Brummel
6b1e148b36
The 18f bench result (rc/bump = 2.86x but gc/bump = 2.90x) showed the existing bench measures alloc-path cost, not the determinism question Decision 10 actually commits to. The user's framing made this explicit: RC has to be DEMONSTRABLY better than Boehm — the relevant axis is per-operation latency under heap pressure (Boehm's stop-the-world vs RC's amortized constant), not total wall-time. This agent's mandate: design workloads against a falsifiable hypothesis, run measurements that fit the hypothesis (latency distribution for determinism, not throughput), pair Implicit-mode fixtures (Boehm-fair) with explicit-mode fixtures (RC-fair) so each allocator is benched in its native regime, and report honestly what the data does NOT say. Distinguished from implementer: ships evidence, not features. Distinguished from architect: focuses on a single dimension (memory) and on empirical measurement, not drift review. Honesty rules built in: - Tie => bench did not distinguish, not "they are equivalent". - Implicit-mode RC numbers are not informative (RC leaks under Implicit) — call out whenever reported. - Bench-only instrumentation in runtime/rc.c must be marked removable and not leak into production. - No verdict statements: orchestrator decides defaults / drops.