9.6 An obstruction-to-extension workflow

A controlled transformational process can be organized into eight stages.

1. Register. Version the current theory, observers, probes, search policy, and admission criteria.

2. Stress. Explore the current model class using targeted Weil probes, countermodels, or interventions.

3. Localize. Identify a reproducible obstruction and the smallest declaration on which it depends.

4. Control. Test stronger in-language search, alternate parameterizations, measurement error, and hidden-state explanations.

5. Integrate. When a local repair is proposed, test whether it persists and composes into a coherent finite path, rollout, or other declared realization inside the old theory.

6. Propose. Generate a small family of typed extensions rather than one unqualified narrative jump.

7. Transport. Compute what each proposal preserves, changes, and newly predicts.

8. Admit. Use independent evidence to accept, reject, or retain the proposal as speculative.

This workflow gives frontier models an important but bounded role. They are powerful proposal engines and analogical retrievers. They do not get to define their own success after seeing the result.