Phase 2.0 seeded the V envelope at ±200 reasoning from dd049d9a4 dollar
magnitudes ($211 avg win, $235 avg loss). But the envelope clamps the
POST-SCALE V regression target — after apply_reward_scale divides by
mean_abs_pnl_ema to keep typical reward magnitudes ~1.0, the target's
natural range is `r + γ × v_tp1 ≤ ~3` in atom-support units, NOT
dollars. A ±200 bootstrap was a no-op (envelope wider than any possible
target excursion) until the EMA tightened it.
±10 is the tighter bootstrap matching the actual post-scale operating
range while still wide enough to admit normal target excursions. The
kernel's existing sentinel-zero bootstrap discipline at line 98
(pearl_first_observation_bootstrap) snaps the EMA to the first observed
trade magnitude as soon as a done event fires, so this bootstrap only
matters for the first ~10-20 steps.
Note: this commit does NOT resolve the step-4 NaN that surfaced after
the atomicAdd determinization (10d4614fb) — l_v is identical 6.329 ±
0.001 across all ±10 / ±200 / pre-fix runs, proving V predictions are
not the proximate NaN cause. The tightening is still correct per
codebase discipline (pearl_controller_anchors_isv_driven +
feedback_isv_for_adaptive_bounds) and removes one masked confound for
the next debug pass. Suspected actual NaN cause shifted to advantage
RMS / encoder h_t / shared streaming statistics — see
pearl_atomicadd_masks_v_instability for the open investigation.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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