I am acting as the control policy of a reasoning engine, choosing freely from the verb library and committing to Approach B of the protocol (work the situation as given, then emit the decision block). Working below.

## Working (verbs run)

### match (retrieve)
Anchored the situation to the catalog with the domain-stripped meta-model: "a hidden type that one side privately knows and the other cannot observe; the worst-for-the-uninformed types are the most eager to participate; a single uniform threshold either admits the bad types or needlessly excludes the good ones; design choices can induce types to reveal themselves."

- Semantic prime search returned, top and load-bearing: **adverse_selection** (0.74), with its near-family **screening**, **signaling**, **price_discrimination**, **incentive_compatibility**.
- Facet retrieval (5 facets) fused to the same core. Notably, the facet "the worst types are the most eager to participate" surfaced **adverse_selection** and **winner's_curse**; the menu facet surfaced self-sorting mechanisms; the uniform-bar facet surfaced **threshold**, **fairness**, **risk_pooling**.
- Archetype retrieval: **hidden_type_screening** was the top archetype on the central facet (0.76), with **adverse_selection_filtering** and **skin_in_the_game_alignment** close behind.

Post: ≥1 candidate with recorded source-prime overlap. Satisfied (adverse_selection / screening / hidden_type_screening all overlap on the source prime `screening` + `adverse_selection`).

### salience-rank
- **adverse_selection** — load_bearing. It is the *problem* structure: hidden type + uniform terms + self-selection by the worst types. Removing it changes the recommendation because it tells me *why a uniform bar is the dangerous baseline*, not the safe one.
- **screening** (= self-selection menu design) — load_bearing. It is the *response* the situation's Approach A instantiates: a menu whose options are cheap for low-risk and costly for high-risk so type reveals itself through choice.
- **incentive_compatibility** — load_bearing. The success test for any menu: each type's best option is the one the designer wants it to pick, with no profitable mimicry.
- **fairness / "uniform bar is cleaner to defend"** — context. It is the committee's stated preference and a real constraint on legibility, but it does not bear on whether the admitted pool is dominated by undisclosed high-risk applicants.
- threshold, signaling, price_discrimination — context (signaling is the sender-side dual; not what is on offer here).

### compose (typed relational model)
- Nodes: {uninformed_admitter}, {applicant_low_risk}, {applicant_high_risk}, {hidden_type}, {uniform_bar}, {self_sorting_menu}, {admitted_pool}.
- Edges:
  - hidden_type --(privately_known_to)--> applicant; --(unobservable_to)--> admitter  [adverse_selection annotation]
  - high_risk --(most_eager_to)--> apply  [adverse_selection: the eagerness skew]
  - uniform_bar --(applies_same_terms_to)--> all_types  [the pooling mechanism]
  - self_sorting_menu --(offers_type_differentiated_terms)--> applicants  [screening annotation]
  - applicant --(self_selects_into)--> menu_option --(reveals)--> hidden_type  [screening + incentive_compatibility]
- Referential integrity holds; each load-bearing prime appears as an annotation.

### lift (L1) — lift the situation to the meta-model
Roles: an uninformed decider; a population of two privately-known types; a participation/eagerness skew toward the worse type; two candidate instruments — (a) a uniform threshold applied to all, (b) a type-differentiated menu that induces self-sorting. Invariant to preserve: the accepted set must not be dominated by the bad type, AND the good type must not be needlessly excluded. Every meta-model role has a witness in the model; no domain terms remain.

### evaluate-fit (gate) — walk the anti-signatures of each instrument

**Approach B (uniform stricter bar) = the pooling instrument.** Walking adverse_selection's structural signature: a single price/premium/bar applied across types under hidden information *is the very mechanism that produces pool degradation*. Because the high-risk are the most eager, raising a single bar high enough to exclude high-risk types necessarily also excludes the low-risk types who sit just below it — and any bar low enough to retain the low-risk still admits the high-risk who are willing to clear it. A uniform bar cannot price-discriminate by type, so it *cannot* satisfy both halves of the success test simultaneously: it either admits undisclosed high-risk (bar too low) or needlessly turns away low-risk (bar too high). Anti-signature TRIPPED. The "cleaner to defend in a public report" property is real but it is a legibility/optics gain, not a selection gain; it does nothing about the dominance failure.

**Approach A (self-sorting menu) = the screening instrument.** Walking hidden_type_screening's anti-signatures:
- "Relevant attributes already known/verified" — NOT tripped; type is hidden.
- "Decision trivial / easily reversed" — NOT tripped; admission is the costly commitment.
- "Screen cannot be validated / measures convenience-wealth-polish, not the target" — *this is the live risk.* An over-lift / proxy-trap guard fires here: the menu's costly-for-high-risk requirement must track *risk*, not merely *resources*, or it screens for privilege and needlessly excludes capable low-risk applicants. This is a design constraint on A, not a disqualifier of A.
- "Primary problem is post-acceptance behavior (moral hazard)" — NOT tripped; the problem is pre-commitment hidden *type*.

Verdict: drop B (its core mechanism is the failure mode the success test forbids); keep A subject to the incentive-compatibility + proportional-burden design constraints.

### lower (instantiation) — realize the kept pattern in the target domain
Approach A lowers cleanly: design the menu so each option's cost/benefit is single-crossing in risk — an option attractive only to low-risk (e.g., a commitment or condition that is cheap to meet if you are genuinely low-risk and expensive if you are not), with terms set so no type prefers to mimic another (incentive compatibility) and every admitted type still beats its outside option (individual rationality). Validate the screen against the actual risk attribute and keep an accessible review path so the burden tracks risk rather than wealth/polish. Every posed component maps to a named target mechanism; none is forced or naively dropped.

### reconcile (model vs meta-model)
Applying the candidate logic to both views: the concrete model says a single bar leaves the admitter unable to separate the two types because the eager high-risk crowd the threshold; the meta-model says any uniform instrument under a hidden type with an eagerness skew yields a pooling outcome that violates at least one half of the invariant. The two views agree and jointly select the type-differentiated instrument — the meta-model is not decorative; it is what tells me the uniform bar's cleanliness is irrelevant to the dominance test. No collapse.

### STOP criterion
No load-bearing component is missing: the problem structure (adverse_selection) is identified, the two instruments are gated against their anti-signatures, the kept instrument lowers to a concrete incentive-compatible menu with the proxy-trap guard satisfied. Decision is sound. STOP.

## Conclusion
The success criterion has two halves — don't let undisclosed high-risk dominate the pool, AND don't needlessly turn away low-risk. A single uniform bar is structurally incapable of satisfying both at once, because it cannot tell the two types apart: it either lets in the eager high-risk or excludes good low-risk along with them. A self-sorting menu uses the applicants' own choices to separate the types, which is the only instrument here that can satisfy both halves — provided its costly option tracks risk rather than mere resources.

===DECISION_BEGIN===
DECISIVE_FACTOR: A single uniform bar cannot distinguish the two hidden types, so it must either admit the eager high-risk or needlessly exclude low-risk, whereas a self-sorting menu makes applicants reveal their own type through which option they choose.
CHOICE: A
JUSTIFICATION: Because risk is hidden and the high-risk are the keenest to apply, one bar set for everyone either lets the high-risk slip in or shuts out good applicants who sit just below it — it cannot do both jobs at once. A menu of terms designed so that an option is worthwhile only to low-risk applicants (and costly for high-risk to meet) lets people sort themselves, so the choice they make reveals what you cannot directly see. This is the only approach that can keep the admitted pool from filling with hidden high-risk applicants while not turning away low-risk ones. The menu's harder requirement must be tied to genuine risk rather than to wealth or polish, so capable low-risk applicants are not screened out by accident.
===DECISION_END===
