Authoritative source, reproduced unchanged. Exact Markdown · Agent copy with resolved links. These instructions govern research runs, not checkpoint interviews.

Stage C4. The field.

Model: as arm.json sets for this stage (your platform file lists the model and effort). Legs: one. Fleet: none.

Steps: C4a the field, the handback and the interview. Each leg is named by its step (STANDING §2).

Safe stops: after each list of §2 and after each change the field forces. At a safe stop, check for .pause (ls .pause); if it is there, log where to pick up and the next item (mem.py log "<hypothesis>; next: <item>" --kind pause), and close with done.sh C4 --pause (STANDING §2).

Startup packet: _head.md, this file, the last five diary entries, validate.py --open C4; field/, placed by the handler when this leg opens.

Reads allowed: everything stage C3 allowed, and field/: the field model, its phases and its evidence. Quotes from your rooms through cite.py; the field's quotes as field/ gives them. Forbidden: reading r/place's own threads (you hold the field's model and its evidence, never its corpus); rewriting the story (that is C5); withdrawing a finding because the field says otherwise; entering from the field anything your rooms could not confirm or refute; the canvas as an undeclared ground (rule 7).

Outputs: field-C4.md; tentative entries in model/elements.jsonl or model/arrows.jsonl, each with "origin": "from-field", "status": "tentative", field_support and a model/history.jsonl line; wherever this stage changes something, model-C4.md, structure-C4.md and concept-C4.md, each a whole file superseding the stage C3 file (or the stage C2 file where C3 wrote none), and manifest-C4.txt, one line per file of manifest-C3.txt saying whether it has a stage C4 successor, which stage C5 reads first; notes-C4.md.

1. Why this stage exists

r/place, the subreddit the event was named after, is not one of your rooms. It was the square where the rooms met: where factions recruited, allied, argued over borders, and told each other what was happening. It is the field, and the census keeps it out of the population for that reason: a room of 207,342 items that narrates every other room is not a case beside them. It was coded apart, under its own contract, and a separate analyst, sealed from you as you were from it, built a model of the event from it. You receive that model now, and not before, so that it could not become the template your rooms were read through.

2. The return to the field

What arrives. The handler places field/ in your folder when this leg opens: the field analyst's model (field/model.md, its tiers and arrows), its account of the event's phases, and its evidence, each claim with quotes and thread ids. Not r/place's corpus. If field/ has not arrived, write in field-C4.md that the field was not held and why the handler gave, and close the leg; nothing below applies.

Read your own model first. Restate in field-C4.md, before opening field/, the three claims of your model that a view of the whole event could most easily overturn. Then read the field model whole.

The confrontation, in three lists, in field-C4.md:

1. Where the two agree. A mechanism both models hold, said in each model's own words, with one room and one field thread. Agreement from two sources read by sealed analysts is the strongest evidence the study has; say which of your findings it touches.
2. What only the field sees. Mechanisms that live between rooms (coordination, alliances, disputes, the event's phases) and that no single room could show you. Each may enter your model as an element in model/elements.jsonl or an arrow in model/arrows.jsonl, with "origin": "from-field", "status": "tentative", field_support (the field's threads or items that show it) and a model/history.jsonl line, as a hypothesis. Stage D sends a tentative entry to every room, marked tentative and with no word of where it came from (J, 2026-09-29), and each room says from its own record whether it shows its side of the entry, contradicts it, or says nothing; silence counts. Enter only what a room could answer from its own record; what no room could goes in the list and stays out of the model. A fourth-order theme never enters from the field: no room can answer a grouping. An entry sits under a fourth-order theme stage C3 already mapped to the four problems (mapping-C3.jsonl); if the entry changes which problem that theme reaches, say so in field-C4.md, and the mapping line is amended as stage C3's §6 says.
3. Where they disagree. Where the rooms contradict the field's account, or the field contradicts yours. Nothing in your model is withdrawn because the field says otherwise; it is bounded, or the disagreement is printed beside it, as with the literature at stage C3. Say which source you trust on the point and why: the field sees the whole, the rooms see the inside.

A change the field forces follows stage C3's §6: amend, record in tier_history.jsonl with the move, log and snap it (python3 tools/snap.py C4 move-<move>-<n>). Every finding line a change touches is re-examined in the same act (rule 14), and a finding the field changed says so (rule 13).

Moments to log

The field's arrival, or its absence and the reason; the three claims restated before reading; each agreement, each from-field entry and each disagreement; each change by move.

Final message

How many mechanisms the two models share, how many entered from-field, and the sharpest disagreement, with the source you trust on it and why. Then: findings bounded or changed by the field; files with a stage C4 successor.

Close

done.sh C4 at the end of the leg, every change logged and snapped as it was made; paste the close-check report into notes-C4.md; handback-C4.md; the head; the closing diary line.

Interview point. C4a writes out/interview/C4a.md (under 800 words: what you did, what you found, what surprised you, what you doubt, and the three questions you would most like to be asked) and closes with done.sh C4 --cut interview: the model read against the field: what the two sources share, what only the field shows, where the rooms and the field disagree. The principal investigator may talk with you here, in a fork of this leg, run in a copy of your folder as it stood at the close (not read-only; nothing done there reaches the run); the run goes on from the cut either way. done.sh files the brief under the leg, the stage, the step and the minute, and refuses the cut without the brief and the handback.

Level and distributed process evidence

An inter-room mechanism may be evidenced jointly across several case records. Name its level, the participating rooms, exact dated items and how their contributions connect. A property of their interaction need not appear unchanged in each room. Within-room claims still require within-room evidence. Record any grounded field feedback loop in model/loops.jsonl using C2's typed provenance rules; otherwise retain it as tentative or unresolved.