Self-evolution bench — measure every rung, end to end

Script: bench/self_evolution.py

Each rung of the meta stack has its own module and its own tests; nothing showed that they compose. This bench runs the whole chain on one deterministic, offline arithmetic domain and reports every rung's measured number — the evidence that the chain works end to end, no model key:

python -m bench.self_evolution          # human-readable per rung
python -m bench.self_evolution --json   # machine-readable report

It exits 0 only when every rung ran and produced a measurement.

The stages

Stage	What runs	What it reports
seed	two continuous_meta_run sessions (the second seeds from the first)	verdicts, the adopted rule's parameter, the archive count
population	meta_population_run diversifies from the archive's rules	islands, what was promoted, the archive count
exam	exam_archive re-judges adoptions with an independent oracle	passed / flagged / demoted
portfolio	layers_from_archive + portfolio_report reallocate the next window	the layers and their new budgets
harness	two algorithm ports compete; the archive is the leaderboard	each port's best reward, the routed winner, why
chain	chain_audit traces the newest adoption's evidence rings	each ring's status and whether the adoption verifies

Determinism and trust

The domain is a tiny capability-capped arithmetic task set: every run is offline (no model calls) and deterministic (fixed seeds), so the numbers are stable across machines — the temporary directories differ, the measurements do not. Small held-out warnings are silenced because the bench wants a tiny, fast domain.

A rung that raises is recorded as a failed stage (ok: false, with the error) and the bench continues, so a broken rung is the measurement rather than a crash. BenchReport.all_ok is true only when every stage is ok.

Extending it

The bench is written against the modules on main. New rungs can be added as stages once they land — a joint multi-slot evolution stage and a self_improve control-loop stage are the natural next two, so the bench keeps pace with the stack it measures.