**2026-08-11 — Stop padding time estimates.** GG: "You generally massively overestimate the time it
takes to do some work... You're fast." Phase-1 items I scoped as "Week 1" took ~an hour. Rule: state
what will be done and in what order; give a duration only when compute-bound (training walltime), and
base it on measured runtimes, not human-project heuristics.

**2026-08-11 — Correspondence is not identity; interpretation is not prediction (manuscript reviews).**
The external review's core corrections, to internalise for all paper claims: (1) distinguish
interpretation / explanation / prediction and claim only the level the evidence supports; (2) a
minimal model being exactly Wright-Fisher does not make real training "literally" WF — our own
learning-kernel result says otherwise (cite it against ourselves); (3) name the operator every claim
is about (output-mean vs weight-average vs max-with-oracle vs routing are different objects with
different budgets); (4) don't write "nobody has / none imports" — invite no priority disputes; say
"to our knowledge" and state the positive contribution; (5) negative results (E13b) are strengths —
lead with them; (6) "control theory" needs states/controls/dynamics/rule or it's a "framework".

**2026-08-11 — tmux does NOT survive SSH disconnects on this machine.** The tmux server starts inside
the SSH session's systemd scope and gets reaped on logout (lost ~20 min of the epistasis grid; GG:
"SSH disconnected"). Reliable pattern here: `systemd-run --user --collect --unit=<name>
--working-directory="$PWD" bash -c '<cmd>'` — lands in user@.service (kept alive by the desktop
session), survives disconnects; check with `systemctl --user is-active <name>`, logs via redirect.

**2026-08-11 — Internal deliberations must not leak into reader-facing prose.** GG (on the
convergence paragraph): it "carries all the ghosts of our internal brainstorming that should be
completely alien to the readers (this is, alas, a recurring problem with your writing)." The pattern:
strategic concerns from the working process (priority anxieties -> "we cite for priority of
publication"; calibration debates -> "the honest statement"; positioning battles -> "nobody has")
surface as defensive or self-referential prose. Rule: before finalising any reader-facing passage,
ask "does understanding this sentence require knowing how we worked?" If yes, rewrite it as a plain
statement about the literature or the result. Confident papers situate; they do not litigate.
(Promoted to a general rule in the global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md, 2026-08-11 — it applies to all
reader-facing prose in every project.)

## Terminology: "model" is overloaded in this project (2026-09-07)
In the PNAS manuscript and figures, "model" must mean an AI model. The theory tier is
"population genetics" / "the Wright–Fisher simulator" / "the minimal inheritance model"
(with the disambiguating adjective), never a bare "model" label — GG flagged Fig. 1's
"Exact model" header as confusing for exactly this reason. When naming tiers, panels, or
headers, reserve the bare word for trained AI systems.