Post-first-call iteration of the bootstrap. Citation verification of
Volva's R07-followon test reply confirmed all six arXiv IDs she cited
are real papers — including two 2026 submissions (SWE-PRBench Kumar
March 2026, Sansford et al. ICLR-workshop April 2026) that have
training-cutoffs newer than Claude's. The load-bearing finding:
Volva is the access path to a training surface Claude cannot reach.
Updates:
- AGENTS.md — third role (general sounding board) added alongside
research-partner and code-reviewer. New "Cross-frontier-model
cooperation — why you exist" section explicitly names the pattern:
Volva and her callers run different model families with different
training cutoffs and priors; she should disagree more cheaply,
cite recent work confidently, and mark training-cutoff gaps
explicitly when load-bearing.
- SOUNDING-BOARD-GUIDE.md (new) — discipline for general design-
talk-through calls. Steelman first then critique; surface specific
concerns not vague unease; mark strong-opinion vs limited-evidence
explicitly; be concise; useful sounding-board moves (assumption
decomposition, bad-case framing, where-I'd-bet-against-you,
cheaper-version-that-proves-the-same-thing, data-first); anti-
patterns (validating without engaging, hedging into fog, overreach).
- CROSS-FRONTIER-COOPERATION.md (new) — durable framing doc.
Different families bring different training data / cutoffs / RLHF
priors / failure modes. Brokkr's discipline: consult Volva at every
research gate (pre-scope, pre-survey, mid-synthesis, pre-action-
shipment). Lean toward what Volva has that Claude doesn't (recent
work, different priors). Don't pretend to have what you don't.
- RESEARCH-PARTNER-GUIDE.md — citation discipline refined. Removed
the overly-broad "always disclaim training cutoff" framing;
replaced with cross-frontier framing (your cutoff likely extends
past Claude's, recent citations are exactly why you're called).
Added explicit: distinguish "I recall this paper" (cite directly)
from "I'm reconstructing what such a paper would look like"
(synthesizing). Mark training-cutoff uncertainty when load-bearing.
- README.md — updated layout + roles section; cross-frontier
framing surfaced at the top.
Vuong Hoang