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Part 4: The Verifier — Real Tools + an Objective Scoreboard

Part 4: The Verifier — Real Tools + an Objective Scoreboard

Chapters 10–12: Expand to a real toolset, write a held-out eval set, and build the mechanical pass/fail scoreboard that everything else depends on.

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Part 4: The Verifier

Real tools + an objective scoreboard · ~3–5 days

This is the module people skip, and skipping it is the number one thing that kills projects like this. Without a verifier you cannot answer “did the fine-tune help?” — so you tune on vibes, and vibes on a 1B model are indistinguishable from noise. Worse: Part 5’s entire premise is filtering trajectories by whether they succeeded. No verifier, no filter. No filter, no flywheel.

ChapterWhat You’ll Do
10 · Real ToolsExpand to six sandboxed tools — and resist adding a seventh
11 · The Eval SetWrite 20–50 held-out tasks, weighted toward mechanically checkable ones
12 · The ScoreboardBuild eval.py and produce the baseline table — the most valuable file in the project

What You’ll Have After Part 4

  • tools/ — six sandboxed tools
  • eval/tasks/ — 20–50 held-out tasks, Type B majority
  • eval.py — runs the harness against tasks, emits the scoreboard as JSON + a table
  • A baseline table: every model you can run, scored — the map that tells you whether tuning a 1B beats prompting a 12B
  • outcome in the trajectory schema now populated automatically

Chapter 10 →