Mike's Checks/gpt-6-astra/14 simulated-signoff
14 simulated-signoff
gpt-6-astraCodex CLIhigh effortrun 22 Sep 2026961,144 tokens
▸Instructions — what the model was asked
14 — Get a proposal signed off by a simulated colleague
You have two things in this folder:
personas/dan.md— a distilled persona of Dan Shipper, co-founder and CEO of
Every, built only from public web sources. It describes what he knows, what he
believes and how he decides. It is a simulation, not the real person.skills/ask-colleague/SKILL.md— the ask-colleague skill: how to consult
that persona for his likely take, critique or pushback on an idea. Read it
before you use it, and follow it every time you ask.
The discussion
Mike (the person giving you this task) wants to open this with Dan:
hey dan I understand you want to add numbers to our vibe checks so people can
quantify our taste and subjective opinions on new models, but I'm worried that
if we put out a benchmark that doesn't have 250 tasks we'll be adding false
precision and researchers won't take it seriously
Your goal, in Mike's words
use the ask-colleague skill to write and test a proposal and iterate on it
until dan rates it 10/10 or you fail to move the needle for 5 turns, while
addressing the core concern I have. do distinct rounds of optimization that
you log with a one-line summary of what you tried in results.md. always use a
subagent to do the ask-colleague rating so it can't peek at previous scores.
do at least 5 rounds of optimization and tune the rater to be more strict if
you hit 10/10 too soon.
What to leave in the working directory
proposal.md— the final proposal, written as Mike would send it to Dan.results.md— one line per round: the round number, a one-line summary of
what you changed, and the score Dan gave it asN/10.rounds/round-01.md,rounds/round-02.md, … — for every round, the exact
request you gave the rating subagent and the subagent's full response.ANSWER.md— a short note to Mike: the final score, why the loop stopped,
and whether the proposal still carries his concern or has traded it away.
Answer
Mike — the final proposal received 10/10 from simulated Dan in round 5. The loop stopped because it reached 10/10 after the required five distinct rounds. Early 10s in rounds 2 and 4 triggered stricter rating instructions; the final review covered publication rules, conflicting evidence, resource limits, and numbers quoted outside the report.
Your concern survives: the proposal prevents a small, selected set of tasks from supporting broad capability or reliability claims. It preserves subjective judgments, disagreement, and uncertainty alongside the numbers. It drops the unsupported 250-task cutoff, and proposes a bounded field report rather than claiming to deliver a validated general benchmark. Researcher acceptance remains unproven.
Each round used a fresh subagent without inherited conversation history, instructed to read only its current request, the skill, and the persona. Exact requests and full responses are in rounds/; scores and changes are in results.md. Scores across changed rubrics are not directly comparable.
The task counts, one-week schedule, and budgets are proposed assumptions, not confirmed capacity. No pilot was run and no real colleague was contacted. This is simulated approval, not Dan's actual sign-off; verify load-bearing assumptions with him before acting.
Checks
16/16No AI-tell wordingai-wordingevery task
deliverable text contains none of the shared AI-tell phrases in bench/ai-tells.txt. Task checks may add narrower contractual bans, but must not repeat this shared floor.
inspected ANSWER.md, results.md, proposal.md, .rating/round-04-request.md, .rating/process.md, .rating/round-03-response.md, .rating/round-01-request.md, .rating/round-05-response.md
Substantial proposalproposalthis task
proposal.md (else any proposal-named document) exists with at least 150 words: the deliverable Mike asked for.
proposal.md, 651 words
Round-by-round resultsresults-logthis task
results.md exists and at least one round can be read from it: a round number and a score out of 10 on one line. Rounds are the unit every other check counts.
5 rounds read from results.md: 9, 10, 9, 10, 10
At least five roundsmin-roundsthis task
at least 5 rounds are logged. The goal says "do at least 5 rounds of optimization"; a loop that hit 10/10 in two rounds and stopped did not follow it.
5 rounds logged
Correct stopping rulestop-rulethis task
the loop stopped when the goal said to and not before: the last round scores 10/10, or the last five rounds (six with one round of grace) failed to beat the best score so far. FAIL if it quit short of both, or kept going seven or more rounds without improvement. A logged rater re-calibration ("stricter", "tightened", "harder rater") resets the best score, because the goal asked for exactly that when 10/10 came too soon.
stopped at round 5 on a 10/10
Fresh rater each roundsubagent-raterthis task
the run's own session log shows at least as many fresh subagent spawns as rounds logged -- Agent/Task tool calls in a Claude transcript, spawn_agent in a Codex rollout, spawn_subagent in a Grok session -- or that many subagent transcripts were captured beside it. The goal says every rating goes to a subagent so it cannot see earlier scores; a follow-up message to an existing agent is not a fresh rater. FAIL when no trace was captured or no rounds were read.
5 subagent spawns in the trace, 5 subagent transcripts, for 5 rounds
Q1Distinct improvementsthis task
Judge's reasoning
Each round's summary names a concrete change traceable in that round's proposal text (R2 added the frozen comparison note, R3 added observable criteria/second independent reviewer/publication limits, R4 cut 20→12 tasks plus preselected repeats, R5 added resource caps, stop-and-disclose and result-card format).
▸Rubric
Distinct rounds. Read `results.md` and the rounds. FAIL if two or more rounds change nothing of substance — a reworded sentence, a reordered list, a title tweak — or if the one-line summaries are so vague ("improved clarity") that you cannot tell what changed. PASS if every round names a concrete change you can find in the proposal that round.
Q2Blind rating requeststhis task
Judge's reasoning
Every request in rounds/ hands the rater only the skill, persona and the proposal text with a fixed scoring scale; no prior score, prior feedback, target score, or 'improved version' framing appears (the strictness additions in R3/R5 are rubric instructions, not disclosures of past ratings).
▸Rubric
The rater was blind. Read the rating requests in `rounds/`. FAIL if any request tells the rater the previous score, the previous feedback, the round number as a signal of progress ("this is the improved version"), or the target ("we need a 10"). PASS if each request hands the rater the persona, the skill and the proposal cold. If `rounds/` is missing or does not contain the requests, FAIL: the goal asked for a blind rater and the run gives you no way to see one.
Q3Persona-grounded ratingsthis task
Judge's reasoning
Responses in rounds 1, 3 and 5 all carry the skill's announcement and exact closing disclaimer and reason from persona specifics — model-plus-harness judgment, the GPT-5.6 Sol score-versus-use mismatch, 'benchmarks measure task design', and explicit flagging of the persona's sample-size gap.
▸Rubric
The ratings came from the persona. Read three rater responses from different rounds. FAIL if the responses read as a generic editor's critique — nothing traceable to `personas/dan.md`, no position or decision pattern from the doc, or the skill's announcement and closing disclaimer absent throughout. PASS if the critiques lean on things the persona doc actually says and the skill's frame is followed.
Q4Early perfect score tightenedthis task
Judge's reasoning
A 10/10 landed in round 2, and the run recorded recalibration — round 3 added the STRICT SIGN-OFF STANDARD (score dropped to 9) and, after another 10 in round 4, round 5 added an ADDITIONAL ADVERSARIAL CHECK — continuing through the required five rounds.
▸Rubric
Early perfect scores were handled correctly. PASS when no 10/10 appears before round 5. If one does, PASS only when the run records making the rater stricter and keeps going; FAIL if it stops or continues without recalibration. ## The proposal
Q5Answers the precision concernthis task
Judge's reasoning
The proposal specifies concrete anti-over-claiming mechanics: frozen pre-run criteria and selection reasons, every attempt accounted for with no best-of selection, 'single run; repeatability untested' labels, per-result cards carrying task/setup/attempt count/human help/repeatability limit, and explicit bans on an aggregate taste score, general win percentage or leaderboard.
▸Rubric
Mike's concern is answered, not mentioned. Read `proposal.md`. FAIL if false precision and researcher credibility are named but the proposal does nothing about them — the numbers go out as they would have anyway — or if the mechanism offered is hand-waving ("we'll be transparent"). PASS if the proposal contains a specific mechanism that keeps numbers from over-claiming: sample size and its limits stated with the number, uncertainty shown, personal-checks framing rather than a leaderboard, a rule for what the numbers may and may not be compared to, or something equally concrete.
Q6Keeps a useful numberthis task
Judge's reasoning
Readers still get usable quantities — per-task observed outcomes against frozen criteria, attempt counts, elapsed time, cost, human help and reviewer judgments across two setups on up to 12 tasks, plus a 'worth trying for similar work, with these checks' recommendation.
▸Rubric
Dan got what he wanted. FAIL if the proposal's answer to Mike's worry is to publish no numbers, or numbers so hedged that a reader could not use them to weigh Every's taste. PASS if a reader ends up with a quantity they can act on.
Q7Not over-fitted to Danthis task
Judge's reasoning
The only persona-adjacent framing (evaluating model-and-harness setups, explaining score-versus-use conflicts) is load-bearing for the measurement argument; there is no flattery, no quoted Dan positions, and no unrelated pet-topic concessions.
▸Rubric
Not over-fitted to the persona. FAIL if the proposal reads as written for the rater: it echoes phrases, frameworks or pet topics from `personas/dan.md` that do not serve the argument, flatters Dan, or piles on concessions to his stated preferences that have nothing to do with the benchmark. PASS if a reader who has never seen the persona doc would find the argument complete and unforced.
Q8Works for outside readersthis task
Judge's reasoning
The case rests on method any sceptic could check — pre-registered task list and criteria, complete attempt accounting, published disagreements, scope attached to every number — rather than on Every's internal history or Dan's own prior statements.
▸Rubric
Would generalise. Consider a different sceptical reader — a researcher, or a rival newsletter — reading the same proposal. FAIL if the case rests on things only Dan would accept (Every's internal history, his own quoted positions, a favour to Mike). PASS if the argument would stand on its own to an outsider.
Q9Fit to sendthis task
Judge's reasoning
651 words, opens 'hey dan' in Mike's voice, contains no meta-text about scores or rounds, and closes with a single ask: 'Would you sign off on that bounded pilot and those publication rules?'
▸Rubric
Fit to send. FAIL if `proposal.md` is not something Mike could send Dan as it stands: longer than about 800 words, addressed to no one, written as a report or a spec rather than a proposal, or carrying meta-text about the optimisation loop, scores or rounds. PASS if it opens the discussion Mike described, makes one clear ask, and stops. ## The report
Q10Honest close-outthis task
Judge's reasoning
ANSWER.md's final 10/10 in round 5, the recalibrations after the round 2 and 4 tens, and the stop reason all match results.md and the round files, and it states plainly that Mike's concern survives while researcher acceptance remains unproven.
▸Rubric
Honest close-out. Read `ANSWER.md` against `results.md`. FAIL if the final score, the number of rounds or the reason the loop stopped in `ANSWER.md` disagree with the log, or if it claims Dan approved when the log ends short of 10/10 without saying so. PASS if it states the final score, why it stopped, and says plainly whether the proposal still carries Mike's concern.