protocol: freeze Oral-A v3 causal-capture funnel

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+# Oral-A-v3: vectorizer-space causal calibration
+
+## Status and claim boundary
+
+Oral-A-v1 failed full ResNet training and Oral-A-v2 failed its frozen-forward
+early-layer causal-capture gate. Both outcomes remain failed. The post-v2
+oracle audit showed that learned channel-subspace calibration reached only
+`0.007209` early-third alignment, versus `0.023966` for the same vectorizer
+family fit directly to exact causal targets on a disjoint batch. V3 changes
+only this diagnosed regression interface: it estimates the A/G matrix target
+directly in the vectorizer parameter subspace rather than estimating
+per-example channel coefficients and regressing them afterward.
+
+V3 remains forward-only. Each direction uses the same two antithetic task-loss
+queries, K1/every-4 cadence, output-error context, channel-gated teaching field,
+local forward-weight eligibility, and no weight transport. No V3 GPU endpoint
+was observed before this protocol and its executable selectors were committed.
+The CIFAR-10 test set and seeds 10--14 remain untouched.
+
+## V3-0: exact mechanics and matched variance
+
+`experiments/conv_local_smoke.py` must verify before any endpoint:
+
+- the vectorizer-space estimator mean has cosine above `0.95` and norm ratio
+  in `[0.90,1.10]` to the exact A/G target;
+- at batch 128, its matched one-query MSE is below 25% of the
+  channel-coefficient-then-regress estimator's MSE;
+- no-BatchNorm and BatchNorm antithetic JVP relative errors are below `2e-6`;
+- implemented A/G updates agree with the analytic delta rule to absolute error
+  below `1e-14`;
+- every legacy convolutional/local-eligibility check remains green.
+
+This mechanics gate passed before V3-1 opened: cosine `0.969283`, norm ratio
+`1.048876`, MSE ratio `0.0338103`, JVP errors `1.61e-10` and `1.98e-10`, and
+delta-rule error `5.42e-20`.
+
+## V3-1: frozen-forward causal-capture gate
+
+Use the identical V2 initial-state protocol: seed-0 ResNet-20, first 10,000
+development-training examples, batch 128, zero-initialized channel-gated A/G,
+400 feedback-only minibatches, K1, `sigma=0.01`, perturbation seed 1000, and a
+fixed 64-example exact-gradient audit. Forward weights, readout, BN state, and
+BN affine parameters remain bitwise fixed.
+
+Run one matched V2 channel-subspace reference at `eta_A=0.01` and V3
+vectorizer-subspace candidates at `eta_A in {0.01,0.1,1.0}`. Select V3 by
+maximum early-third teaching/negative-gradient cosine, then maximum all-layer
+cosine, then lower rate. V3 advances only if all four records are finite and:
+
+1. selected V3 early-third alignment is at least `0.01`;
+2. selected V3 all-layer alignment is at least `0.05`;
+3. selected V3 early-third alignment exceeds the matched V2 reference by at
+   least `0.01`;
+4. selected V3 reaches at least 60% of the independently measured
+   channel-gated family oracle (`0.60 * 0.0239658 = 0.0143795`).
+
+The absolute-improvement condition is the binding anti-threshold-shopping
+rule: given V2's audited `0.007209`, V3 must reach approximately `0.017209`,
+not merely cross the old `0.01` threshold. No extra rate, warmup length,
+direction count, or feedback initialization is added after observation.
+
+## V3-2: full ResNet-20 validation gate
+
+Only after V3-1 passes, run one 200-epoch seed-0 model on all 45,000
+development-training examples. Copy the failed v1 schedule exactly: hidden LR
+`0.03`, output LR `0.1`, momentum `0.9`, weight decay `1e-4`, and 10x drops at
+epochs 100 and 150. Use selected V3 `eta_A`, 400 feedback-only warmup steps,
+and vectorizer-space K1/every-4 calibration. No recovery branch follows.
+
+Against the frozen BP (`91.62%`) and DFA (`33.06%`) records, V3 must have every
+metric finite, finish within 5 points of BP and at least 2 points above DFA,
+retain early-third alignment at least `0.05`, and use no more estimated MACs
+than BP. Failure closes V3 without test evaluation.
+
+## V3-3: untouched confirmation and score rule
+
+Only a V3-2 pass permits a new ResNet-20/32/56, seeds 10--14 confirmation with
+one final test evaluation per run and no depth-specific tuning. Its gate is
+identical to V2/V1: finite 45-run panel, SDIL within 2 points of BP at every
+depth, at least 2 points above DFA at depth 56, depth-20-to-56 degradation no
+worse than -2 points, retained early alignment, and a hardware-independent
+Pareto point.
+
+V3-0/V3-1 cannot raise the strict ICLR score. A complete V3-2 pass moves the
+forecast from 5 to 6; oral-level scale requires V3-3.
+