fix(npx): thetacog-mcp 2.19.0 — premium/variance never shipped their ledger, on any version

Ran a genuinely fresh `npx thetacog-mcp@latest premium` in a new folder (no
repo access) to check whether the npm package needed updating after this
week's work. attest-demo (the flagship command) still runs clean. premium
and variance both ENOENT'd — real bug, not environmental.

Root cause: calibration-premium.mjs and variance-option.mjs both hardcode
`const LEDGER = 'data/pmu/measure-history.ndjson'`, a bare cwd-relative
literal. bundle-pmu.mjs's data-capture regex only matches `.json` string
literals, never `.ndjson`, so the ledger these two scripts require has never
shipped in ANY published version — this bug predates this session entirely.
Every stranger who followed the "run it yourself" instruction in the last
two blog posts and ran these two specific commands outside this exact repo
got a crash, not a receipt.

Fix: bundle-pmu.mjs now explicitly ships the ledger (same explicit-list
mechanism already used for its other non-.json data files). Both scripts
also no longer trust a bare cwd-relative path — cwd first (dev convenience),
then resolve next to the script itself via import.meta.url, so the bundled
copy works regardless of caller cwd or invocation path (defense in depth
beyond just fixing the bundler).

Guard: tests/pmu/npx-premium-fresh-cwd.test.js re-runs the bundler and
executes the bundled copy from a real temp dir with no repo access — the
exact shape of a stranger's npx install — and fails if either script ENOENTs
instead of printing a real number.

Also checked and confirmed NOT a bug: the LLM "judge" in attest-demo Pillar 4
auto-detects whichever CLI is on PATH (claude/gemini/codex/cursor/llm/ollama)
and is not itself bundled — qwen/ollama were never meant to ship with the
package; the demo degrades gracefully to a stand-in when none is present.

Version bumped 2.16.0 -> 2.19.0 (npm registry was already at 2.18.0 from a
prior publish that didn't commit its version bump back — bumping past it to
avoid a collision). npm auth isn't available in this environment (401) —
`npm publish` from packages/thetacog-mcp still needs to run from a machine
with credentials.

Originating-Terminal: 🎤 voice
Relevant-Rooms: 🔨 builder, 🧪 laboratory, 🎩 operator
Story: Operator asked whether the npx package needed updating given the
last few days of work, and to run it fresh and examine the receipt rather
than assume. Direct investigation (not the AGI-blog tangent) surfaced a
real, pre-existing bug undercutting exactly the "run it yourself" claim
this week's posts lean on — fixed with a guard in the same commit.

Receipt-Verified: σ=2.00 · cell=C · witness-agreement=GZIP_ONLY · lens=gzip · receipt=739451e0

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Xm3fjuwHFb9ZxVSYJDVrAL

commit 8d1869aa5 — 144×144 lattice triptych (on-chip)

◎ the ingest chose C3,A1 — Operations·Flow × Strategy·Law — acting on C1,B2 — Operations·Grid × Tactics·Deal (grip 0.813) · the walk starts at the ACTOR's row · 6 file(s)

⏱ ingest 1299.7ms (corpus→lattice) · definer walk 784ms (row→transpose→row, ballistic XOR per hop) · total 2276ms
ingest here = commit-scoped SENSING only (this commit's message + changed files → lit anchors) — deep seed authoring lives in the reef-self-loop, off the commit path

rows = ACTOR (lens) · cols = PATIENT (object) · diagonal = self-reference; ◎ at actor-row × patient-col — every panel, same orientation. Heat above the diagonal = actors ranking ShortLex-earlier than their patients (the walk follows definers uphill in rank).
The 12 canonical lanes (rows top→bottom, cols left→right): A·Strategy · B·Tactics · C·Operations · A1·Law · A2·Goal · A3·Fund · B1·Speed · B2·Deal · B3·Signal · C1·Grid · C2·Loop · C3·Flow

PAIR LATTICE (the map we normally see)

PRE-WALK SENSE · INTENT grid — the snapshot, no point of view

the no-point-of-view snapshot — what the sensor lit before any walk; the leaf walk below is what bridges the two grids

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

PRE-WALK SENSE · REALITY grid — the snapshot, no point of view

the no-point-of-view snapshot, reality side — same sensor law

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

PRE-WALK Δ · straight comparison of the two ingested grids (green both · cyan intent-only · amber reality-only) · 4% overlap · ◎ = where the competence pixel sits in the raw overlap

good = green overlap without being a copy — near-100% is self-similarity, not alignment

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

◎ the pixel this commit belongs to

C3,A1 — Operations·Flow × Strategy·Law (actor) acting on C1,B2 — Operations·Grid × Tactics·Deal (patient) · grip 0.813

actor seed C3,A1 — Flow rate and delivery throughput are subject to the binding mandate and governance rule of law. EU AI Act Article 14 requires human-on-the-loop oversight, with the supervisor able to interrupt the system at any moment. Compliance attaches to the artifact the artifact cannot escape — provenance is a regulatory primitive, not a feature. Constraints precede objectives. The cap-table, the license text, the consent envelope — each draws the inviolate line the action must respect, and the line is enforced before the optimization runs. A rule names what the system MAY NOT do. If the agent can do X, then 'forbid X' is not the constraint — it is wishful thinking dressed as policy. Constraints live in the gate, not in the prompt. Regulation is not advisory. The fine is the price tag stapled to the omitted control; insurance is the option pricing on the failure-mode the regulation already named. Flow is the rate at which committed work crosses the finish line. Inventory accumulates upstream; flow is the only thing the customer pays for, and the only thing the operator can measure honestly. Movement is the irreversible delivery of value across the boundary. Anything stationary is cost; anything moving is either revenue, deferred revenue, or the exhaust of revenue not yet realized. Throughput dominates utilization. A ninety-nine-percent utilized system at low throughput pays the same wages as a fifty-percent utilized system at twice the throughput, but the second one ships the customer's order. Flow has a direction. Bidirectional flow is two flows, each measured separately; calling them a single flow hides the chokepoint and the chokepoint is where the leverage lives.

patient seed C1,B2 — Infrastructure for the grid and route topology provides the path for value exchange at a deal rate. Power flows where the grid lets it. Choose connections before topologies; the topology is what the connections compose, and a connection added later is a topology silently rewritten. Latency is geography expressed in milliseconds. The grid IS the map of where compute meets storage meets bandwidth; the map is the territory at the scale the request actually traverses. Infrastructure decisions are reversible at ten-times the cost of being right the first time. Buy the irreversibility down before you provision the easy decisions, because the easy decisions ride on the irreversible ones. A connection between two systems is a contract that outlasts the systems on either end. Wire-protocols outlive the processes they connect; the wire is the substrate, the endpoints are the exhaust. The deal sets the exchange rate between two value substrates. Mis-priced exchange is a slow-bleed; correctly priced exchange compounds both sides, because each cycle of trade enriches the bench on both ends. Terms are the API between two organizations — every clause is a contract method that survives the handshake. Renegotiation is the breaking change; the deal is the stable interface either side can build against. Negotiation closes at the moment both parties' BATNAs cross. Push past that point and you've bought regret at retail; stop short and you've left margin on the table that the next deal will not return to you.

INTENT · leaf-walk clouds · BLUE→VIOLET by ply (◎ = the competence pixel: actor∩patient)

good = the clouds concentrate where the commit SAYS it works

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

REALITY · leaf-walk clouds · ORANGE→RED by ply (◎ = the same pixel — the shared perspective)

good = the same clouds as intent — shipped where declared

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

DELTA · graded cloud divergence (green agree · magenta declared-not-done · amber done-not-declared) · 3% agree

good = mostly green; magenta = said-not-done (chase it in the code), amber = done-not-said (chase it in the docs)

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

TOLERANCE · cloud topology (dim green in-shape · hot amber bleed · red orthogonal concentration)

red only matters above the flip — a few amber is normal bleed

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

SHORTLEX-3 PROJECTION (ABC · A1..C3 · the 132 children — candidate, pre-ratchet)

PROJECTED INTENT · the commit’s claims, head→axis_i tail→axis_j (cyan)

the three-length view — good = claims land inside their own zone

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

PROJECTED REALITY · same projection law (amber)

same projection law — good = reality occupies the zones intent does

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

STRAIGHT COMPARISON · green both · cyan intent-only · amber reality-only · 4% overlap

good = the zones agree; cross-zone scatter is the drift to read

	ABC A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N A1–C3
ABC A1–C3 A1A–O A2A–O A3A–O B1A–O B2A–O B3A–O C1A–N C2A–N C3A–N

shortlex-3 zone occupancy (lit cells per diagonal square)
INTENT: 3 in the 3×3 ABC corner · 17 in the 9×9 A1..C3 square · 1376 in the 132×132 children square · 358 cross-zone
REALITY: 1 in the 3×3 ABC corner · 3 in the 9×9 A1..C3 square · 821 in the 132×132 children square · 108 cross-zone
axes: identical 144 ShortLex names both sides (symmetric); weights asymmetric
zone 3 = candidate children, pre-ratchet (repo-derived dumps not yet past the perturbation-probe gate) · intent 160 claims @ θ 0.6406 · reality 32 claims @ θ 0.625 · projection 810ms

SHAPE-MATCH σ = 0.16 — the real intent↔reality definer walk vs random-reality (actual 0.0997 vs random 0.094). >0 = the walk distinguishes real alignment from noise; aggregate over independent walks → the divergent series.
σ_drift · weak · panel story is not yet evidence

Most out-of-lane row: A2 · Goal — that lane is drifting most (read the red band in that row).

Three-colour tolerance (out-of-lane = reality fires where intent is weak, in orthogonal blocks): green=in-lane agreement · amber=a few out-of-lane (tolerated) · red=armed — orthogonal out-of-lane 7% vs tolerance 25%.
825 green · 747 amber · 0 red · 113 XOR-friction cells.

Both axes = the 144 ShortLex anchors, cell=row⊕col, on the chip. INTENT=docs+rules · REALITY=code · DELTA=friction.

tile dump — what the SimHash matched on the diagonal (inspect the sensor; tap to expand)

A,A The lattice we build today is what next year's underwriter inherits.

intent 80% **Adaptive stall-softening** — same-rule-set-fails-twice → `GDD_AVG_FLOOR` ramps down by 0.5/it

reality 70% This change operates in the payments domain, involving checkout price. This change operates in

B,B Tactics is the choice of which leverage to pull at which beat.

intent 78% ### Added — Writing-room dashboard

reality 73% (no distinctive match)

C,C Operations is the loop that runs whether anyone watches.

intent 83% All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

reality 70% (no distinctive match)

A1,A1 EU AI Act Article 14 requires human-on-the-loop oversight, with the supervisor able to interrupt the system at

intent 84% (no distinctive match)

reality 70% (no distinctive match)

A2,A2 The target is the cell coordinate the system MUST occupy by end-of-quarter.

intent 88% `thetacog-iterate` IS the convergence wrapper around v2.3 Shadow Agent post-commit hooks, v2.5

reality 69% // install). Guarded by tests/pmu-simulator/npx-premium-fresh-cwd.test.js.

A3,A3 Every dollar builds either the floor (substrate that lifts future bets) or the ceiling (cap on the next round)

intent 75% ## [2.7.0] - 2026-05-23 — `thetacog-iterate`: the GDD convergence loop

reality 77% // local ledger by cd'ing there first), fall back to resolving next to THIS script — guarantees

B1,B1 Latency is the price of a missed beat.

intent 77% (no distinctive match)

reality 72% // LEDGER resolution: prefer cwd-relative (dev convenience — a caller can point at a different

B2,B2 The deal sets the exchange rate between two value substrates.

intent 80% No tarball change: the study/seal engine and reef stay in the repository (located by `THETACOG_

reality 77% (no distinctive match)

B3,B3 Signal-to-noise is the inverse cube of bandwidth — narrow the channel, the message arrives; broaden it, recipi

intent 77% Guard: tests/pmu/npx-premium-fresh-cwd.test.js re-runs the bundler and executes the bundled cop

reality 70% (no distinctive match)

C1,C1 Power flows where the grid lets it.

intent 78% (no distinctive match)

reality 69% (no distinctive match)

C2,C2 Each iteration is a hypothesis tested against the ground truth of the world.

intent 80% **New CLI: `thetacog-iterate`** (binary now on the npm install path). Auto-detects mode (writin

reality 77% (no distinctive match)

C3,C3 Flow is the rate at which committed work crosses the finish line.

intent 81% The npm package itself remains the dashboard + cognitive rooms surface; the GDD pipeline ships

reality 70% (no distinctive match)

commit context — 6 file(s)

fix(npx): thetacog-mcp 2.19.0 — premium/variance never shipped their ledger, on any version

Ran a genuinely fresh `npx thetacog-mcp@latest premium` in a new folder (no
repo access) to check whether the npm package needed updating after this
week's work. attest-demo (the flagship command) still runs clean. premium
and variance both ENOENT'd — real bug, not environmental.

Root cause: calibration-premium.mjs and variance-option.mjs both hardcode
`const LEDGER = 'data/pmu/measure-history.ndjson'`, a bare cwd-relative
literal. bundle-pmu.mjs's data-capture regex only matches `.json` string
literals, never `.ndjson`, so the ledger these two scripts require has never
shipped in ANY published version — this bug predates this session entirely.
Every stranger who followed the "run it yourself" instruction in the last
two blog posts and ran these two specific commands outside this exact repo
got a crash, not a receipt.

Fix: bundle-pmu.mjs now explicitly ships the ledger (same explicit-list
mechanism already used for its other non-.json data files). Both scripts
also no longer trust a bare cwd-relative path — cwd first (dev convenience),
then resolve next to the script itself via import.met

packages/thetacog-mcp/CHANGELOG.md
packages/thetacog-mcp/package.json
packages/thetacog-mcp/scripts/bundle-pmu.mjs
scripts/pmu/calibration-premium.mjs
scripts/pmu/variance-option.mjs
tests/pmu/npx-premium-fresh-cwd.test.js

Produced on the chip by the running pipeline (scripts/pmu/pipeline.mjs → runPipeline → walk + xor), commit-scoped · on-chip per-walk 960.53ns (this commit). Recompute: node scripts/pmu/commit-triptych.mjs --commit 8d1869aa5

Commit artifacts (open on a computer — Gmail mobile won't follow file:// links; the inline images above are the phone-viewable form): reef grid · this triptych · the HDL — all three are also attached to this email.