前肉眼先看见,视频是验收的 定性存档,数字门不受它影响”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §5 R0 验收门(预注册)验收存视频(用户定 2026-08-09) Continuing a converged policy on a change that carried no new gradient drifted its transfer from 100/98% to 80/28% over 3,000 iterations while every Isaac gate stayed perfect - scan every checkpoint on the second simulator's friction axis
converged-continuation-is-poisonBefore continuing a converged policy, check that the change creates a live gradient; if it does not, cap the budget at a few hundred iterations, and in every continuation scan each checkpoint on the second simulator's transfer axis (for example low friction) - trainer-side gates can stay perfect while transfer decays.
Symptom
V2.7-A (swap the flat_feet term for a compensated version, continue from v2_6c) finished with the line's best Isaac score (100%) and a MuJoCo transfer collapse: mu 1.0 98 -> 80%, mu 0.4 98 -> 28%; the stance it was meant to widen had not moved.
Context
The new term's calibration run showed a near-zero tax from the start: the policy already satisfied it, so the reward landscape offered nothing new. A checkpoint scan on MuJoCo mu {1.0, 0.4} located the damage: +100 iterations 100/98% (better than the baseline), then 86/54, 60/38, 80/28 - monotonic decay with training length, while entropy and action noise rose (7.77 -> 8.18, 0.588 -> 0.612): drift, not sharpening.
Change
Rule written in: with no new gradient, a continuation budget is short (at most a few hundred iterations) and the MuJoCo transfer axis enters every checkpoint scan. The next rung (V2.7b, a live stance-width gradient) was budgeted at 1,000 iterations with mu {1.0, 0.4} scans every 100 and a stop-on-signal rule.
Outcome
V2.7b kept transfer at the same depth (mu 1.0 98% / mu 0.4 92% at +1,000, where A had already rotted to 86/54) and at +3,000 (100/96%): a live gradient preserved transfer. V2.8 then broke that pattern (mu 0.4 2%): the gradient must also be compatible with the policy's existing form.
Mechanism
On a converged reward landscape PPO keeps updating without a signal to follow, and the random walk is pulled toward whatever the training plant rewards idiosyncratically - invisible in the trainer's own gates.
Conflicts
The drift mechanism is the spec's reading of one decay series plus one contrasting run; V2.8 is recorded as an exception to "live gradient keeps transfer".
Applies when
- fine-tuning a converged policy with a small reward change
- a continuation run's trainer-side metrics improve while real or cross-sim results worsen
- choosing which checkpoint of a continuation to ship
“**checkpoint 扫定死因**(μ1.0/μ0.4):**29500(+100 iter)= 100/98%** (优于基线!)→ 30400 = 86/54 → 31400 = 60/38 → 32398 = 80/28 —— **迁移随续训长度单调衰减**。 … **教训入库:收敛均衡上的长续训是毒药 —— 无新梯度时 续训预算须短(≲数百 iter),且 MuJoCo 迁移轴必须进 checkpoint 扫描。**”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §43 结果:V2.7-A 判 FAIL —— 换刀本身无罪,毒在续训预算 Every gate on a penalty is an exit - to stop paying a stance tax the policy parked 2 deg outside a 30 deg uprightness gate (lunging), and, from scratch, just under a height gate (crouching); a positive band and an always-on guard fixed both
penalty-gate-is-an-escape-hatchNever gate a penalty on a state the policy can leave by getting worse; use always-on guards for what must never happen and positive, gated bands for what you want, and count every gate on a penalty as one more escape route to check in the logs.
Symptom
V2.9 added stance_width_task = relu(0.34 m - foot spacing) x standing gates, weight -10. Three checkpoints scored 0% on acceptance: standing height reached, feet on the ground, angular rate low, but the torso leaned 32.5/32.3/31.9 deg in a fore-aft lunge. The training dashboard read "tax paid off, base_height at full value".
Context
The penalty was gated by uprightness (tilt < 30 deg) and standing height; its tax had no time gate (500 steps x -1.65) while the standing income sat behind a 3 s zero gate (~325 steps), so leaning just past 30 deg lost a little gated income and saved the whole tax. base_height has no upright gate, so the lunge still collected it. The first metric also measured full horizontal spacing, so a staggered lunge counted as "wide".
Change
Two laws written down: a penalty may only carry gates the policy cannot escape by getting worse (make it an always-on guard) or it becomes a positive band ("not earned" is not "escaped"); and width is measured laterally in the base yaw frame. From scratch (V3.1 P1) with the lateral metric but the same gates, the policy parked just under the height gate instead (base_height 1.176/1.5, h ~ 0.30 m against a 0.3264 gate), the beta curriculum never advanced in 1,700 iterations, and the run was stopped early. P1b flipped the penalty into a positive band +2.0 x clamp(lateral / 0.34) x standing gates; P1c added yaw_guard = -5 x relu(|hip_yaw| - 30 deg), always on, no gate, no exemption.
Outcome
P1b: lateral stance 0.364 m, all four categories 100%, MuJoCo mu 1.0/0.4 both 100%. P1c: all six acceptance criteria passed for the first time on the line (hip-yaw saturation 1.2%), the guard's tax converging to -0.016 (almost never touched).
Mechanism
A gated tax that is not paid is saved, so the policy moves to the cheapest state just outside the gate; a gated income that is not earned is simply lost, so a positive band has no exit. HoST's style penalties are ungated or binary - the same law seen from the other side.
Applies when
- adding a penalty multiplied by an uprightness, height, phase or contact gate
- a policy settles just beyond a gate threshold
- training metrics look paid-up while acceptance collapses
“**罚项的门 = 策略的逃生门**。带直立门的负项可以靠"变得更差"(倾出门外) 全时免税;HoST 的 style 罚全部无门控/二值恰是同一律的反面实证。修律: 负项只许挂"变差逃不掉"的门(上限护栏 always-on),或改正向 band (收不到 ≠ 逃掉)。”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §46 定案(血统内第四败 + 两条新律) A plateau in a training curve was a population mix, not a half-learned skill - 60% standing at 0.372 m and 40% sitting at 0.19 m - and a category at hard zero stayed at zero through 3,000 more iterations
zero-partial-credit-is-not-an-iteration-problemBefore buying iterations for a plateau, split the metric by category and check whether it is bimodal; a category at hard zero with no partial credit is missing a capability or a reachable state, and more iterations under an unchanged config will only polish the categories that already work.
Symptom
After R0.1 the training-side base_height sat near 0.29 m and the curve was still climbing at the iteration cap, which read as "train it longer".
Context
Candidate A (user decision) was a child-run from R0.1's last checkpoint with zero config change - the logged env.yaml files differ only in log_dir - for 3,000 more iterations (R0.2). The per-category acceptance split was already available: prone had scored 0/156 with no partial credit.
Change
Continue training unchanged, then read the result by category rather than by the pooled curve.
Outcome
supine 91.5 -> 96.4%, side 82.2 -> 87.9%, get-up 0.96 -> 0.84 s, pose error 0.91 -> 0.54 - all improvements to categories that already stood. Prone stayed 0/153; mid 55.9 -> 41.2% was within noise (n=34). Height by category was binary - standing groups 0.372/0.373 m, seated groups 0.187/0.194 m, nothing between - so the pooled 0.29 was 0.61 x 0.372 + 0.39 x 0.19 = 0.30 (measured 0.307): six in ten standing, four in ten sitting. The rendered prone episode was still kneel-sitting at t = 8 s.
Mechanism
The pooled mean of a binary outcome only moves when the mix moves; PPO kept polishing the subpopulation that already succeeded while the failing one produced no advantage signal to follow.
Conflicts
R0.2 recorded the missing capability as "prone lacks rolling over"; R0.3's end-state confusion matrix retracted that - prone had righted its torso in 159/159 episodes and was failing to stand from the W-sit. The lesson that iterations could not fix it holds; the named cause was wrong.
Applies when
- a training curve plateaus while acceptance shows one category at zero
- deciding between "train longer" and "change something"
- pooled training metrics are read as the typical episode
“**分类别 h 中位把"平台 = 人口混合"钉死了**:数值是**二值**的 —— 站立组 0.372/0.373,坐姿组 0.187/0.194,**中间没有过渡态**。 … **这也是本仓此后读该指标的通用告诫:全体混合的期望会把 双峰分布平均成一个不存在的中间值,必须分类别看。** … **结论:A 不能过门,原因确定为 prone 缺"翻身"这一技能,不是迭代不够。**”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §13 R0.2(recovery_r0_2,child-run 续训):A 走完了 —— 推不动 prone Late training leaned on sampling noise as a stability crutch - deterministic play collapsed while training metrics stayed green
noise-crutch-deterministic-collapseEvaluate the deterministic policy in an external harness on a fixed cadence during training (not just at the end), select checkpoints on that curve, and treat a collapsing noise_std with rising training reward as a warning that noise is load-bearing.
Symptom
omni_s1's final checkpoint (model_5999) fell at 4 s even in Isaac's OWN deterministic play, while checkpoints from iter 1700-4000 were fine - and no training metric flagged anything. Policy noise_std had collapsed to 0.045 by iter ~990 (final 0.033).
Context
Diagnosis: the policy had learned to use its exploration noise as a dither/stabilizer - "策略把采样噪声当稳定拐杆,训练指标看不见" (the training metrics cannot see it, because training always runs with noise on). Countermeasures: entropy_coef 0.005 -> 0.01 to slow the std collapse, and - the structural fix - an in-training smoke loop (watch_ckpt.py): every 500 iters, export ONNX directly, run 3-seed MuJoCo evaluation, log CSV/TensorBoard curves plus three-view videos. The doctrine line was written in bold: "训练指标全绿不再是发育健康的 证据,冒烟曲线才是" - green training metrics are no longer evidence of healthy development; the smoke curve is. The follow-up run s1b showed the drift metric follow a U-shape (73 -> 8.6 at iter 3500 -> 76), making checkpoint selection BY the smoke curve (early stop at 3500) the shipping mechanism, with terminal re-degradation booked as known and unresolved.
Change
entropy floor raised; watch_ckpt smoke loop instituted as standing infrastructure; checkpoint selection moved from "last iteration" to "best point on the deterministic smoke curve".
Outcome
s1b shipped from iter 3500 (the U-bottom) instead of a degraded terminus; every later lineage (s1c/s1e, the C ladder's --every 100 loops) inherited the watcher as the standard guardrail.
Mechanism
PPO evaluates and improves the stochastic policy; if noise itself stabilizes the gait (dither smoothing a marginal limit cycle), the deterministic mean policy is a different, worse controller that training never measures. External deterministic evaluation on an independent simulator is the only readout of what will actually be deployed.
Applies when
- final checkpoints underperform mid-training ones
- noise_std collapses early while training reward climbs
- deciding which checkpoint to export and ship
“训练后期确定性脆化——noise_std iter~990 收到 0.045(终 0.033),model_5999 连 Isaac 确定性 play 都 4 s 摔(1700~4000 正常):策略把采样噪声当稳定拐杖,训练指标看不见。对策:entropy_coef 0.005→0.01 + train/watch_ckpt.py 训练中冒烟曲线 … 训练指标全绿不再是发育健康的证据,冒烟曲线才是。”
train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 3. S1.1 修订记录 ② A hardware run without its log is an anecdote - the first real get-up's policy, gain profile and log were never recorded, two CSVs stayed "to be reported", and runbook commands wrote different policies' logs under one copied filename
hardware-log-is-the-attribution-inputMake the log part of the run: name it from the policy and conditions automatically (never by hand-copied filenames), record the policy digest and gain profile inside it, include what the open questions need (torque, joint positions and targets), and treat a session without a collected log as incomplete.
Symptom
The recovery line's oldest open question - whether Isaac or MuJoCo reads torque demand correctly - was waiting on real-robot logs that never arrived, and the verdicts that did arrive could not be tied to files.
Context
deploy_policy writes a CSV per run (--log); the runbook's own analysis snippet reads its joint-position, target and action columns (q_, tgt_, act_), and the recovery hanging checklist asks for torque and joint logs for the whole run, to be compared with simulation. The first real get-up (08-09): policy, gain profile and log "to be recorded later". The first real A/B (08-11): v2_5b's result and both policies' CSVs "to be reported". In the runbook's walking commands, three runs of two different c4 policies log to real_s1e_pw08_teleop_0808.csv, and s1e and s2e_fric runs log to real_c2_700_pw08_teleop_0808.csv - filenames copied from other commands.
Change
None recorded; the spec kept listing the open-loop comparison as waiting for real logs.
Outcome
No real-robot log appears in the recovery spec through §50, so the simulator disagreement stayed unresolved and hardware verdicts stayed unattached to data.
Mechanism
Attribution needs the run's identity (policy digest, profile, conditions) and its signals in one artifact; a filename copied from another command mislabels the file, and a log not collected at the session is rarely collected later.
Applies when
- planning a hardware session whose result should settle a sim question
- log filenames are typed or pasted by hand
- hardware feedback arrives as prose without files
“python tools/deploy_policy.py --policy train/policies/omni_c4_ff800_pj.onnx … --log train/real_logs/real_s1e_pw08_teleop_0808.csv … q,t,a=d[:,c("q_")],d[:,c("tgt_")],d[:,c("act_")]”
RL系统/FOLLOW THIS copy 2.md § Walk 遥控 / S2 / csv 分析片段 (operator runbook, undated) Three times a joint-angle stand-in for a foot-level quantity was gamed or lied - the absolute ankle roll sold stance width to buy flat feet, 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
joint-space-proxy-for-task-space-quantityExpress foot-level (task-space) goals and acceptance criteria in task space - link attitude and lateral spacing from world poses - never through joint angles that assume other joints are at zero, and measure the task-space value before trusting a joint-space estimate of it.
Symptom
The line's first real-robot get-up (v2_6, 2026-08-11) was "fairly stable", but after standing the feet were too close and the robot slid into the splits and fell several times; later reports added that it also got up through a split posture.
Context
(1) flat_feet penalized sum |q_ankle_roll|, but a flat foot is ankle roll compensating hip roll; the proxy taxed the compensated wide solution, and the untaxed combination was hips straight plus ankles at zero - flat and narrow. On hardware the lateral support shrank to hip width plus centimetres, lateral balance rested on 11 N*m ankle motors, and the feet slid apart. (2) The next rung's acceptance criterion "hip roll >= 20 deg" assumed zero hip yaw; at 50 deg of yaw the lateral contribution is x cos 50 ~ 0.64 - the same substitution again, inside a criterion. (3) A new task-space diagnostic reading the foot links' world poses measured v2_6c's stance at 0.159 m where the kinematic audit from joint angles had said 0.271 m (0.271 x cos 47 ~ 0.17).
Change
Rule written into the spec: task-space quantities are never expressed through joint-space proxies. V3.1's stance terms were all task-space: flat_feet_task from the foot links' world orientation, lateral foot spacing in metres, stand_pose stripped of both roll joints.
Outcome
From scratch with task-space terms (V3.1 P1c): lateral stance 0.355 m, foot residual tilt median 0 deg / P75 2.0 deg, all six criteria passing, mu 1.0-0.4 all 100%.
Mechanism
A joint proxy bundles the goal with everything else those joints do; the optimizer finds the combination the proxy does not tax, and a joint-based criterion silently assumes the other joints sit at their nominal.
Applies when
- rewarding flat feet, stance width, foot placement or end-effector pose
- an acceptance criterion is written in joint angles for a geometric goal
- joints with large yaw or coupled axes are involved
“**病根 = 关节空间代理**:`flat_feet` 罚 Σ|q_ankle_roll|(§41 取的简易口径)。 "脚掌平"的运动学正解是 **踝滚补偿髋滚**(q_ankle_roll ≈ −q_hip_roll) … 代理把"脚平"和"站距"绑死在一起卖了。”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §43 真机首试入账(2026-08-11)判读:flat_feet 的代理口径错误 Under continuous 3-axis uniform sampling, pure straight-line walking is a zero-measure event the policy never trained
zero-measure-commands-need-mode-samplingEnumerate the exact command points users will actually issue (straight, stop, in-place turn) and give each explicit probability mass via mode sampling with off-axes pinned to zero - never assume a continuous sampler covers its measure-zero subsets.
Symptom
"The robot drifts even in sim when told to walk straight" persisted across reward tunings - because with commands drawn as vx in [0.15,0.5] x vy ~ U(+/-0.2) x wz ~ U(+/-0.6), the event vy=0 AND wz=0 has probability zero: pure straight-line walking was never sampled even once.
Context
Restart evidence item #3: "纯直行是零测度点 … 'sim 里直行就漂'是分布的 必然,不是 reward 没调好" - the drift metric was legitimately drowned by commanded turning (v11's own comment self-documented this). The structural fix is discrete mode sampling: a custom ModeVelocityCommand that first draws a mode by share (stand/forward/back/turn/side/mixed), then draws values only on that mode's axes with all others pinned to exact zero - which is also what preserves single-variable discipline in the C ladder (native 3-axis uniform "采不出'离散模式桶' … 把 C1~C4 的单变量纪律直接毁掉"). The mixed mode later got an ellipsoid constraint rather than a cube for the same reason in reverse - corner combinations of a cube are unrepresentative extremes.
Change
Command generation moved from independent per-axis uniforms to mode-bucket sampling with pinned-zero off-axes (plus 20% rel_standing); acceptance likewise evaluates per mode.
Outcome
Straight-line behavior became a trained, testable mode instead of a measure-zero hope; the C ladder could add one mode per rung with provable isolation.
Mechanism
A policy optimizes expected reward under the command distribution; events of probability zero contribute nothing to the objective, so exact-zero-command behaviors (straight walk, stand, in-place turn) are only learned if the sampler gives them mass. Product-of-uniforms distributions concentrate mass on mixtures and give none to the pure behaviors users actually command.
Applies when
- a "simple" command (straight, stop) underperforms mixtures in sim
- designing command distributions for velocity-tracking tasks
- a ladder needs per-mode isolation for attribution
“纯直行是零测度点:最终 command 为 vx∈[0.15,0.5] × vy∈U(±0.2) × wz∈U(±0.6) 连续均匀,vy=0∧wz=0 从未被专门采样 —— "sim 里直行就漂"是分布的必然,不是 reward 没调好 … Isaac 原生 UniformVelocityCommand 是三轴各自 uniform,采不出"离散模式桶"”
train/OMNI_V0_SPEC.md § 0. 为什么从零 (3) / 三件前置 (1) The fallen-state reset was designed, not sampled from SO(3) - fixed category shares with jitter, a low drop that settles physically, equal left/right shares for mirror augmentation, and a numeric check before training
fallen-pose-reset-distributionBuild a fallen-start distribution from named, physically plausible categories with jitter and a settle phase, keep mirrored categories at equal probability, and check the realized shares and penetration numerically before spending a training run on it.
Symptom
A get-up policy can only learn from the fallen states its resets produce; uniformly random orientations produce ground-penetrating and limit-jammed states the robot can never be in.
Context
R0 reset_root_fallen: supine 30%, prone 30%, side_l 15%, side_r 15%, mid (random axis 50-125 deg) 10%, +/-15 deg jitter, full yaw, dropped from 0.28-0.40 m and left to settle under physics, joints uniform inside the soft limits with a 5% margin plus small random velocities. Random SO(3) was rejected (the advisor agreed). side_l and side_r must have equal probability because mirror augmentation turns a left fall into a right fall. The advisor had proposed supine and prone only for R0; the spec included side and mid because the feasibility accounts showed physical solutions for all of them, and wrote "narrow back to supine+prone" down as the first fallback. With no display on the training box the reset was checked numerically instead of by eye.
Change
Category mix as above; realized shares, settle height and penetration measured over 512 envs before the first run. A fallen-state bank (real falls, settled and stored) was pre-registered for R2.
Outcome
Realized shares 29.3/31.6/16.4/17.8% against the config, settle +0.262 m, final penetration 0/512 (a 0.10 m peak at the write instant, ankle links only, pushed out within 80 ms because the 0.28 m drop floor is shorter than a fully extended leg). R0's failure was a reward basin, not a reset artifact. The fallen-state bank stayed unbuilt through V3.1 (checklist item open); R0.3 later re-sliced the prone share into roll_l/roll_r bands, which is what forced the acceptance distribution to be frozen separately.
Mechanism
A category-structured, physically settled start distribution keeps training on states the robot can actually occupy, and equal mirrored shares keep mirror augmentation a pure doubling of data rather than a bias.
Applies when
- designing reset distributions for get-up, recovery or multi-contact skills
- mirror/symmetry augmentation is on and the task has chiral start states
- no viewport is available to inspect resets on the training machine
“角度 jitter ±15°、yaw 全域、0.28~0.40 m 低空放下由物理沉降,关节软限位内 均匀(留 5% 余量)+ 小随机速度。**不用 random SO(3)**(会采出穿地/极限卡死 等现实不可能状态,顾问同判) … side_l/side_r **概率必须相等**(镜像增强的样本同分布前提)”
git:Lucen-recovery@origin/recovery:train/RECOVERY_V0_SPEC.md § §3 R0 任务定义 / §9 核查单 Prove a new penalty actually fires - two ways a clearance term silently did nothing
inert-reward-term-auditBefore training with a new reward term, log its realized per-step value under the current policy and confirm it is nonzero where intended - check coordinate zero-points against FK and check who occupies the term's gate; and never weaken the term that creates the states your new term needs.
Symptom
A newly designed swing-height clearance penalty could have trained as a no-op twice over, and the companion advice to lower feet_air_time actively backfired when tried.
Context
Instance 1 (zero-point offset): the proposed code used body_pos_w of the foot link, but that is the ankle_roll_link frame origin, which sits 0.0585 m above the ground even with the foot flat on it - so (0.03 - 0.0585) is always negative and the penalty is永远 0; the 0.0585 offset must be subtracted (verified identical in MuJoCo FK and Isaac). Instance 2 (gate occupancy): the clearance penalty fires only in swing phase; a dragging policy keeps both feet in contact, so the penalty is constantly 0 for exactly the policy it was meant to fix - and worse, any slight lift immediately incurs it, a reverse threshold. Lowering feet_air_time to 0.5 on that advice measurably collapsed air time to 0.0002 (below v3). Corrected understanding: "clearance 是把已有的摆动相抬高, 造出摆动相仍要靠 air_time" - air_time creates the swing phase, clearance raises it.
Change
Fixed the height zero-point; kept feet_air_time as the swing-phase creator with clearance layered on top; both errors documented as corrections to the team's own earlier advice.
Outcome
With both fixed, swing height rose from 22-23 mm (v2) to 29 mm (v5) to 34 mm (v6); the inert-term failure class entered the standing checklist.
Mechanism
A penalty's gradient exists only where its gate is occupied and its argument crosses its threshold; frame offsets shift the threshold out of reach, and phase gates can have zero occupancy under exactly the policy being treated. Terms interact as an ecology - one term must create the states in which another can act.
Applies when
- adding any gated or thresholded penalty (clearance, impact, slip)
- a new term produces no behavioral change at any weight
- body-frame positions are used in reward code
“body_pos_w 是 ankle_roll_link 坐标系原点,平放触地时仍高出地面 0.0585 m。… (0.03 − 0.0585) 恒为负 → 惩罚永远是 0 … clearance 惩罚只在摆动相生效,拖地时两脚始终触地 → 惩罚恒 0;而一旦轻微抬脚就立刻扣分,对正在拖地的策略是反向门槛。… 正确认识:clearance 是"把已有的摆动相抬高",造出摆动相仍要靠 air_time。”
train/WALK_DIAGNOSIS.md § walk_v4 独立验收 — 本文档给的两处代码/建议是错的 Set torque limits per joint from measured gait peaks - a uniform percentage is the wrong shape, and training must use the deployed numbers
torque-limit-shape-by-measured-peaksMeasure per-joint torque peaks in the actual gait and set each limit as measured-peak x margin capped at rating; then propagate the same numbers into training and add an automated deploy-time consistency check - never derate by a uniform percentage, never let training assume torque deployment will not grant.
Symptom
A uniform 50% torque derating (18/8.5/7) had piled safety margin on the joints that never use it while cutting the busiest joint below half its measured demand.
Context
Per-joint gait peaks were measured (walk_v5 at cmd 0.3/0.6): RS06 (hip_pitch/knee) uses 5.5-5.9 N*m = 15-16% of its 36 N*m rating - cutting it to 12 is a free safety win; RS02's ankle_pitch runs at 16.2 N*m = 95% of its 17 N*m rating - "它是速度的硬件瓶颈", no room to cut; RS00 measured 36-44%, capped at 11. The resulting shape 12/17/11 replaced the uniform percentage. Sweeps across several limit sets (rated / 50% / 14-17-11 / 12-17-11) produced identical speed, lift, and landing force - within this range the limits do not shape the gait; what matters is consistency: "关键是训练和硬件必须是同一个数", because the exporter fills effort_limit from tau_limit, and a policy trained at rated 36/17/14 "会假设有三倍力矩可用" while deployed at 12/17/11 (exactly the v5 cross-generation inconsistency later suspected in its wild kicking).
Change
robot.yaml tau_limit set to the measured-shape 12/17/11, firmware written to match, and train/isaac_values.py regenerated so training sees the same limits; the deploy tool self-checks limits against robot.yaml on every run.
Outcome
Free safety margin captured where demand is low, the real bottleneck joint left at rating, and the train/deploy torque worlds unified with an automated consistency check.
Mechanism
Torque demand is grossly unequal across joints in a gait (15% vs 95% of rating here); a uniform percentage misallocates the safety budget by construction. And since the trainer treats effort_limit as a plant truth, any train/deploy mismatch is an invisible plant gap of exactly the mismatch ratio.
Applies when
- choosing safety torque limits for a legged platform
- training-vs-deployment actuator limit audit
- one joint runs near rating while others idle
“曾用统一 50%(18/8.5/7)是错的形状: 把余量堆在用不到的 RS06 上, 却把 ankle_pitch 砍到需求的 52%。… RS02 在 0.6 m/s 已用到额定 95%, 它是速度的硬件瓶颈 … 实测多组限幅 … 完全一致 —— 限幅在这个范围对步态零影响, 关键是训练和硬件必须是同一个数。… 若训练仍按额定 36/17/14, 学出的策略会假设有三倍力矩可用。”
train/WALK_V6_MINIMAL.md § 3. 训练侧必须同步的一件事 Add a single-point-suspension test to acceptance - the ground is a free stabilizer that hides divergence
suspension-probe-removes-free-stabilizerInclude at least one acceptance condition that strips the environment's free stabilization (suspension, or equivalent) - the sim-passing policy that fails on hardware is often failing a condition the battery never posed.
Symptom
walk_v5 looked healthy in every on-ground sim test yet diverged on the real robot - the acceptance battery had never measured a condition that would have revealed it.
Context
The battery gained a single-point-suspension probe (robot hung, feet free): measure torso tilt while the policy runs without ground contact. v5 scored 45.9 deg mean tilt suspended - wildly unstable - which the file calls "最灵敏的失稳探针(拿掉地面这个免费稳定器)": ground reaction forces passively stabilize a marginal policy, so on-ground metrics saturate long before the policy's internal balance is actually sound. v6 halved it (23.0 deg, target <10 deg) - progress visible on a scale where on-ground numbers showed nothing.
Change
Suspended-tilt added as a standing acceptance row; run under the honest contact parameters battery (accept_v2 with measured condim 4 / torsional friction 0.035), under which v5 correctly FAILS in agreement with the real robot.
Outcome
The sim battery's verdict on v5 flipped from pass to fail, matching hardware; suspended tilt became the discriminating metric between v5 and v6 (45.9 vs 23.0 deg) when ground metrics differed little.
Mechanism
Contact with the ground closes a stabilizing feedback loop the policy gets for free; removing it exposes the policy's own attitude control authority. A metric measured only in the assisted condition cannot rank policies by the unassisted quantity that hardware will actually demand during perturbations and flight phases.
Applies when
- sim acceptance passes but hardware diverges
- designing an acceptance battery for a legged robot
- two candidates tie on ground metrics
“单点吊那条是最灵敏的失稳探针(拿掉地面这个"免费稳定器"), v5 在地上一切正常却在真机发散, 就是因为验收从没测过这个工况。”
train/WALK_V6_MINIMAL.md § 5. 验收 The trainer read a stale USD after the URDF mass update - regenerate derived assets and gate on an automated equality instrument
derived-asset-staleness-checkFor every derived plant artifact (USD from URDF, generated value files), pair the generation step with an automated source-vs-derived equality instrument, prove the instrument can fail, gate training on its PASS, and re-run physical audits after every regeneration.
Symptom
Measured link masses had been committed to URDF/MJCF (total 9.58 -> 9.792 kg, weighed values), but Isaac reads the derived USD asset - which still carried the old masses: a silent 2.2% mass fork between the training plant and the evaluation plant.
Context
The v12 checklist made USD regeneration a hard precondition ("硬性 前置") and, crucially, backed it with an instrument: check_usd_mass.py compares USD vs URDF per-link mass AND inertia trace, validated by showing it FAILs the stale asset naming 9 offending links, then PASSes after re-conversion (13/13 links consistent, total 9.7920). The self-collision filter audit was re-run after the regeneration (three poses, 0.00 N) because a regenerated asset invalidates physical audits done on the old one. This milestone was also where the three plants first aligned: "三边 plant 首次对齐(armature+摩擦+ 实称质量)就在这一代".
Change
convert_urdf re-run on the training machine, regenerated asset committed, check_usd_mass.py PASS required as an acceptance gate for the generation; dependent audits repeated post-regeneration.
Outcome
The 2.2% plant fork was closed before it could distort a generation's acceptance numbers; the staleness class of bug now has a permanent detector instead of a memory.
Mechanism
Source-of-truth edits do not propagate to derived binary assets by themselves; any consumer reading the derivative silently trains or evaluates on the old plant. An automated equality check between source and derivative - proven able to fail - turns an invisible staleness into a red gate, and regeneration invalidates every audit performed on the old artifact.
Applies when
- editing masses/inertia/geometry in URDF or MJCF sources
- a trainer or evaluator consumes converted/derived assets
- plant numbers differ between simulators for no visible reason
“25ba997 把连杆质量更新为实称值(总重 9.58→9.792 kg,URDF/MJCF 已改),但 Isaac 读的是 train/assets/laika_v2.usd —— 仍是旧质量。… 否则 Isaac(9.58)与 MuJoCo(9.79)质量分叉 2.2%,v12 验收数字失真。验收门:python tools/check_usd_mass.py 必须 PASS … 对旧资产实测 FAIL/9 连杆点名,仪器已验证”
train/WALK_V12_SPEC.md § 7. 核查单 (⚠️ 先重转 USD) A proposal in the runbook - torque and action limits as versioned safety tiers (classroom / research / expert) written to motor RAM and read back, separate from the reward's effort penalty - recorded as a proposal, its implementation unrecorded
safety-limits-are-a-layer-not-a-rewardKeep hardware limits as an explicit, versioned safety layer (tiers written and read back at start, the persisted default the safest one) and the effort penalty as a behaviour layer; when a skill needs more torque, change tier deliberately rather than trading one layer against the other.
Symptom
Running and jumping need more torque than the deployed limits allow, and the temptation is to trade the training-side effort penalty against the hardware limit, or to hand a new user a robot "tuned however the last person left it".
Context
A message pasted into the operator runbook (undated, citing Berkeley's practice of storing the full motor configuration as JSON with write and read-back scripts) proposes: configuration is a versioned artifact, not a verbal agreement; three safety tiers in robot.yaml beside the gain and policy profiles - classroom (RS06 limited to 10 N*m, lateral joints clamped: "however bad the policy, it only moves awkwardly"), research (14 N*m, clamps at twice the measured need, the default) and expert (the 36 N*m rating, joint limits only, requiring an explicit flag); deploy writes the tier to motor RAM at start and reads it back, while the stored copy stays classroom so a power cut returns to the safest state. It frames limits as the safety layer and the effort penalty as the behaviour layer - more torque for running means switching tier, not weakening the penalty.
Change
None recorded: the message ends by asking which to do first, a rollback or the tiers.
Outcome
The sources do not record the tiers being implemented; the deployed limits stayed at 12/17/11 N*m through the recovery and one-leg lines (the one-leg spec treats raising the RS06 limit as a separate, unapproved hardware decision). Related and recorded elsewhere: torque limits were written to RAM only in a scripted, self-reversing field experiment.
Mechanism
Hardware limits bound the damage any policy can do; reward terms shape what a policy prefers. Mixing them either weakens safety to buy behaviour or distorts behaviour to buy safety.
Applies when
- a new skill needs more torque than the deployed limits
- robots are handed to students or new users
- motor configuration lives in people's heads or in the firmware only
“配置是版本化的产物,不是口头约定。 … deploy_policy 启动时按档写进电机 RAM 并读回校验(落盘的那份永远保持 classroom,断电自动回到最安全状态)。 … 限幅是安全层,dof_torques_l2 是行为塑造层,它们在不同的层,不冲突。跑步要更大力矩就换档,而不是去动训练里的省力惩罚。”
RL系统/FOLLOW THIS copy 2.md § 面向 developer / 教育机构该怎么做 (pasted proposal, undated) Never referee a suspect metric with another metric from the same code - they can share the disease
independent-referee-for-metric-disputesTo adjudicate a disputed measurement, compute the quantity by an independent method from raw state; never accept a sibling column from the same pipeline as the tiebreaker.
Symptom
A triple reversal on one question: sidewalk sign diagnosis (correct) was retracted using a second metric from the same script, then the retraction itself had to be retracted when that second metric turned out to be the buggy one - two opposite-direction errors on the same problem in one day, both written into the execution sheet.
Context
The probe's net-displacement metric suggested the sidewalk reference sign was inverted. Worried about yaw-drift pollution of net displacement, the author checked the same table's body-frame vy_mean column (~0.003 everywhere, 20-50x smaller) and retracted the sign diagnosis. But vy_mean came from mj_objectVelocity, which was silently reporting vertical velocity due to a frame bug - the "referee" was the diseased measurement. Re-measured with a truly independent computation (xmat.T @ qvel, world trajectory), the original diagnosis was confirmed: saw -0.5 gave vy +0.058/-0.130 (76%/106%), consistent with the net-displacement values all along (yaw pollution was real but only 10-21 deg, nowhere near reversal-sized).
Change
Lesson written twice, verbatim, as a hard rule: when questioning a measurement, the referee must be an independent algorithm (different code path, different physical derivation), e.g. rotate qvel by the body matrix directly, or inspect the raw world trajectory.
Outcome
With the independent referee in place the frame bug was confirmed, fixed, and the whole C4 line re-scored - revealing sidewalk had been working (see body-frame-velocity-api-audit).
Mechanism
Metrics sharing a code path (or an upstream API) share failure modes; agreement between them is evidence about the code, not the world. Only a measurement with an independent derivation can break the tie, because its errors are uncorrelated with the suspect's.
Applies when
- two metrics of the same quantity disagree
- about to retract a conclusion based on a second readout
- auditing evaluation code after a surprising result
“我用一个坏指标去质疑一个好指标，并把撤回写进了执行单。教训（写死）：质疑一个测量时，不能用同一份代码里的另一个测量当裁判 —— 它们可能同源同病。裁判必须是独立算法（这次的裁判应该一开始就是 xmat.T · qvel[:3]，或直接看世界轨迹）。”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 3m. 二 我今天犯了两个方向相反的错 / 3n. 五 元教训 The 1.5 Hz step-frequency gate was retracted - the author had misread his own actuator data, and the limit fought pendulum dynamics
gate-threshold-retracted-frequencyEvery 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 Changing the gait clock silently flipped a hardwired threshold's meaning - write derived constants as expressions
derived-constants-must-track-their-baseBefore changing any base parameter (clock, control rate, scale), enumerate every constant derived from it and every constant that must NOT change; convert derived literals into expressions of the base so the next change cannot silently flip a term's meaning.
Symptom
Slowing the clock 0.40 -> 0.50 s would have silently inverted the feet_air_time threshold's semantics: the 0.25 s threshold was hardwired, so at ct 0.40 the swing window (~0.20 s) sat below it (constant pressure to lengthen strides), while at ct 0.50 the window (~0.25 s) equals it - the term's meaning flips from "push longer" to "neutral" with no code error anywhere.
Context
The clock change audit walked every dependent quantity: most followed automatically (joint_pos_ref / clearance / contact_number cycle_time params, gait_phase observation, deploy/sim2sim/policy_io, export) - wiring confirmed, zero hand edits; the air_time threshold was the one hardwired constant, fixed by preserving the RATIO: 0.25 -> 0.3125 = 0.625 x ct, with the recommendation to commit it as the expression 0.625*ct "一劳永逸" (solved once and forever). The same audit also listed what must NOT follow the clock (50 Hz control rate, physics dt/decimation, 47-dim contract, action_latency absolute seconds, PD/torque limits) - the change's blast radius stated in both directions.
Change
feet_air_time threshold re-expressed as a fraction of cycle_time; auto-following vs must-not-change lists written into the spec for the clock migration.
Outcome
The clock migration (v10, repeated in v11) carried no silent semantic flips; the expression form removed the trap for every future clock change.
Mechanism
Constants derived from a base parameter encode a ratio at their birth; storing the evaluated number severs the dependency, so changing the base leaves stale semantics with no failing test. Expressions preserve the intent; and an explicit both-directions dependency list (follows / must-not-follow) is what makes a base-parameter change reviewable.
Applies when
- changing gait clock, control frequency, or units
- a reward threshold interacts with a phase/window duration
- config audit finds literals that encode ratios
“feet_air_time 阈值 0.25 是写死的,不跟 ct 走——0.40 时摆动窗 ~0.20s<0.25(恒拉长压力),0.50 时摆动窗 ~0.25s≈阈值(语义翻转)。按比例保原压力:0.25 → 0.3125(=0.625×ct;建议直接写成 0.625 * ct 表达式,一劳永逸)。”
train/WALK_V10_SPEC.md § 3. T —— 慢时钟 (训练侧必做一件) Choose the fork root by which candidate's shortfalls are recoverable, not by headline score
fork-root-recoverable-shortfallWhen picking a checkpoint to fork from, rank candidates by whether their weaknesses are trainable-back, not by current headline metrics; prefer the candidate whose deficits the upcoming training directly pays for.
Symptom
Multiple candidate checkpoints for the omni-command ladder root, each best at something different: fric-3000 had the best tracking precision (vx 88-91%) and hardened plant robustness; s1e-500 had lower precision (vx 82%) but was the only candidate that could still walk backward.
Context
Root selection ran as a data probe, not a preference vote: 6 candidates x 8 out-of-distribution omni commands x 20 seeds = 960 cells (probe_omni_0808.json). s1e-500 @pw1.0 survived 20/20 in all eight conditions including backward at 67% tracking; the deep-trained fric lineage scored backward 0-3/20 despite better forward precision.
Change
Decision criterion made explicit: list what each candidate exclusively wins at, then ask which of those wins the loser could train back. fric-3000's exclusive wins (precision, plant robustness) are both retrainable - precision is directly optimized by the reward, plant hardening is a planned later pass. s1e-500's exclusive wins (backward plasticity 20/20 vs 2/20, disturbance margin 159/160 vs 125/160, push chirality symmetry 40/40 vs 17/40) had all been shown unrecoverable - push-level rungs failed twice, chirality never recovered even with mirror augmentation on. Root = s1e-500.
Outcome
s1e-500 carried the whole C ladder; its backward skill was preserved through C2/C4 gates (regress budget <=2/20 enforced), and the final C4 product passed a 260-cell battery at 20/20 everywhere.
Mechanism
Training can re-earn anything the objective directly pays for, but capabilities that earlier training destroyed and never restored (plasticity, symmetry, robustness margins) are empirically one-way doors. The information-bearing comparison is therefore recoverability of each candidate's deficit, which the team stated as "独占项的可恢复性正好相反 —— 这就是判据" (the exclusive items' recoverability is exactly opposite - that is the criterion).
Applies when
- selecting a resume/fork root among several checkpoints
- one candidate is more precise but another retains a skill the rest lost
- planning a task-extension ladder from an existing lineage
“fric-3000 赢在精度（vx 88~91%…）与 plant 鲁棒性 → 两样都训得回来…；s1e-500 赢在可塑性（C1 20/20 vs 2/20）、抗扰余量（159/160 vs 125/160）、手性对称（推 ±6 N·s 40/40 vs 17/40）→ 三样都训不回来 … 独占项的可恢复性正好相反 —— 这就是判据。”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 0. 为什么根是 s1e-500（数据，不是偏好） An auto-curriculum ratchet capped out at iter 248 and never engaged - stage difficulty manually or verify engagement
auto-curriculum-engagement-checkPrefer manually staged difficulty with gated transitions; if you use an automatic curriculum, instrument its internal state and alarm when it stops engaging - a saturated curriculum is constant DR wearing a curriculum's name.
Symptom
A curriculum mechanism intended to grow difficulty adaptively (s1f's ratchet) hit its cap at iteration 248 and never bit again - for 96% of the run its effect was equivalent to constant DR, i.e. the curriculum existed in name only.
Context
When external advice suggested graded wz bands (start ±0.15, then ±0.30), the team agreed with grading but explicitly rejected automatic curriculum, citing the s1f episode. The same logic had already been paid for with push grading: ±0.6 failed twice, ±0.3 was feasible - grading matters, but the grade transitions were made by hand at verified checkpoints.
Change
Ladder policy: difficulty staged manually, one band per rung, each transition gated by the acceptance battery; automatic ratchets not used unless their engagement is monitored and demonstrated.
Outcome
Every C-ladder band change (wz ±0.12-0.25 first, wider later) was an explicit, attributable rung; no silent constant-DR-in-disguise runs recurred.
Mechanism
Adaptive curricula couple their own state machine to noisy training metrics; a ratchet that saturates early stops adapting but keeps its name, so the operator believes difficulty is progressing when it is frozen. Manual staging costs more decisions but each decision is observable and reversible.
Applies when
- choosing between auto-curriculum and staged bands for a new skill
- a curriculum's difficulty parameter plateaus early in training
- post-hoc attribution of what difficulty a lineage actually saw
“C2 的 wz 分级（±0.15 → ±0.30，不要一上来 ±0.6）—— 与我们付过学费的 push 分级同形（±0.6 两轮 FAIL，±0.3 才可行）。但必须手动分级，不做自动课程 —— s1f 的课程化棘轮 iter 248 封顶未咬合，96% 时长等价常量 DR”
train/C_LADDER_RUN.md § 1. 采纳 3 条 (C2 的 wz 分级)