14.5 Controlled benchmark

A ten-anchor Markdown benchmark contains five productive ordered chains: schema before normalization, evidence before citation, abstention before formatting, tool contract before routing, and validator before final answer. Reversing a chain loses its benefit. The normalized workflow score is

Progress is the fraction of the five productive chains closed in the correct order; faithfulness checks whether the served evaluator reads the resulting skill state correctly. A bracket probe is a cheap deterministic read–write/dependency calculation. A validation probe sends a candidate artifact through the authoritative evaluator. The two columns therefore measure different resources and are never added as if they had equal cost.

Under a served-model validation contract, exhaustive search uses 91 calls and LASKO 11; both score \(1.000\). Greedy and random search score \(0.000\) and \(0.120\), respectively.