Roadmapchevron_rightPhase II · Signal
arrow_backPhase Iarrow_forwardPhase III
II SIGNALPhase II2026 — 2028

Measure the mind.

You can’t improve what you can’t measure — and an agent’s behavior is just information. Phase II puts a number on it.

personNamed for Claude Shannon· 1916 — 2001
brush render: ASCII

infoRendered in ASCII — his face read as characters on a screen. Fitting, for the man who taught us that everything, even a face, is information.

The brief

The leap from autocomplete to understanding. Phase II is GISM — the engine that makes the machine actually reason.

phase-02.spec
status◷ NEXT — in active development
named forClaude Shannon · 1916–2001
eraafter the substrate ships
deliversplanning, grounding, faithful & calibrated reasoning
unlocksa mind that can safely learn (Phase III)
measured inbits, not vibes
scope7 milestones · 15 tasks
GISM
the engine
true reasoning & understanding
≤ 0.5%
hallucination
gated, claim-level
100%
faithful
shown reasoning = used reasoning
≤ 0.05
calibration
confidence ≈ accuracy (ECE)
The stakes

A system you can’t trust to report itself can’t be governed.

Capability without faithfulness is a confident liar. GISM makes reasoning explicit, grounded, and measurable — the difference between a model that sounds right and one that can show its work.

The road to AGIPhase II of V · 40% there
I Foundational
II Signal
III Perception
IV Depth
V Singularity
psychology

Reasoning, not recall

Plans, reflects, and revises mid-thought — the jump single-shot models can’t make.

visibility

Thoughts you can audit

The chain of thought it shows is provably the one it used.

foundation

Bedrock for learning

Everything Phase III learns, it learns on top of trustworthy reasoning.

The mind behind the phase

Claude Shannon

Father of information theory · the man who measured meaning

Claude Shannon’s 1937 master’s thesis — still arguably the most consequential ever written — showed that Boolean logic could be built from electrical switches, handing us the digital circuit. Then in 1948 he did it again: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” defined the bit, proved how much information a noisy channel can carry, and quietly founded the field every modem, codec, and language model rests on. In his spare time he juggled on a unicycle and built a machine whose only function was to switch itself off.

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point a message selected at another.

A Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1948
lightbulb

Yes — Claude Shannon, and Claude the model. The naming is a homage the field is quietly proud of. Phase II takes the “information” in information theory literally and scores agents in bits. Entropy isn’t a vibe; it’s an integral.

Selected timeline
1937
Master’s thesis: Boolean algebra as switching circuits
1943
Meets Turing over tea at Bell Labs; they talk machine minds
1948
“A Mathematical Theory of Communication” — entropy, the bit
1950
“Theseus”: a relay mouse that learns a maze
1950
Publishes one of the first computer-chess algorithms
Phase 02 · what we’re building

Information theory — the bit

graphic_eq
Information theory — the bit
Meaning made measurable. The first time anyone could put a number on how much was actually being said.

Phase II turns runs into signal. Evaluation harnesses become first-class, versioned artifacts — graded on every run, gating every promotion. Telemetry, durable memory, and context compression let agents carry state across long horizons without drowning in it. We score capability, faithfulness, and drift in numbers, not adjectives.

Shannon’s frame is the whole design: an agent is a channel between what you intended and what it did, and hallucination is noise on that channel. The job isn’t to wish the noise away — it is to measure it, drive it toward its entropy floor, and protect the signal that survives. A system you can’t trust to report itself accurately can’t be governed, however capable it looks in a demo.

intentwhat you meantagentencodenoisedecodeactwhat it dideval harness · taps the channel at every stageSNRsignal (grounded) over noise (ungrounded) — ≥ 0 dB or it does not shiphallucination = measured

schemaIntent enters; the agent encodes it into actions; the world adds noise; we decode what actually happened and compare. The gap is hallucination — measured, not described. Evals tap the channel at every stage.

The plan

Four workstreams, one substrate

Named for Claude Shannon, scoped for 2026 — 2028. Each workstream ships on its own cadence; none ships without the gates further down this page.

fact_check

Evals as versioned artifacts

2026–27
  • check_circleEval suites live in the repo, semver’d alongside the agents they grade
  • check_circleGraded every run; a regression blocks promotion automatically
  • check_circleGolden traces + adversarial sets, both diffable over time
graphic_eq

Faithfulness & hallucination scoring

2027 Q1
  • check_circleClaim-level grounding: every assertion traced to a source or flagged
  • check_circleA continuous hallucination rate per agent version (noise has a number)
  • check_circleCalibration tracking — does stated confidence match observed accuracy?
memory

Durable memory & context compression

2027–28
  • check_circleLong-horizon memory with provenance, not just a bigger window
  • check_circleLossy-but-faithful compression: keep the signal, drop the redundancy
  • check_circleRetrieval that’s auditable — you can see why a memory surfaced
monitoring

Capability & regression dashboards

2028 Q1
  • check_circleCapability tracked over every version, not a single launch-day number
  • check_circleDrift alarms — a brief teal flash when behavior moves, per house style
  • check_circlePer-agent SNR: correctness over noise, release to release
≤ 0.5%
Hallucination gate
per release, claim-level, blocking
99%
Grounding
claims traced to a source
≤ 0.05
Calibration (ECE)
confidence ≈ real accuracy
every run
Eval coverage
graded, not sampled
checkI · FOUNDATIONAL
done
chevron_right
II · SIGNAL
YOU ARE HERE
chevron_right
III · PERCEPTION
ahead
chevron_right
IV · DEPTH
ahead
chevron_right
V · SINGULARITY
flag AGI
The progression

Each milestone unlocks the next

Phase II is GISM — the leap from a model that completes patterns to one that genuinely reasons and understands. These milestones build reasoning that is explicit, grounded, faithful, and measurable: a mind whose thoughts you can read, check, and trust. This is the difference between an autocomplete and an understanding.

Planned 22
01schedule ~2 mo
task

Prototype a deliberate reasoning loop

A model that plans and revises mid-thought instead of decoding in one pass.

02schedule ~1 mo
task

Separate reasoning trace from output

Make the thinking an explicit, inspectable artifact.

03schedule ~1 mo
task

Benchmark multi-step reasoning

Tasks that single-shot models fail by construction.

04Planned
psychology
lock_openOnce the substrate can host itmilestone ● · 1 / 7
construction buildreasoning kernel

GISM v0 — the reasoning kernel

A system that plans, reflects, and revises — not one that merely completes.

deployed_code shipsplan–reflect–revise loopexplicit reasoning tracemulti-step benchmark
05schedule ~1 mo
task

Attach evidence to every claim

Each assertion links to a source or is flagged as ungrounded.

06schedule ~6 wks
task

Separate the known from the inferred

The system marks what it is certain of versus guessing.

07Planned
link
lock_openOnce reasoning is explicitmilestone ● · 2 / 7
construction buildgrounded

Grounded understanding

Understanding becomes demonstrable, not asserted.

deployed_code shipsclaim→evidence linksknown-vs-inferred tagsgrounding score
08schedule ~2 mo
task

Measure chain-of-thought faithfulness

Does the shown reasoning match the reasoning actually used?

09schedule ~6 wks
task

Detect rationalization

Catch post-hoc stories that do not drive the answer.

10Planned
visibility
lock_openOnce understanding is groundedmilestone ● · 3 / 7
fact_check evalfaithful CoT

Faithful self-report

The reasoning it shows is the reasoning it used — measured, not decorative.

deployed_code shipsCoT-faithfulness metricrationalization detectorfaithfulness dashboard
11schedule ~2 mo
task

Build provenance-tracked memory

A durable store where every memory traces to its origin.

12schedule ~1 quarter
task

Add an internal world-model

A structured model it reasons over across runs.

13schedule ~1 mo
task

Test long-horizon consistency

Does understanding persist between sessions, not reset?

14Planned
travel_explore
lock_openOnce reasoning is faithfulmilestone ● · 4 / 7
construction buildworld-model

World-model & durable memory

Understanding that persists across long horizons instead of resetting each run.

deployed_code shipsprovenance memory storeinternal world-modellong-horizon consistency tests
15schedule ~2 mo
task

Teach it to grade its own reasoning

Self-critique that catches its own errors.

16schedule ~1 mo
task

Add an “ask for help” path

Escalate genuine uncertainty instead of confidently guessing.

17schedule ~6 wks
task

Calibrate confidence (ECE)

Stated confidence matches measured accuracy.

18Planned
tune
lock_openOnce it has a world-modelmilestone ● · 5 / 7
fact_check evalself-eval · ECE

Self-evaluation & calibration

It knows what it knows — and reports its uncertainty honestly.

deployed_code shipsself-critique loopask-for-help pathECE calibration
19schedule ~1 mo
task

Score reasoning on every run

Capability and faithfulness graded continuously.

20schedule ~3 wks
task

Gate promotion on reasoning evals

No untrustworthy reasoning is allowed to ship.

21Planned
verified_user
verified_user
lock_openOnce confidence is calibratedgate ◆ · 6 / 7
verified_user safety gatereasoning gate

Reasoning evals as the gate

Trust is enforced, not assumed — however impressive the answers look.

deployed_code shipsper-run reasoning scorepromotion gatetrust report
22Planned
verified
auto_awesome
lock_openOnce reasoning is trustworthymilestone ★ · 7 / 7
auto_awesome milestoneGISM GA

GISM GA — reasoning you can audit

True reasoning and understanding, inspectable end to end. The foundation everything after it learns on.

deployed_code shipsGISM 1.0audit trail per inferencereasoning API
How to read this map
task — work to do milestone reached safety gateauto_awesome the horizonschedule duration = effort each task takes
Live nowNext upSoonPlannedHorizon
The capability ladder

Where this phase takes the system

Phase II is a rung, not a leap. Here is the honest before and after — what the platform cannot yet do entering this phase, and what it can do leaving it.

trip_originEntering Phase II
removeModels that pattern-match but do not truly reason
removeConfidence you cannot trust
removeUnderstanding that resets every run
arrow_forward
flagLeaving Phase II
check_circleA system that plans, reflects, and revises
check_circleGrounded, faithful, calibrated reasoning
check_circleUnderstanding that persists and can be audited
The method

How we actually carry out each milestone

Information theory gives us the discipline: define the signal, name the noise, and measure the gap. Each Phase II milestone is a way of putting a defensible number on something the field too often describes with a shrug.

M1

Evals as versioned artifacts

ObjectiveMake evaluation a reproducible, adversarial, versioned artifact that the whole system is accountable to.

1
Co-locate evals with agents
The suite lives in the same repo and shares the agent's version line, so you can always ask exactly how v1.4 scored on its own v1.4 eval.
2
Hold out and rotate
Maintain golden traces and an adversarial set, and rotate held-out items so that optimizing the visible eval doesn't silently overfit it.
3
Grade on replay
Because Phase I runs are deterministic, grading runs against captured traces — evals are fast, cheap, and exactly comparable across versions.
4
Gate explicitly
Mark which metrics are advisory and which are blocking; a red blocking metric fails the promotion, full stop, with no human able to wave it through.
science How we validate it

Two independent graders plus one adversarial grader must agree within tolerance; eval-on-eval drift is itself monitored over time.

flag Done when

Every capability claim is backed by a versioned, reproducible eval that anyone with the repo can re-run and challenge.

deployed_code Deliverableseval suite formatreplay graderpromotion gate
M2

Faithfulness & hallucination scoring

ObjectivePut a continuous, claim-level number on how much of what an agent says is actually grounded.

1
Decompose into claims
Parse an agent's output into atomic, checkable assertions. You cannot score a paragraph, only the claims inside it.
2
Trace each claim to evidence
Link every claim to a source in the run's context or tool returns; an unlinkable claim is, by definition, ungrounded.
3
Score the channel
Define signal as grounded claims and noise as ungrounded ones, then require SNR ≥ 0 dB and a hallucination rate under the release ceiling.
4
Track calibration
Compare stated confidence to measured accuracy; reward honest uncertainty and penalize confident error, because the second is what gets people hurt.
science How we validate it

Sampled human adjudication calibrates the automatic scorer, and the scorer's own error bars are published alongside its verdicts.

flag Done when

Hallucination rate ≤ 0.5% per release at the claim level, with calibration error ≤ 0.05 — both gating.

deployed_code Deliverablesclaim decomposergrounding scorercalibration meter
M3

Durable memory & context compression

ObjectiveLet agents act over long horizons by remembering faithfully and forgetting deliberately.

1
Store with provenance
Every memory carries where it came from and when, so retrieval is auditable and any surfaced memory can be traced back to its origin.
2
Retrieve by relevance, prove by source
Rank memories for the task at hand, but always require the supporting source so retrieval errors are catchable rather than invisible.
3
Compress redundancy, never commitments
Distinguish signal from noise: compress transcripts freely, but a compressed memory must preserve every fact that binds future behavior.
4
Bound the cost
Keep long-horizon reasoning sub-quadratic so memory is an asset, not a tax that quietly forces truncation and amnesia.
science How we validate it

Long-horizon tasks are replayed with and without compression; faithfulness must not degrade beyond a published threshold.

flag Done when

Agents sustain multi-day tasks with auditable memory and no measurable loss of faithfulness from compression.

deployed_code Deliverablesprovenance memoryfaithful compressorauditable retrieval
M4

Capability & regression dashboards

ObjectiveMake capability and its erosion visible across time, so improvement is a trend you can defend, not a launch-day boast.

1
Version every number
Tie each metric to an artifact id so capability reads as a curve over versions, with regressions as visible as gains.
2
Alarm on drift
Behavior that moves between releases raises a drift alarm — a brief teal flash, per house style — before it hardens into a regression.
3
Separate capability from faithfulness
Track them as orthogonal axes; a more capable but less faithful release is a regression, not progress, and is labeled as such.
4
Publish the methodology
The dashboard's definitions are open, so the numbers can be argued with — which is the only way they earn trust.
science How we validate it

Synthetic regressions are injected and must be caught by the drift alarms before any human notices the change in behavior.

flag Done when

Every agent carries a defensible capability/faithfulness history, and no silent regression survives a release.

deployed_code Deliverablesper-version metricsdrift alarmsopen methodology
east
What Phase II hands Phase III

Phase II hands Phase III a system that can measure itself honestly. Learning without measurement is just drift with good intentions — so the meter had to come before the motor. Now the platform can be allowed to change itself, because we can finally tell whether a change made it better.

Under the hood

What it looks like when you build it

Declarative, versioned, and boring on purpose — the interesting part is that there are no surprises. Copy it; it is closer to real than to mock.

terminaleval.yaml — grading is an artifact, not an afterthought
1# eval.yaml — versioned next to the agent it judges.
2suite: invoice-reconciler/faithfulness
3version: 0.9.0
4
5metrics:
6 hallucination_rate: { max: 0.5%, gate: true } # blocks promotion
7 grounding: { min: 99%, per: claim }
8 calibration_error: { max: 0.05, metric: ECE }
9
10channel: # Shannon’s frame, made literal
11 signal: grounded_claims
12 noise: ungrounded_claims
13 require: SNR >= 0 dB # or it does not ship
14
15# $ clever eval --gate → promotion fails on the first red metric.
16# noise has a number. measure it, then drive it to the floor.
The ethical commitment

Alignment is signal integrity

Hallucination is noise on the channel between intent and act. We drive it toward its entropy floor and defend the faithful signal — because a system you can’t trust to report itself accurately can’t be governed, no matter how capable.

verified_userGates that must pass before promotion
01No promotion past a failing faithfulness gate — hallucination has a hard ceiling per release
02Every capability claim is backed by a versioned eval, reproducible by anyone with the repo
03Confidence must be calibrated — a system that is wrong and sure is worse than one that is wrong and says so
04Drift is monitored continuously; silent behavior change is treated as an incident
What could go wrong

The hard parts, said out loud

A roadmap that only lists wins is marketing. These are the open problems this phase inherits or creates — the ones we would rather you scrutinize than discover.

warning

Goodhart’s law

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The moment an eval gates promotion, agents — and the people tuning them — optimize the eval. Held-out adversarial sets and rotating graders push back, but the arms race is permanent.

warning

The entropy floor is not zero

Some uncertainty is irreducible — the world is genuinely ambiguous. The goal isn’t a 0% hallucination rate (that’s a confident liar); it’s a calibrated one that knows the floor and reports it.

warning

Measuring changes the system

Heavy instrumentation has cost and can alter behavior — the observer effect, in software. Telemetry budgets and sampling keep the channel from being dominated by the meter.

SNR ≥ 0 dB or it does not ship. // Shannon juggled on a unicycle; we settle for juggling correctness and capability.
Capability radar

Where the system sits on the way to AGI

Six axes, scored 0–10. Watch the shape fill out, phase by phase, until every axis is maxed at the horizon — the moment all of them are high at once is what we call aligned AGI.

REASONINGAUTONOMYGENERALITYOVERSIGHTOBSERVABILITYOPENNESS
Phase II now aligned AGI
Reasoning7/10
Autonomy4/10
Generality4/10
Oversight8/10
Observability9/10
Openness9/10

Reasoning jumps from a flat 2 to a 7 — the GISM leap. Autonomy and generality stay deliberately low: a mind that reasons, but does not yet act or generalize on its own.

The difference

What changes in Phase II

The honest contrast — what the world looks like without Phase II, and what it looks like with it.

cancelPattern completion
removeGuesses the next token
removeConfidence you cannot trust
removeForgets between runs
removeCannot show its work faithfully
check_circleGISM reasoning
addPlans, reflects, and revises
addCalibrated, honest uncertainty
addPersistent world-model and memory
addAuditable, faithful reasoning
Anatomy

Anatomy of a thought

How GISM turns an intent into a reasoned, auditable answer.

01
input
Intake
Parse the intent and what is being asked.
chevron_right
02
route
Plan
Lay out an explicit reasoning path.
chevron_right
03
link
Ground
Tie each claim to evidence.
chevron_right
04
rule
Reflect
Self-critique and revise the reasoning.
chevron_right
05
visibility
Report
A faithful chain of thought and a calibrated answer.
What you can build

In your hands at this phase

Concrete things Phase II puts within reach — not someday, but as each milestone above lands.

fact_check

Trustworthy analysts

Agents whose every claim is grounded and auditable.

psychology

Multi-step solvers

Tasks that need planning, not just recall.

memory

Long-horizon copilots

Assistants that remember and reason across sessions.

rule

Self-checking pipelines

Agents that catch their own errors before you do.

The lexicon

Speak the language of Phase II

The handful of terms this phase introduces — the words you’ll need to read the rest of the page, and the docs.

GISM

The reasoning engine — plans, reflects, revises.

Grounding

Tying a claim to a verifiable source.

Faithfulness

The shown reasoning matches the used reasoning.

Calibration

Stated confidence matches measured accuracy (ECE).

World-model

An internal model the system reasons over.

Entropy floor

The irreducible uncertainty a faithful system reports.

Builder FAQ

The questions you’re actually asking

Straight answers, in the brand’s voice. Tap a question.

Prior art & further reading

Standing on the right shoulders

The work this phase is built on — read the source, then come build the next line of it.

1948
A Mathematical Theory of CommunicationC. E. Shannon

Entropy, the bit, and the noisy channel.

2022
Chain-of-Thought PromptingWei et al.

Reasoning steps unlock multi-step ability.

2023
Measuring CoT Faithfulnessthe field

Does the explanation reflect the computation?

open
Calibration in language modelsthe field

When does stated confidence track accuracy?

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