# VerdictTank v2.1 — ONE Consolidation Recommendation
## Research Agent Grounding Lens (Grok 4.5)

**Date:** 2026-08-12  
**Author role:** Research Agent (only judge with native live web + social search)  
**Target:** ~15% reduction without losing effectiveness  
**Constraints satisfied:** no model >2 roles · Audit + Research survive · ≥2 cross-checks

---

## Research-lens thesis

I produce the factual brief every downstream judge consumes. From that position, two seats add **latency and tokens without new signal**:

1. **Market-Reality (Phase 7)** mostly **re-summarizes my brief** — competitive density, TAM defensibility, and citation-backed market claims are already Research outputs. Its unique residual (non-Western lens) is a *prompt/schema* requirement, not a reason for a full serial phase.
2. **Cross-Check C as a third parallel scorer** is **highly correlated** with A/B. Internal Opus 5 empirical validation on this stack found all three cross-checks scored `market` at **exactly 6** (spread **0.00**). External ensemble guidance: if judges agree on everything, you bought one verdict three times (orq.ai LLM juries; Verga et al. "Judges → Juries"). Two diverse cross-checks capture the ensemble; a third correlated scorer is mostly cost.

Specialist phases that do **not** rehash Research (Financial math, Team/Founder fit, Execution ops, Legal/regulatory code) stay. Audit and Reasoning stay as non-scoring synthesis/gates.

---

## (1) Changes — single consolidation: **Grounding-Redundancy Cut**

### A. Eliminate standalone Market-Reality (Phase 7)

| Action | Detail |
|---|---|
| Remove | Phase 7 seat: Market-Reality / Qwen3.7 Plus (default) |
| Absorb into Research | Expand Phase 1 brief schema with a mandatory **Market block**: competitive density table, TAM/SAM defensibility notes, ≥1 non-Western comps when vertical warrants, citation URLs, "unknown/unverifiable" flags |
| Absorb residual scoring | Market *dimension* continues via Primary + Validation + 2 cross-checks (already score all 10 dimensions). No separate market narrative phase |
| Vertical weights (§3.2) | Market-Reality weight boosts → apply to **Research brief depth** (more market citations) + **Primary/Validation market-dimension weight**, not a missing judge |

### B. Collapse cross-checks 3 → 2 (keep minimum)

| Action | Detail |
|---|---|
| Remove | Phase 4c Cross-Check C as default Enterprise seat |
| Keep | Phase 4a Cross-Check A (GPT-5.6 Sol) + Phase 4b Cross-Check B |
| Diversity preserve | **Reassign DeepSeek V4 Pro → Cross-Check B** (replace Gemini Pro Latest in default lineup). Reasons: (i) keeps Chinese-lab / non-Western error surface that Market+CC-C previously carried; (ii) avoids Gemini floating-alias longitudinal noise documented in v2.1 §4.5 and review results; (iii) Gemini remains Fallback 1 for Research and available in pool |
| Blindness | Both remaining CCs still see **proposal + Research brief ONLY** — unchanged isolation |

### C. What does *not* change

- Research Agent never scores
- Audit Agent remains fenced, post-scoring, read-only
- Reasoning-Verification still synthesizes all score sets
- Financial, Team/Founder, Execution, Legal stay as serial specialists
- Fable double: Team + Audit (still 2)
- No other model exceeds 2 roles

### D. Lineup delta (Enterprise default)

| # | Phase | Role | Model (after) | Vendor | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Research Agent | Grok 4.5 | xAI | **Survives** — brief schema expanded |
| 2 | 2 | Primary Reviewer | Claude Opus 5 | Anthropic | Unchanged |
| 3 | 3 | Validation Reviewer | Claude Sonnet 5 | Anthropic | Unchanged |
| 4 | 4a | Cross-Check A | GPT-5.6 Sol | OpenAI | Unchanged |
| 5 | 4b | Cross-Check B | **DeepSeek V4 Pro** | DeepSeek | **Was Gemini; DeepSeek moved here** |
| — | ~~4c~~ | ~~Cross-Check C~~ | — | — | **REMOVED** |
| 6 | 5 | Financial Integrity | MiniMax-M3 | MiniMax | Unchanged |
| 7 | 6 | Team/Founder | Claude Fable 5 | Anthropic | Unchanged |
| — | ~~7~~ | ~~Market-Reality~~ | — | — | **REMOVED** (folded into Research) |
| 8 | 7' | Execution-Feasibility | GPT-5.6 Terra | OpenAI | Unchanged |
| 9 | 8' | Legal/Regulatory | **Qwen3.7 Plus** | Alibaba | **Vendor-cap patch** (was Sonnet) |
| 10 | 9' | Reasoning-Verification | Kimi K2.6 | Moonshot | Unchanged |
| 11 | 10' | Audit Agent | Claude Fable 5 | Anthropic | **Survives** |

**Seats:** 13 → **11**  
**Phases:** 11 → **10** (4a–4b parallel; Market gone)  
**Scoring judges:** 10 → **8** (Primary, Validation, CC-A, CC-B, Financial, Team, Execution, Legal)  
**Non-scoring:** Research, Reasoning, Audit (3)  
**Total:** 8 + 3 = **11**

Qwen3.7 Plus remains on the default path via Legal (not dropped from Enterprise). Gemini stays in pool + Research fallback.

### E. Fallback table patches (must ship with this cut)

- Delete Market-Reality row **or** keep as optional on-demand role for White-Label only
- Cross-Check B primary becomes DeepSeek V4 Pro; F1 Gemini Pro Latest; F2 Claude Fable 5 (still cross-vendor)
- Cross-Check C row retired from Enterprise default (pool may retain for WL custom panels)
- Legal primary: Qwen3.7 Plus; F1 Gemini Pro Latest; F2 DeepSeek V4 Pro (cross-vendor)
- Research F2 can stay Terra; optional: add Qwen as Research F3 for market-heavy verticals

### F. Research brief schema addition (contract)

```
## Market block (mandatory)
- Competitors: name, category (authoring vs critique vs other), price anchor, source URL
- Non-Western / non-US comps: min 1 when vertical in {superapp, cross-border, unclassified-global}; else "N/A — US-centric vertical"
- TAM/SAM claims: verified | overstated | unverifiable — with citation or explicit gap
- Density judgment: sparse | contested | saturated — one paragraph, citations only
```

Downstream judges **cite the Market block ID**, not re-crawl the open web (except Legal/Financial specialists on their narrow facts).

---

## (2) Reduction %

| Metric | Before (v2.1) | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seats (Enterprise default) | 13 | 11 | **−15.4%** |
| Phases | 11 | 10 | −9.1% |
| Parallel CC calls | 3 | 2 | −33% of CC fan-out |
| Scoring judges | 10 | 8 | −20% |
| Serial specialist after scores | Market + Exec + Legal… | Exec + Legal… | −1 serial hop |
| Est. E2E latency (vs 218s baseline) | 218s | ~185–195s | **~11–15%** wall-clock |
| Est. token/COGS share | full panel | −Market narrative −1 full score JSON | **~14–18%** cost |

**Headline reduction: ~15%** (seat count exact at −15.4%; cost/latency band 14–18% / 11–15%).

Why not larger: cutting Audit or a second CC would violate constraints or erase the disagreement signal that makes panels worth running (selection-bottleneck literature: judge-based selection > synthesis; arxiv 2603.20324).

---

## (3) What survives (effectiveness preserved)

| Kept | Why it still works |
|---|---|
| **Research Agent** | Stronger, not weaker — owns market grounding explicitly |
| **Audit Agent** | Groupthink / blind-spot gate unchanged |
| **≥2 cross-checks** | Sol + DeepSeek: US frontier + non-Western lab; blind; proposal+brief only |
| **Primary + Validation** | Dual Anthropic pass with sober second read (different tiers A/B) |
| **Financial, Team, Execution, Legal** | True specialists; low overlap with Research crawl |
| **Reasoning-Verification** | Contradiction synthesis over fewer, higher-signal score sets |
| **Vendor cap** | After Legal→Qwen: Anthropic 3/11 = **27.3%** (under 33%) |
| **Pool diversity** | Gemini remains in pool/fallbacks; White-Label can still pin full custom panels |
| **Model role cap** | Fable Team+Audit = 2; all others ≤1 |

---

## (4) Risks

| Risk | Severity | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Market nuance loss on superapp / cross-border verticals | Med | Research Market block mandatory; §3.2 superapp trigger increases Research market citation quota + Primary market-dimension weight +30% |
| DeepSeek as sole non-Western CC may under-challenge US-centric Primary | Med | Legal→Qwen adds second non-Western seat; Audit watches for US-default groupthink |
| Anthropic share 4/11 if Legal stays Sonnet | High (rule break) | **Must** reassign Legal → Qwen (included in this same cut) |
| Sol still cannot tool-use on admin-ai | Low | CC-A is scoring-only JSON — already OK per §4.5 |
| Dropping third CC reduces disagreement surface | Med-Low | Literature + internal 0.00 market spread say third was fake diversity; monitor panel sigma for 30 days; if sigma collapses, restore CC-C on High complexity only (§3.3 already expands high-complexity) |
| Research brief becomes single point of market failure | Med | Research fallback chain unchanged (Gemini grounding → Terra); malformed Research → subscriber notify + degrade already specified |
| Pro tier "7 judges" matrix needs rewrite | Low | Define Pro as: Research + Primary + Validation + 2 CC + Execution + Reasoning (no Financial/Team/Legal/Audit) — document explicitly |
| Build-gate still unproven (panel delta <0.5 vs solo) | Existential (pre-existing) | This cut helps the thesis: fewer correlated seats make a ≥0.5 panel advantage more plausible if one exists; still run 3–5 real proposals before build |

---

## (5) New diagram

### Before (v2.1) — 11 phases / 13 seats

```
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 1 Research (Grok)   │  grounding brief
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 2 Primary (Opus 5)  │  scores
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 3 Validation (Sonnet)│  challenge
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
              ┌────────────────┼────────────────┐
              ▼                ▼                ▼
        ┌──────────┐    ┌──────────┐    ┌──────────┐
        │4a CC-A   │    │4b CC-B   │    │4c CC-C   │  blind re-scores
        │ Sol      │    │ Gemini   │    │ DeepSeek │
        └────┬─────┘    └────┬─────┘    └────┬─────┘
              └────────────────┼────────────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 5 Financial (M3)    │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 6 Team (Fable)      │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 7 Market (Qwen)     │  ← re-summarizes Research
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 8 Execution (Terra) │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ 9 Legal (Sonnet)    │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │10 Reasoning (Kimi)  │  synthesize
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │11 Audit (Fable)     │  fenced ±0.5
                    └─────────────────────┘
```

### After — Grounding-Redundancy Cut — 10 phases / 11 seats (−15.4%)

```
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 1 Research (Grok 4.5)            │
                    │    + mandatory Market block      │  LIVE WEB (only)
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 2 Primary (Opus 5)               │
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 3 Validation (Sonnet 5)          │
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                         ┌───────────┴───────────┐
                         ▼                       ▼
                  ┌─────────────┐         ┌─────────────┐
                  │4a CC-A Sol  │         │4b CC-B      │  2 blind CCs
                  │             │         │ DeepSeek    │  (min met)
                  └──────┬──────┘         └──────┬──────┘
                         └───────────┬───────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 5 Financial (MiniMax-M3)         │
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 6 Team/Founder (Fable 5)         │
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 7 Execution (Terra)              │  Market phase GONE
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 8 Legal (Qwen3.7 Plus)           │  vendor-cap patch
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │ 9 Reasoning-Verification (Kimi)  │
                    └────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
                    │10 Audit (Fable 5)                │  SURVIVES
                    └──────────────────────────────────┘
```

### Signal flow (Research lens)

```
 Research brief
   ├─ facts/citations ──────────────► all scorers (unchanged)
   ├─ Market block (NEW) ───────────► Primary / Validation / CCs
   │                                   (no Phase-7 rewrite)
   └─ gaps/unverifiable ────────────► Audit watches for overclaim

 Dropped edges (were low-signal):
   Research ══re-summary══► Market narrative ══► Reasoning
   CC-C ══correlate≈0══► CC average
```

---

## Constraint checklist

| Constraint | Status |
|---|---|
| ~15% reduction | **15.4% seats**; ~14–18% COGS; ~11–15% latency |
| No model >2 roles | Fable Team+Audit=2; all others ≤1 |
| Audit survives | Phase 10' Fable, fenced |
| Research survives | Phase 1 Grok, expanded |
| Minimum 2 cross-checks | Sol + DeepSeek |
| Vendor ≤33% | After Legal→Qwen: Anthropic 3/11 = 27.3% |

---

## Implementation note (one PR)

1. Spec §1.1 / §1.2 / §2.3 / §3.2 / §3.3 / §4.1 / §6.3 — role counts must all read **11 seats / 10 phases**
2. Cross-section reconciliation (lesson from v2.0→v2.1 role expansion) before any re-review
3. Cache-bust deploy `judge-pool-spec.md?v=2.2`
4. Do **not** build until 3–5 real proposals still clear the ≥0.5 panel-vs-solo gate on the *reduced* panel

---

## Bottom line

**ONE consolidation:** *Grounding-Redundancy Cut* — delete Market-Reality as a serial phase (it re-summarizes Research) and delete the third cross-check (empirically zero incremental spread); fold market into the Research brief; keep DeepSeek as CC-B; move Legal to Qwen for vendor-cap compliance.

**−15.4% seats, Research + Audit intact, 2 blind cross-checks retained, specialists preserved.**