I over-applied a proof-path rule. "No LLM-as-judge" guards Arborist's
*verifier* (an LLM in the proof path = the circularity Arborist
kills; #000049's poor reliability is a proof-path-model constraint).
The control experiment's judge is external science — outside BOTH
arms, scoring post-hoc, touching neither system's internals — so it
cannot break the experiment. fox: use a strong SOTA model
(stronger than both systems under test), blinded + reference-
grounded + transcript-logged. This lifts the wrongly-imposed
atomic-fact-only limit (judge handles essay grounding; #000049's
exclusion was right for the proof path, wrong for external science);
deterministic gold-key demoted to a cheap atomic cross-check.
Still fox calls: fixture population, which SOTA judge (API
cost/egress), spend. Scaffold; no build past gate-1.
russell@unturf.com
1fdae8830a