Ramp the leaf-share grain down within one continuous run (e.g. 4->3->2->off),
carrying the whole population across each step — graduated non-convexity over
the single hard sharing->off transition of the §15 finish.
- operators.unfold_shared_leaves(above=cap): unfold only leaves whose share
exceeds the new grain cap, leaving smaller-share leaves collapsed for the
next step. above=1 (default) keeps the full-unfold §15 behaviour.
- driver: max_share override threaded through _overrides_for/_fitness_for/
_evaluate so a phase can rebuild the evaluator at a lower leaf_share_max cap;
search(seed_pop=) evaluates an explicit initial population so a phase hands
its whole population to the next instead of restarting from a single best.
- driver.search_annealed: one phase per descending grain then a de-share
polish; unfold-above-cap between steps; cumulative accounting + grain-tagged
history; honest canonical best (byte-for-byte verified vs homemaker-fitness).
- evolve: --anneal-grain LADDER CLI (self-finishing; §15 finish not applied).
8iv settled the primitive (grid unfold beat the circulation-aware slice), so
the ramp reuses the plain balanced-grid unfold at every step.
Tests: unfold above-cap selectivity, seed_pop seeding, search_annealed phase
stitching / honest finish / degenerate-ladder fallback. 258 pass. DESIGN §16.
Head-to-head A/B on harbor-house still to run; verdict pending (issue open).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01M8566xAxTnwtJTkpXjYNZm
Bruno Postle
3b3eef68a7