18.6 The ARTISTIC procedure

An initial implementation follows eight stages.

1. Declare. Freeze the base vocabulary, tokenizer, encoder, generator, permitted adapters, visual observers, and reference grammar.

2. Probe. Generate matched prompt, seed, and image interventions that isolate an object, attribute, relation, or binding failure.

3. Diagnose. Estimate image-side, language-side, and mixed defects, including uncertainty and unsupported alternatives.

4. Propose. Select a bounded operational repair or package comparison. When the visual presentation changes, state which previously inexpressible distinction its extension is meant to capture.

5. Realize. Use OPTIC to construct its embedding, adapter, recognizer, rendering control, and compact semantic specification.

6. Explore. Use RELIC to select held-out compositions and counterexample generations rather than resampling successful prompts.

7. Admit. Test grounding, disentanglement, productivity, systematicity, intersubjectivity, and transport.

8. Persist. Version the repair or package comparison, examples, counterexamples, model dependencies, and later revisions.

The proposal language must be large enough to add relational constructors, not only embeddings. Conversely, it must remain bounded enough that a failed experiment can distinguish invention from unconstrained fine-tuning.