15.6 Persistence

A proposed concept will be evaluated not only on its first theorem but on the curriculum of definitions, lemmas, counterexamples, and questions that it makes possible for subsequent agents.

Persistence is tested by freezing the new vocabulary and handing it to a fresh reasoner. The later curriculum should contain problems whose shortest or most reliable solutions use the new primitive, alongside negative controls for which it supplies no benefit. This prevents a one-off abbreviation from being mistaken for theory construction.