1\section{Main results}2\label{sec:results}34\subsection{Execution accounting}56Table~\ref{tab:accounting} reconciles the ledger with the frozen assignment. All \nMainRuns{} confirmatory runs were launched; \nMainTimeouts{} hit the wall-clock limit and \nMainBudget{} exhausted the budget cap. One run (RC0094, F4-conf-02, arm D) ended in an infrastructure error after its reviewer returned a \emph{revise} verdict, because the harness inserted the resumed session into the ledger under the same client session identifier as the initial session (amendment A-004); the defect was fixed and the run re-executed as a fresh attempt after the batch, with the first attempt retained in the ledger and its cost charged to the accounting. No other continuation was needed in the batch: the controller gate passed at its first cycle in every arm C and D run (\nGateControllerFail{} controller gate failures in \nRunsC{}+\nRunsD{} runs), and \nReviewsRevise{} of \nReviews{} reviews returned \emph{revise}. Every executor session finished on its own (\texttt{result.subtype = success}); no human intervened in any session.78\begin{table}[htbp]\centering\small9\caption{Assignment and execution accounting by split. ``Completed'' = executor session finished on its own; ``Evaluated'' = final receipt stored; ``Successes'' = scientific success under the frozen oracles.}10\label{tab:accounting}11\input{../results/tables/tab_accounting}12\end{table}1314\subsection{Primary endpoint}1516Table~\ref{tab:arms} and Figure~\ref{fig:primary} give the task-weighted rate of intervention-free verified completion by arm and the prespecified contrasts. The four arms are indistinguishable: $\hat p_A = \pA$, $\hat p_B = \pB$, $\hat p_C = \pC$, $\hat p_D = \pD$. The primary contrast is $\hat\Delta_{DA} = \dDA$ (task-cluster bootstrap 95\% interval $[\dDAlo, \dDAhi]$; sign-flip permutation $p = \dDAp$); across the \nConfTasks{} tasks, D beat A on \dDAfav{} tasks (favouring D / tied / favouring A). The mechanism contrasts are equally null: B$-$A $= \dBA$ $[\dBAlo, \dBAhi]$, C$-$B $= \dCB$ $[\dCBlo, \dCBhi]$, D$-$C $= \dDC$ $[\dDClo, \dDChi]$. The interval for the primary contrast excludes differences larger than about six percentage points in either direction; at this task difficulty and with this model, the protocol, the gates and the review changed neither the completion rate nor, as shown below, the violation rate, while they raised the cost per run by a factor of \costRatioB{} (B), \costRatioC{} (C) and \costRatioD{} (D) relative to the open instruction.1718\begin{table}[htbp]\centering\small19\caption{Primary and secondary endpoints by arm (confirmatory split, frozen oracles). $\hat p_a$ is the task-weighted completion rate of Eq.~\eqref{eq:phat}; ``Correct (any)'' ignores the envelope; ``Viol.\ rate'' is the share of runs with at least one critical violation; ``Repro.'' is the share whose replication script regenerated the results in a fresh copy; ``Quality'' is the weighted component score.}20\label{tab:arms}21\input{../results/tables/tab_arms_confirmatory}22\end{table}2324\begin{figure}[htbp]\centering25\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{../results/figures/fig_primary_confirmatory.pdf}26\caption{(a) Task-weighted completion by arm with task-cluster bootstrap intervals; (b) paired task-level contrasts with 95\% bootstrap intervals, permutation $p$-values and the count of tasks favouring each side. Confirmatory split, \nMainRuns{} runs, \nConfTasks{} task clusters.}27\label{fig:primary}28\end{figure}2930\begin{table}[htbp]\centering\small31\caption{Prespecified contrasts for the primary endpoint and secondary endpoints (task-cluster bootstrap 95\% intervals, sign-flip permutation $p$, Holm adjustment over the three secondary contrasts).}32\label{tab:contrasts}33\input{../results/tables/tab_contrasts_confirmatory}34\end{table}3536\subsection{Where the failures are}3738Figure~\ref{fig:errors} and Table~\ref{tab:family} locate the failures. They are concentrated in two tasks that failed in every arm, and the reason lies in the oracles rather than in the executors. In F1-conf-01 the source publishes no consumer-price index for October 2025, so the twelve-month growth rate of one window month is undefined; all twelve executor sessions computed every required value correctly, reported \texttt{feasibility = partial} with exactly that reason, and were scored as a false completion because the frozen oracle required \texttt{complete}. In F6-conf-04 the data generator had produced twelve firms with negative training hours; eleven of twelve sessions detected the impossible values, excluded them with a documented exclusion ledger and a data-issue entry, and reported sensitivity estimates on the full sample, which the frozen oracle scored as a wrong count and a wrong baseline because its reference used all 1,200 rows. Both are evaluator defects of the kind the pilot was meant to catch and did not, because the development tasks did not exercise these rules. We did not change the frozen scoring. Under the prespecified rubric-label sensitivity analysis (amendment A-005), in which \texttt{partial} with the correct reason is accepted for F1-conf-01 and the 1,188-row sample with an independently recomputed baseline is accepted for F6-conf-04, the arm rates become $\sensA$, $\sensB$, $\sensC$, $\sensD$ and the primary contrast $\sensDA$ $[\sensDAlo, \sensDAhi]$: the ceiling is near-total and the null is unchanged.3940The remaining failures are isolated: one arm-A run of F3-conf-02 reported naive forecasts and a model-error summary inconsistent with its own forecast ledger (four criteria failed, no violation), and one arm-D run of F6-conf-01 marked an effect claim as supported on the genuine-null weekday task (an invalid-inference violation). The critical-violation picture (Table~\ref{tab:arms}, Figure~\ref{fig:quality}) is therefore dominated by the F1-conf-01 feasibility label (\nMainViolRuns{} runs with a violation in total, twelve of them that label); no leakage, fabrication, unreported-substitution or provenance violation occurred in any of the \nMainRuns{} runs. The length-matched control (arm L; Section~\ref{sec:recovery}) and the development pilot (23 of 24 successes) point in the same direction.4142\begin{figure}[htbp]\centering43\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{../results/figures/fig_quality_confirmatory.pdf}44\caption{(a) Quality components by arm (task-weighted means); (b) share of runs with at least one critical violation, by type and arm. Confirmatory split, frozen oracles.}45\label{fig:quality}46\end{figure}4748\begin{figure}[htbp]\centering49\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{../results/figures/fig_errors_confirmatory.pdf}50\caption{Failed scientific criteria by task and criterion, stacked by arm (number of runs; denominator \nRepeats{} runs per task and arm).}51\label{fig:errors}52\end{figure}5354\begin{table}[htbp]\centering\small55\caption{Task-family heterogeneity: completion and violation rates by family and arm (four tasks per family, \nRepeats{} repeats).}56\label{tab:family}57\input{../results/tables/tab_family_confirmatory}58\end{table}5960\subsection{What the gates and the reviewer actually did}6162The absence of an effect on outcomes does not mean the mechanisms were inert; it means they found nothing to fix at the level the oracles measure. The post-hoc contract check that all arms receive failed for \nContractFailA{} arm-A and \nContractFailB{} arm-B runs (missing report sections, claims referencing absent keys, or a replication script that did not regenerate the results byte for byte), and for no arm C or D run: the gate did enforce the deliverable contract. The scientific criteria, however, were met with or without that contract, and the contract failures of A and B did not translate into scientific failures because the evaluators score values, not formatting. Reviewers in arm D returned on average \reviewIssuesMean{} issues per review, almost all minor (unreproduced context percentages, over-assured wording), and asked for a revision \nReviewsRevise{} time(s); the one revision cycle that completed (RC0094, second attempt) ended in acceptance and a scientifically successful run. The behavioural audit found no outside-workspace path references in any run and no voluntary invocation of the gate program by arms A or B. One qualification applies to every continuation in this study: because of the launcher defect of amendment A-006, the text of the gate feedback and of the review feedback never reached the executor as prompt text; the resumed sessions received a one-word prompt and found the controller's gate receipts and the reviewer's \texttt{review.json} in their workspace, which is how the single review-repair cycle of the benchmark and the gate cycles of the transfer study were resolved. A post-fix verification set (the smoke task under all four arms and the real-time forecasting project under arm C, run with the corrected launcher after the analysis) is reported in Table~\ref{tab:postfix}; it is not pooled with the frozen results.6364\subsection{Cost, time and the quality--cost frontier}6566Table~\ref{tab:cost} and Figure~\ref{fig:cost} report the resource side with full denominators. Mean inference cost per run (client list-price estimate) rose from \costA{} USD in A to \costB{} (B), \costC{} (C) and \costD{} USD (D, of which the reviewer session is about a third); median wall time rose from \wallA{} s to \wallD{} s. Because completion did not change, cost per verified completion rose in the same proportion (\costPerSuccessA{} to \costPerSuccessD{} USD). The frontier in Figure~\ref{fig:cost}(b) is flat: the additional spending bought contract compliance and reviewer commentary, not scientific validity. The total inference cost of the confirmatory stage was \costMainTotal{} USD; all splits together (smoke, pilot, main, rerun, transfer, recovery, ablation) cost \costAllSessions{} USD of inference, which is small next to the builder effort reported in Section~\ref{sec:reflexive}.6768\begin{table}[htbp]\centering\small69\caption{Runtime, usage and cost by arm (USD, client list-price estimates; wall time in seconds; ``Cost/success'' = total cost divided by the number of verified completions).}70\label{tab:cost}71\input{../results/tables/tab_cost_confirmatory}72\end{table}7374\begin{figure}[htbp]\centering75\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{../results/figures/fig_cost_confirmatory.pdf}76\caption{(a) Inference cost and wall time of every confirmatory run; (b) quality--cost frontier: mean cost per run against task-weighted completion, by arm.}77\label{fig:cost}78\end{figure}7980\begin{table}[htbp]\centering\small81\caption{Post-fix verification runs (corrected launcher, full user prompt; amendment A-006). Development smoke task under all four arms and the real-time forecasting project under arm C. Not pooled with the frozen results.}82\label{tab:postfix}83\input{../results/tables/tab_postfix}84\end{table}85