Brummel
525112e32e
Tested the user's bracket-free ideas (indent, YAML) against the annotated-paren result. Hypothesis was that removing the closing token removes the repetition tail. The opposite held. Instrument note (the watch-out paid off twice): a real YAML library auto-quotes and gives *,-,true special meaning, which collides with the AILang operators — Qwen wrote `- *` (multiply), a YAML alias marker, and the library crashed. That is a measurement bug, not a model failure. Rebuilt with a hand-written literal indent parser (atoms verbatim, no quoting); `- *` then round-trips fine. With the instrument fixed, the result is monotone across four formats: format 4 annotated parens 7/8 > plain Form-A parens 6/8 > yamlish indent 3/8 > YAML library 2/8. More explicit structure marking helps this model; less hurts. Qwen's weakness is structure-tracking at depth, and indentation makes it track the nesting itself — as error-prone as matching parens but without the redundant cue. The bracket-free surfaces fail EARLIER (L3/L4), before the L7 repetition ceiling is even reached. Lever for an LLM-authored language: redundant explicit structure (depth- annotated brackets), not a lighter surface. Synthesis in format-findings.md; raw ladders qwen-yaml.md (PyYAML, discarded) and qwen-yamlish.md (own parser).