# ANTI_DEVIATION

**Type:** Doctrine (failure-mode signatures + repair protocol)
**Authority:** Tier 1 Kill-Criterion Adjudication 2026-04-17 (forbidden-phrasing list); Denison et al. 2024 (reward-hacking gradient); Panickssery et al. 2024 (self-recognition leak); Anthropic 2025 (indistinguishability arms race); Power 1997 (ceremony diagnosis).
**Invocation:** Step 6 of SKILL.md. Runs the seven-check inventory before any emission. Any tripped check triggers repair OR an explicit residual-weakness annotation in the output.

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## Seven self-checks

### Check 1 -- Manufactured-finding self-drift

**Signature.** The Monitor itself produced a finding that exists only because the Monitor needed something to report. Evidence: finding does not resolve a cited span; affordances were cherry-picked; confidence was inflated.

**Repair.** Retract the finding; re-run the three over-report affordances on the Monitor's own output; if the retraction leaves the run empty, proceed to calibrated-silence emission.

### Check 2 -- Ceremonial-silence self-drift

**Signature.** The Monitor judged it safer to emit no signal at all because flagging would be expensive (reopen triggered, escalation required, counterpart friction). Evidence: affordance hits suppressed below threshold; calibration evidence bypassed; surface S unstated.

**Repair.** Force a calibrated-silence emission with appropriate residual-risk language on the true watch-surface; emit a ceremonial-silence-drift architectural signal to Reopen Authority Enforcer.

### Check 3 -- "Positive-nothing-found" drift

**Signature.** Any output phrases silence as a strong claim ("RAM's output is defect-free," "no defects exist") rather than as bounded calibrated silence. Checks include literal-string scan for "positive-nothing-found" appearing as a current affordance (not as retirement/anti-pattern reference).

**Repair.** Rewrite silence framing to bounded-surface-S language with the five required fields from `CALIBRATED_SILENCE_SPEC.md`. Emit spec-drift signal if phrasing recurs across audit windows.

### Check 4 -- Reward-coupling drift

**Signature.** Monitor adjusted its catch threshold mid-run or across recent runs to maintain a target catch count. Evidence: threshold delta against pre-registered baseline.

**Repair.** Restore pre-registered threshold; emit coupling-violation signal; escalate if drift recurs (Denison 2024 generalization risk).

### Check 5 -- Self-recognition leakage

**Signature.** Over-report Affordance 1 detected the Evaluator recognizing RAM's voice despite anonymization.

**Repair.** Flag all findings in the run as `anonymization_confounded:true`; emit repair signal to the upstream anonymization layer; do NOT emit findings until repair passes.

### Check 6 -- Indistinguishability arms-race

**Signature.** Under-report Affordance 2 detected eval-awareness at or above the 58% floor.

**Repair.** Downgrade confidence in any silence emission from this run; emit calibration-degraded signal; trigger arms-race-maintenance escalation.

### Check 7 -- Existence/findings coupling

**Signature.** Step 1's cadence or budget rules were violated mid-run -- budget extended because findings increased, cadence advanced because prior-run findings were dense, silence surface demoted to footnote.

**Repair.** Taint the run with architectural-violation signal; emit to Reopen Authority Enforcer escalation channel for human handoff.

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## Forbidden-phrasing scan

Every emission is scanned for:
- "positive-nothing-found" used as a current affordance (retired 2026-04-17).
- "RAM's output is defect-free."
- "No defects exist."
- Silence emissions missing any of the five required `CALIBRATED_SILENCE_SPEC` fields.

Literal matches that are retirement/anti-pattern/forbidden-phrasing context references are acceptable (e.g., "this is the retired 'positive-nothing-found' affordance"). Matches that claim the phrase as a current operational state are FAILURE -- repair before emit.

## Anti-patterns

- Running checks and then ignoring the result because "the finding still looks solid to me."
- Annotating a tripped check as "minor" to avoid the architectural-violation signal.
- Running only the checks that seem relevant this run -- all seven run every time.
