WM-08: Find applicable patterns with independent expectations

@flexiarg aif/declare-the-conditioning
@title Declare the Conditioning (Score the Fit, Not the Form)
@keywords conditioning, situation, context, fit, EFE, curried, referent
@audience aif implementers, pattern authors, futon developers
@tone technical
@style pattern
@references [aif/currency-before-merge aif/valuation-reads-the-paperwork]

@how aif/structured-observation-vector
@see-also aif/term-to-channel-traceability
@why no matching problem dossier node (@holds-at absent; not among the twenty dossier nodes R1-R17, R20, TRACE). Negative claim per the committed check futon2 holes labs library-loop runs l3_no_dossier_check.py, receipt runs L3-no-dossier-check.edn (enumerates every aif pattern's @holds-at against the dossier node set extracted from PROBLEMS-*.md headings). Rationale not invented (L3 rationale-backfill pilot, zai-1, 2026-09-05)
@how own mechanism: Every valuation surface must declare what slice of the situation it consumed; G(candidate) is a lambda — only G(candidate | situation) is a value. (source: this pattern's ! conclusion line; L3 rationale-backfill pilot, zai-1, 2026-09-05)
! conclusion: Every valuation surface must declare what slice of the situation it consumed; G(candidate) is a lambda — only G(candidate | situation) is a value.

  + context: A stack grows multiple valuation surfaces (blend terms, wholeness, ΔG legs, field diagrams), each labelled with the same vocabulary ("EFE", "value", "score").

  + IF:
    You want valuations to be comparable, auditable, and honestly labelled.

  + HOWEVER:
    Different surfaces silently consume different slices of the world — one eats the live observation vector, another a 160-char prose scrap, a third nothing at all — so identical labels name incomparable objects, and cross-surface comparisons are apples-to-oranges without anyone having lied.

  + THEN:
    Give every valuation surface a three-axis declaration: SENSE (which formal object it claims), SELECTION-SEMANTICS (extremum / amortized sample / bound — over what menu), and CONDITIONING (what situation-slice it consumed). Render the declaration where the number is rendered. In pattern terms: Context → (Problem → Solution) — application is modus ponens; the world supplies the antecedent; score the fit, never the form alone.

  + BECAUSE:
    Canonical expected free energy is G(π; Q(s), C) — conditioned on beliefs and preferences by definition; a policy has no value in vacuo, and Alexander says the same of form and context. Surfaces that skip the declaration re-invent the mislabeling one level up.

    + evidence: M-evaluate-policies §9.6–9.7 + exhibit "conditions on" column (futon2, 2026-07-03): the atomic-action lane conditioned on the live observation vector while the cascade lane ate a title+status scrap and two native components consumed no situation at all — one arena, incomparable conditioning. E5 measured the conditioning channel: situation-enriched ψ rebuilt 11/13 cascades. The fold contract already typed circumstance as an argument; the plumbing had starved it.

  + NEXT-STEPS:
    - Add the sense × selection-semantics × conditioning triple to each EFE-labelled surface's declaration (extends the efe-referent-declaration shape).
    - Route all lanes toward ONE situation source (the structured observation vector) where feasible.

@flexiarg aif/no-self-certification
@title No Self-Certification (A Verdict Moves Only on Evidence Its Maker Did Not Manufacture)
@sigils [⊘/⟲]
@keywords self-certification, circular evidence, prior-equals-value, independence tag, censored observation, calibration, verdict, structural enforcement, untagged-never-counts
@audience anyone building a measurement, calibration, gate, certifier, or reward channel
@tone foundational
@style pattern
@why war-room/wr-25-good-news-gets-the-same-evidence-discipline-as-bad   ;; editorial, claude-13 2026-08-23: retrospective sense-making, NOT a causal
;; claim -- WR-19 did not produce this pattern. See README-flexiarg 5a.
@holds-at R9   ;; pegged 2026-08-30 (claude-15): the catalogue paragraph numbered R9 in p4ng/sec-catalog.tex; see PREREG-war-machine §1b

@how aif/measurement-window-hygiene
@see-also aif/interoceptive-tripwires
@why R9 dossier problem: Control-stage R9 solves who may certify a result: the roster places **“No self-certification”** in ACT's assurance band (`p4ng/empirics-futon/control-stages.edn:43`; control-stage/catalogue numbering). (source: futon2 holes labs wm-contract PROBLEMS-assurance-band-batch6.md, R9, The problem it solves; L3 rationale-backfill pilot, zai-1, 2026-09-05)
@how own mechanism: A measurement / verdict apparatus must never be moveable by evidence it manufactured itself. Enforce this STRUCTURALLY — with tags the apparatus cannot fake (independence, measured-vs-fallback, settled-vs-transient) and a verdict that counts only those tags — not by vigilance. (source: this pattern's ! conclusion line; L3 rationale-backfill pilot, zai-1, 2026-09-05)
@why problems/r9-no-self-certification (L14 edge-resolution; basis: holds -- the problem node's own holds-at token covers this pattern; source: receipt runs/L14-edge-resolution.edn; zai-1, 2026-09-05)
! conclusion: A measurement / verdict apparatus must never be moveable by evidence it manufactured itself. Enforce this STRUCTURALLY — with tags the apparatus cannot fake (independence, measured-vs-fallback, settled-vs-transient) and a verdict that counts only those tags — not by vigilance.

  + context: You are building an instrument that issues a verdict — "calibrated", "passed",
    "admissible", "rewardable" — from evidence that the same system also produces, stages, or
    scores. The verdict will look earned long before it is.

  + IF:
      An instrument issues a verdict from evidence it also produces or stages (a calibrator over
      its own predictions, a gate over its own outputs, a reward channel over its own scores).

  + HOWEVER:
      On first contact with reality, every layer tries to certify ITSELF, and each attempt looks
      rigorous: the forward model scores its own constants (`prior == value`); the evidence reader
      eats its own staging files; the realised channel copies predicted on success (a censored
      0.0); the calibration clears on degenerate volume. Vigilance cannot catch these — an
      instrument's *first* catches are about itself, and no human watches every path.

  + THEN:
      Require that a verdict may be moved ONLY by evidence the verdict-maker did not manufacture.
      Tag every evidence record at birth with the properties the apparatus cannot fake —
      `:independent?` (was there an out-of-band witness?), source (`:measured` vs
      `:target-absent-fallback`), settledness (`:settled` vs `:transient`) — and have the verdict
      count ONLY the records whose tags clear. Strictness default: **untagged never counts**.

  + BECAUSE:
      Circularity is invisible from inside the loop precisely because every internal reading is
      consistent with every other — that is what `prior == value` means. The only thing that breaks
      it is a referent the maker had no hand in: an external witness, a settled re-read of a world
      it does not control, a tag it cannot forge. Structure survives where vigilance fails, and it
      converts "be careful" (unauditable) into "the tag is absent, so it does not count" (checkable).

  + canonical-instance:
      The FutonZero G-SIM calibration arc (WM-pilot, 2026-06-11): four distinct self-certification
      attempts surfaced live — censored fallback, transient spike, `prior == value`, and
      operator-gate-as-fruit — each caught only because an independence/source/settled tag existed
      to exclude it, and each then encoded as a permanent structural guard. See
      `[[M-the-perfect-crime]]` (the forensic framing: the crime relocates to a scarcer witness;
      this pattern is the structural half of that ladder) and the reward-red-team fixture
      (the executable suite of the shapes).

  + how-to-apply:
      Before trusting any "it passed", ask: did this verdict move on evidence the system made?
      If yes, find the un-manufactured referent (external witness / settled read / out-of-band
      tag) and gate the verdict on it. If there is none, the verdict is decoration. Minted from the
      arc that learned it, WM-pilot 2026-06-11 (arc-2 cycle 13).