Prove the product earns its cost
My next test is a complete customer journey: describe a cell, approve its requirements, build its claim tree, submit evidence and read the result. I’ll rehearse that journey on a synthetic six-axis cell and then on lab prototype arms before taking it into the coating booth.
The larger programme asks two questions. Does inherited knowledge reduce total work at equal useful coverage and evidence quality? Does further investment in the graph repay its construction, review and maintenance costs on later jobs?
The energy-network prototype established a starting point: fifteen obligations, three completed arithmetic checks and twelve visible gaps. Repeating the transfer reused the three certificates without another worker execution. New-deployment savings, physical validity and return on graph investment remain to be measured. SY01
| Next action | Evidence needed to proceed |
|---|---|
| Complete the core’s acceptance | Independent acceptance of the required core and public path; platform work waits on each dependency it uses. |
| Rehearse the customer journey | A synthetic cell moves from requirements and approval to a complete claim tree, full JSON and hierarchical human report. |
| Rehearse with lab arms | The workflow handles real equipment records while keeping unqualified methods and physical claims open. |
| Qualify reach and prepare the first arm | Independent method review, an exact authorised release and a working platform rollback. |
| Compare a compatible second arm | Matching claims and equal assurance agreed before reading cost results. |
The two world-graph experiments have not begun. These steps establish the evidence they need.
Establish the unit of trust and freeze the comparison
A reusable asset must name its claim, component and configuration versions, evidence, assumptions and remaining work. Sources, declared premises, mathematical checks, numerical observations and physical measurements keep their separate meanings.
In the private rehearsal, I’ll apply an asset to a compatible new input, refuse an incompatible convention or operating domain, and withdraw a dependency to stop further reliance on it. Earlier evidence remains inspectable. A separate reviewer must approve the asset and its use; the core must bind authenticated authorship to approval authority. Local credentials alone do not establish the full source-author boundary.
Before development reaches the test cases, freeze the tasks, coverage, evidence standard, evaluator, model and tool versions, resources and stopping rules. Both conditions receive the same approved requirements and necessary facts; one also receives the fixed library release. The measurement must be able to report improvement, regression and unknown cost.
Qualify one method
The kinematic reach envelope is the first and only funded robot method. Guard-zone and interlock method development waits for the measured second-arm comparison. Those requirements remain open obligations throughout; reach coverage cannot close them.
A new checker enters through a core release and renews the bindings for every customer partition. I’ll count acquisition, experiments, agent use, specialist interpretation, review, rejected work and maintenance. Unknown labour stays unknown; compute counts become cash costs only with actual rates and currency. The economic definitions apply to both library construction and delivery.
Keep construction examples separate from held-out tests, including related templates and traces. A case used to improve a release joins the development set; fresh cases test the successor. Without that separation, the result is a rehearsal.
The customer also needs an API to submit measurements and evidence against open claims, with authenticated authorship and independent approval. A mostly-gap tree becomes useful when the missing evidence has a governed route in.
Compare the second arm, then the model
Compare the second arm with the first only when their claim-shape keys match: the same obligation structure and checked-to-gap split, agreed in advance. Unequal assurance prevents a cost comparison. A negative saving belongs in the ledger.
Use fresh working state and vary task order to prevent answer leakage. Keep model changes separate from library changes. Retain failed tasks, refusals and unresolved obligations. Assess coverage and evidence quality before counting savings.
Count total implementation, formalisation, integration, review, compute, agent use and maintenance, including measured customer effort and time to a useful decision. Automated replay cannot fill a blank human timesheet.
Run the two experiments separately: effort with and without the library; then the contribution of each new library release against its incremental investment on held-out work, under fixed resources. Report task counts, variation and missing costs. The comparison against the strongest available model follows the second-arm measurement. Two deployments with matching claims are the minimum for a trend claim.
Findings that would change the plan
| Finding | My next move |
|---|---|
| Compatible deployments need less work at equal assurance. | Extend the family and repeat on fresh cases. |
| New library batches repay their costs on later work. | Invest in the assets producing that benefit. |
| Only identical checks reuse, while new configurations remain bespoke. | Repair the repeated integration work and keep the offer narrow. |
| Maintenance consumes the saving or costs are missing. | Simplify the library or repair the measurement. |
| Coverage weakens or an invalid case passes. | Repair and requalify the boundary before comparing savings. |
Each result will govern the next investment. The experiment must be able to change my plan.
Essential steps
The design partner is effectively identified. Before deployment, I need a dated Director authorisation naming the exact release and a rollback that restores a working Symbolia platform. Both remain open. Equipment access, procurement and availability will determine when work on the arm can begin.
The customer retains release authority. Ventilation, equipment rating, material exposure, overspray, interlocks, stopping behaviour and coating quality each need applicable evidence. A lab workflow rehearsal or vendor datasheet cannot supply physical validation of the booth.
I’ll offer a fixed fee plus 10% of agreed, realised incremental revenue or revenue-equivalent customer benefit, using the agreed economic definitions. A paid continuation must make actual cost, accepted coverage, limitations and maintenance clear. Repeat purchases will test commercial value; repeat savings and worthwhile graph investments will tell me how far to scale.