At 0.001, the dense micro-reward was 1/1000th the magnitude of the
sparse exit reward (±10). Too weak to meaningfully bootstrap Q-values.
At 0.01, it's 1/100th — strong enough to provide directional feedback
while still subordinate to the exit signal.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>