Pokémon TCG Metanoia Spec 01 — Channel Protocol and Cognitive Swarm

State machine

Spec 01 defines a staged research loop:

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> INIT
    INIT --> GENERATE
    GENERATE --> DEBATE
    DEBATE --> RANK
    RANK --> EVOLVE
    EVOLVE --> META_REVIEW
    META_REVIEW --> RESPOND
    META_REVIEW --> DELEGATE
    META_REVIEW --> HALT
    RESPOND --> [*]
    DELEGATE --> [*]
    HALT --> [*]

The states are a coordination protocol, not a claim that one model internally executes a human-like deliberation. Each transition should have an artifact, a decision rule and a provenance pointer.

Anti-pollution boundary

The protocol's anti-pollution idea is directly relevant to this project: hypotheses, evidence, criticism and final synthesis should not be allowed to silently collapse into one undifferentiated context. For the Pokémon pipeline, the same principle maps to:

• replay-derived observations;
• engine-generated oracle labels;
• model-generated synthetic vehicles;
• validation metrics;
• tournament outcomes;
• user interpretations and future blueprints.

The Stage 3 incident demonstrates why this matters technically. If training-only signals, sparse auxiliary targets and validation summaries share an unclear contract, an apparently coherent run can conceal objective interference.

Ranking and evolution

The protocol proposes ranking candidate explanations or hypotheses before evolution. In this project, that should mean comparing evidence quality and reproducibility, not using an Elo label as a universal truth score. A candidate architecture should carry its source commit, test result, data cohort and unresolved assumptions.

HALT and delegation

HALT is a valid result when evidence is insufficient, a destructive action would be required, or the next phase is outside the authorized scope. Delegation is valid when another bounded source or human decision is required. Neither state is failure; both preserve epistemic control.

Primary source

docs/metanoia/01_channel_protocol_and_cognitive_swarm.md

Cross-references

• pokemon_tcg_metanoia_suite — suite index.
• pokemon_tcg_stage3_training_failure_postmortem — anti-pollution relevance to training/validation.
• pokemon_tcg_docs_corpus_provenance — source-role separation.