When Q-mean shifted from +0.01 to -0.01, fixed α=0.05 took ~20 updates
to catch up → misaligned backtest atoms → val_Sharpe dipped to -20.
Adaptive alpha: α = |error| / (|error| + 0.01), clamped [0.01, 0.5].
Tracks fast on Q-shifts (α→0.5), smooths when stable (α→0.01).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>