Three-cohort harness against IONOS-hosted Qwen3-Coder-Next, testing
whether application-head tag (`app` vs `apply` vs `call`) affects
LLM authoring success. Cohorts share lambda/constructor/typecon tag
renamings (the non-discriminator changes); only the head differs.
Result: 100 % cohort-treue — Qwen writes whatever the spec teaches,
no measurable natural preference. Pipeline pass-rate (classic 1/8,
apply 0/8, call 1/8) is cohort-independent. The four task failures
are general Form-A friction, not naming-related. Refactor not
justified per the feature-acceptance gate.
Tracked harness:
- 2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/rename-spec.py — regex tag
rewriter for the two non-classic spec variants
- 2026-05-21-naming-ab/run.py, reprocess.py — three-cohort runner
+ post-processing with disjoint-discriminator counting and
module-name-matched temp dirs
Generated artefacts (runs/, rendered/ail-{renamed,call}.md) are
gitignored — regeneratable from rename-spec.py + run.py.
Side-effects filed against current spec/schema bugs surfaced during
the run:
- refs #28 spec teaches (ctor X) for term position; parser requires
(term-ctor X) — 100 % t4 failure across cohorts
- refs #29 io/print_str appends newline (de facto println);
spec now documents the behavior, code question still open
- refs #30 schema camelCase outlier: paramTypes/retType in Term::Lam
Spec patch in rendered/ail.md:
- replaces stale io/print_int references with io/print_str (bitrot
from the print-builtin consolidation)
- documents io/print_str's trailing-newline behavior
- corrects the prelude claim about int_to_str (IS in prelude)
Cross-model authoring-form test
Empirical measurement of whether .ail.json or .ail is the form a
foreign LLM author reaches for and succeeds with. Single subject for
v1: Qwen3-Coder-Next via IONOS. Two blind cohorts; same four tasks.
Parent spec: docs/specs/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring-form-test.md.
Layout
master/spec.md— canonical mini-spec source (form-agnostic prose +{form-only: X}blocks +{example: id}markers).master/examples/*.ail.json— AST source-of-truth; each example prints to either form via the existing roundtrip machinery.master/tasks/*.task.json— task definitions consumed by the harness. Authored in cma.2, not cma.1.render/— standalone Cargo crate, outside the root workspace, builds the renderer binary.rendered/json.md,rendered/ail.md— projected mini-specs, checked into the repo for review.harness/— Authored in cma.2.runs/<date>-<hash>/— populated byharnessduring a live run.
Running the renderer
cargo run --manifest-path experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/render/Cargo.toml -- \
--master experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/master \
--rendered experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/rendered
Running the tests
cargo test --manifest-path experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/render/Cargo.toml
Three integration tests: example_roundtrip (each example loads,
prints to AIL, reparses to the same canonical bytes), spec_completeness
(every AST variant in ailang_core::ast is exercised by at least
one example), token_balance (form-only blocks balanced within ±5%
across the two rendered files).
Running the harness
Live mode (one full eight-run sweep, ~480k tokens budget by default):
export IONOS_API_TOKEN="<token>" # see roadmap entry for token provenance
cargo run --manifest-path experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/harness/Cargo.toml -- \
--rendered experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/rendered \
--tasks experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/master/tasks \
--out experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/runs \
--model Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-Next
The harness pre-flights ail --version and clang --version before
the first API call. Set AIL_BIN if ail is not on PATH.
Mock mode (offline; CI-friendly; bypasses the IONOS API):
cargo run --manifest-path experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/harness/Cargo.toml -- \
--rendered experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/rendered \
--tasks experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/master/tasks \
--out /tmp/mock-runs \
--model mock \
--mock experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/harness/tests/fixtures/mock_full_run.json
Tests:
cargo test --manifest-path experiments/2026-05-12-cross-model-authoring/harness/Cargo.toml
Five suites: inline --lib unit tests for strip_locations (5),
plus integration tests strip_locations against captured stderr
fixtures (5), verify_references (1, drives every reference through
the real ail+clang pipeline), mock_full_run (1, full eight-row
mock E2E), budget_abort (1). Total 13 passed.