{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_four_proposal_generalization60_20260803","cell_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__futurism_foresight","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"foresight_scenario_set_behavioral_contract","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Behavioral Contract for Representation-Independent Water-Futures Scenario Sets","problem":"A regional water authority revisits the same long-range drought scenario set across facilitated workshops, narrative briefs, spreadsheets, causal maps, and simulation models. Each representation embeds different implicit rules for scenario identity, driver inclusion, evidence provenance, uncertainty, and implication derivation. Planning teams therefore cannot tell whether a translated scenario set preserves the original foresight meaning or merely resembles it.","actors":["Regional water authority foresight lead","Water-resource planners who create and revise scenarios","Infrastructure, finance, conservation, and emergency-management teams that consume scenario implications","Facilitators and analysts who translate scenarios between methods","Tool or model maintainers who implement scenario representations","Governance body that owns the resulting water strategy"],"observable_state":"Given one approved scenario set, two teams encoding it in different media can return different answers to contract-level questions such as which scenarios contain a specified driver, which claims support an implication, whether every scenario spans the agreed horizon, and whether a revision preserves or forks scenario identity. Current reviews inspect decks, fields, diagrams, or model structure rather than testing shared observable behavior, so equivalence after translation is undetermined.","consequence":"Options may be compared against futures that changed during translation, while decision records continue to label them as the same scenario set. This weakens traceability, makes tool replacement risky, and can cause adaptation choices to be justified by representation-specific assumptions rather than the governed foresight object.","affected_objective":"Maintain semantically traceable, plural, and comparable long-range water futures while allowing analysts to change facilitation methods, storage formats, and modeling tools.","intervention":"Define a versioned abstract component called a Foresight Scenario Set. Its public operations create a bounded horizon; add, revise, fork, and retire scenarios; attach drivers, uncertainties, claims, evidence references, and implications; query coverage and provenance; compare scenario identity; and freeze a decision-use version. Its laws require every active scenario to retain a stable identifier, explicit horizon, provenance for decision-relevant claims, declared treatment of uncertainty, and distinguishability from at least one other active scenario; revisions that alter a defining driver must fork identity rather than silently overwrite it. Preconditions, postconditions, allowed errors, and side-effect limits are specified independently of any deck, database, graph, or simulation. Implementations expose only opaque scenario-set handles and are substitutable only after passing the same black-box and metamorphic conformance checks.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Abstract behavioral surface","domain_realization":"Operations over scenario identity, horizons, drivers, uncertainties, claims, evidence references, implications, provenance queries, comparison, forking, retirement, and version freezing."},{"archetype_element":"Hidden representation","domain_realization":"Narrative cards, slide order, spreadsheet columns, graph schemas, facilitator notes, simulation variables, and storage layout remain non-contractual."},{"archetype_element":"Behavioral laws and invariants","domain_realization":"Stable identity, explicit horizon, traceable decision-relevant claims, declared uncertainty treatment, preserved provenance, plural distinguishable scenarios, and mandatory identity forks after defining changes."},{"archetype_element":"Error and side-effect semantics","domain_realization":"Invalid revisions return typed violations without mutating the approved set; queries do not alter scenarios; freezing creates an immutable decision-use version."},{"archetype_element":"Conformance oracle","domain_realization":"One parameterized suite submits operation sequences and public queries to each representation and compares only contract-defined observations."},{"archetype_element":"Substitutability rule","domain_realization":"A representation may replace another for planning use only when it passes the shared suite for the applicable contract version; visual similarity or field matching is insufficient."},{"archetype_element":"Leakage control","domain_realization":"Audits identify dependencies on slide ordering, diagram position, internal probability defaults, model variable names, or undocumented categories and either seal them or promote them to explicit promises."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"abstract_data_type_specification","role":"Defines the abstract Scenario Set value, operation semantics, invariants, and a mapping from each valid deck, table, graph, or model state to the same contract-level scenario meaning.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the abstract value and semantic mapping, the intervention becomes a shared template whose fields can match while meanings diverge."},{"mechanism_slug":"design_by_contract_clause","role":"Assigns caller and component obligations for each revision and query, including non-mutation after rejected changes and mandatory forking after defining-driver changes.","counterfactual_removal":"Without these clauses, edge cases and invalid transitions remain informal, so implementations can diverge while presenting the same operation names."},{"mechanism_slug":"opaque_type_or_module_boundary","role":"Prevents planning clients from reading or editing representation-specific fields directly and requires all sanctioned access through scenario-set operations.","counterfactual_removal":"Without opacity, consumers can continue depending on slide positions, spreadsheet columns, or model variable names, recreating the coupling the contract is intended to remove."},{"mechanism_slug":"black_box_contract_test_suite","role":"Runs the same public-operation tests against narrative, graph, and model-backed implementations and supplies the acceptance gate for substitution.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a shared black-box oracle, conformance is asserted by inspection or reputation and replacement equivalence remains undecidable in practice."},{"mechanism_slug":"metamorphic_behavior_test","role":"Checks relations where no single foresight answer is authoritative: reordering storage must not change query results, adding an unrelated evidence reference must not change scenario identity, and export-import must preserve contract-level observations.","counterfactual_removal":"Without relational checks, representation-dependent changes can escape example-based tests whenever an absolute expected foresight output is unavailable."},{"mechanism_slug":"representation_leakage_probe","role":"Inspects observable ordering, labels, timing, default probabilities, exported metadata, and error details for useful but unpromised signals that clients could treat as meaning.","counterfactual_removal":"Without leakage probing, the formal boundary may remain intact while accidental observables become an unofficial foresight contract."},{"mechanism_slug":"semantic_versioning_and_deprecation_gate","role":"Records behavioral changes, distinguishes compatible additions from breaks, inventories consumers, and requires a migration window before removing scenario operations or meanings.","counterfactual_removal":"Without governed evolution, a sound initial contract can later change silently and strand decision records or client analyses on incompatible meanings."}],"causal_chain":["Planning clients depend on contract-defined scenario operations and observations rather than deck, table, graph, or model internals.","Each concrete representation maps its valid internal states to the same abstract Scenario Set and must preserve the stated invariants across revisions.","Opaque access and leakage review reduce opportunities for consumers to turn representation details into scenario meaning.","Shared black-box and metamorphic tests expose observable divergence before a representation is accepted as a substitute.","Versioning distinguishes preserved meaning from intentional contract change and keeps frozen decision-use records interpretable.","Consequently, method or tool changes can be evaluated as semantic substitutions, reducing the risk that water-strategy comparisons unknowingly use altered futures."],"baseline":"The authority uses a preferred slide-and-spreadsheet package, a review checklist, and manual crosswalks when scenarios move into causal maps or simulations. Reviewers compare labels, fields, and narrative summaries, but there is no representation-independent state model, invariant set, error policy, or reusable substitution test.","nearest_rivals":["A canonical scenario template or common interchange schema standardizes fields and file shape but does not determine operation-sequence behavior, identity changes, invariants, or error semantics.","A facilitation protocol standardizes how scenarios are produced but does not certify that later storage or modeling implementations preserve the resulting scenario meaning.","A single centralized scenario repository reduces format variation by requiring one implementation, but it does not provide a behavioral criterion for replacing that repository or importing an independently implemented representation.","Manual expert equivalence review can interpret subtle narrative meaning but is not a reusable, implementation-independent acceptance oracle and may vary across reviewers."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal's distinct claim is limited to making the governed object a behaviorally specified Scenario Set whose meaning is tested across representations; it is not merely a shared format, a standardized workshop, or consolidation onto one tool.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The regional water authority's foresight lead may define and pilot the contract and recommend whether a representation conforms. The strategy governance body retains authority over scenario approval, probability judgments, investment choices, and public commitments.","authorized_first_step":"On copies of one completed scenario exercise, the foresight lead may draft the abstract operations and invariants, implement a read-only adapter for two existing representations, and run offline conformance tests without changing the approved scenarios or live planning workflow.","excluded_actions":["Declaring any scenario probable, preferred, or true","Changing an approved scenario, investment decision, or regulatory commitment","Treating technical conformance as validation of scenario content or evidence quality","Exposing confidential evidence or participant attribution through the public interface","Replacing a live planning tool or migrating authoritative records during the first test","Automatically rejecting minority or unconventional futures because they differ from a reference representation"],"halt_rollback":"Stop the pilot if the abstraction collapses substantively distinct scenarios, cannot represent a decision-relevant uncertainty, exposes restricted provenance, or forces analysts to encode contested judgments as technical facts. Roll back by discarding the adapters and test copies; the authoritative scenario records and decision process remain unchanged."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Independent analysts may find that the meaning required for water-foresight use is inseparable from narrative form, facilitation context, or model structure, so two representations cannot share a useful behavioral surface without erasing decision-relevant distinctions.","problem_falsifier":"When blinded teams translate the same approved scenario set into two representations, they consistently recover the same scenario identities, horizons, provenance paths, uncertainty treatments, and implications using the existing manual process, and observed disagreements are only cosmetic.","intervention_falsifier":"Two independently built adapters can both pass the proposed conformance suite yet yield materially different answers to a predeclared decision-relevant scenario question, or the contract must expose representation-specific fields to express ordinary cases.","risks":["The contract may freeze one school of foresight practice as if it were representation-independent.","Weak laws or generators may certify divergent implementations.","Over-specified tests may turn incidental wording, ordering, or categorization into permanent promises.","Opacity may hide assumptions that governance reviewers need to inspect for substantive assurance.","A simple reference adapter may reproduce defects in the incumbent representation.","Technical conformance may be misread as evidence that scenarios are plausible, complete, or decision-worthy.","Maintaining adapters and versions may add process burden without improving consequential comparisons."]},"next_evidence_step":"Select one completed, non-live water-scenario exercise and predeclare six contract-level queries and four metamorphic relations. Encode copies independently as a narrative-card adapter and a causal-graph adapter, then have blinded analysts execute identical operation sequences and record divergences in identity, provenance, horizon, uncertainty, implication retrieval, errors, and mutation behavior. The bounded result is a divergence log and a decision on whether the proposed abstract surface is expressible and discriminating; it does not estimate operational effect or authorize deployment.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Not assessed against prior experiment candidates because the task is sealed and forbids using them; this candidate is derived only from the supplied archetype, mechanisms, and futurism-and-foresight domain card.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Initial complete proposal","Concrete domain problem","Representation-independent causal preservation","Bounded falsifiable evidence step"],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}