Zettelkasten/Fleeting Notes/Weekly/2026_15.md

id	title	type	created	modified	tags
2026-15	Weekly — 2026-04-08	Weekly	2026-04-08T11:00:00Z	2026-04-08T11:00:00Z	weekly

Weekly - 2026 CW 15 (Wed 2026-04-08)

Accomplishments

🎯 MAJOR: FRET Specifications & Reactive Synthesis Progress (April 3)

Significant formal verification work — specifications written, realizability conflicts identified and resolved, test traces analyzed.

• Wrote FRET specifications for the reactor automaton
• Worked through heatup mode requirements: bounded temperature rate (dT_dt constraints), maximum heatup duration before SCRAM
• Developed watchdog pattern for bounded time constraints — key insight: "within T seconds satisfy SCRAM" would force SCRAM always (no happy path to load following); watchdog only fires if STILL in heatup when timer expires
• Typed input/output variables: Inputs (STARTUP, t_dot_exceeded, t_max_exceeded, t_power_min), Outputs (SCRAM, OP_MODE, Cold_Shutdown, Heatup, Load_Follow)
• Hit and resolved realizability conflict (PWR-0000 vs PWR-2001 vs PWR-3002) — added "While !SCRAM" scope to PWR-2001 so startup only happens outside SCRAM
• Analyzed 67 test traces against 8 requirements:
  • Only 4/67 pass all requirements
  • PWR-2001 fails in 49 traces (adversarial: STARTUP + t_max_exceeded simultaneously)
  • 75 physical consistency warnings (Heatup=1 with OP_MODE=0)
  • Traces appear to be counterexamples, not valid behaviors
• Identified need for explicit both-sides specification of inequalities/implications — potential FRETless design improvement (implicit iff support)

Status: DR-72 (FRET specs) marked Done. Understanding of FRET's limitations deepening — feeding into FRETless design ideas.

DICE 2026 Travel Booked (April 4)

• Expedia booking: $999.77 (hotel + car for SLC)
• DR-78 marked Done
• Conference: May 12-13, Salt Lake City

Firefly III — March 2026 Fully Reconciled (April 3)

• Imported 18 Apple Card transactions (March 28 - April 2)
• Cross-referenced 136 statement transactions against 148 in Firefly
• Cleaned up migration garbage: phantom $5,755.53 payment, duplicate entries, wrong-sign Daily Cash adjustments
• Added 3 missing Daily Cash Adjustment clawbacks
• March Apple Card statement now reconciled clean ($2,898.11 → $9,976.38 payment → $8,728.99 charges → $1,650.72 ending)

🔧 Anthropic Billing Change — Infrastructure Pivot (April 4)

Major cost optimization after Anthropic announced third-party tool billing changes.

• Anthropic subscriptions no longer cover OpenClaw usage (every token billed separately)
• Old config exposure: estimated $600-900/month at Opus 4.6 default
• Reconfigured same day:
  • Default model: Sonnet 4.5 (was Opus 4.6) — ~5-10x cheaper
  • Heartbeats: Haiku 4.5, 60-minute intervals (was 30min on Opus)
  • Prompt caching enabled: "long" retention (90% savings on repeated context)
  • Opus available on demand via override
• Target: ~$100/month total
• Created PER project in Plane for personal tasks (non-thesis/car/website)

iMessage Echo Loop Bug — Diagnosed & Fixed (April 6)

• Outbound iMessage replies were echoing back as inbound messages, creating infinite loops
• Root cause: DM chat classified as "self-chat" + binary corruption in imsg watch text causing echo cache misses
• Applied surgical patch to OpenClaw monitor — forced drop of all is_from_me messages in self-chat context
• ⚠️ Patch gets overwritten on OpenClaw updates — needs re-application

Thesis Draft

• Preliminary Results section skeleton complete with equations (from late March)
• PKE, thermal-hydraulic, and reactivity feedback equations in place with LaTeX labels
• Awaiting Dan's V1 feedback to unlock next steps

Pushed or Rescheduled

Dan Cole V1 Feedback:

• Proposal draft sent March 17 — now Day 22+ with no response
• Expected — Dan busy with Luis finishing up
• All downstream formal verification work blocked on his review

FRET Discussion:

• Punted from Easter Sunday (April 6) to this week
• Topic: extracting actual automaton/AIGER circuit from FRET reactive synthesis output
• Dane wants visualization of the automaton itself for easier trace analysis

Email Infrastructure:

• himalaya still broken on all accounts (since March 24)
• Only default (zoho) accessible

To Do

This Week (CW15):

• Discuss FRET automaton extraction with Dan at group meeting
• Present FRETless as publication roadmap (FRET gaps → enum/FSM extensions → continuous dynamics → nuclear case study)
• Continue barrier certificate work (DR-74, DR-75 — load following + cold shutdown)
• Continue reachability analysis (DR-73, DR-76 — heatup + SCRAM modes)
• DICE presentation prep (May 12-13 approaching — ~5 weeks out)
• Martha's Run 5K — April 11 (Friday)

Personal:

• PER-3: Find +1 for May 9 wedding (deadline passed ~April 6 — status?)
• PER-1: Evaluate OpenAI Codex Plus as potential cost optimization
• PER-4/5: Cancel YouTube TV / Subscribe Pittsburgh Sportsnet

Upcoming:

• May 9: Wedding (guest, not in party)
• May 10: DICE departure to SLC
• May 12-13: DICE 2026 conference

Context

Weather:

• April 1: 58-63°F, rainy morning
• April 3: 85°F high, rain chance midday
• April 4: 87°F high, sunny
• April 6: Heavy rain, 54°F

Fitness Battery (April 6):

• Broad jump: 65 inches
• Dead hang: 32 seconds
• Bench press: 135 × 5
• Lat pulldown est. 1RM: 172
• Leg extension est. 1RM: 187
• Dane felt good about it — saw Jackie and Andreas at gym

Notes:

• FRET specification work is building real expertise — realizability conflicts, trace analysis, variable typing are all thesis-level skills
• The watchdog pattern insight is worth writing up — common control pattern that FRET handles awkwardly
• FRETless iff-style specification is a concrete design improvement to pitch
• Cost optimization was handled well — same-day response, minimal disruption
• CW14 cycle was productive: 9 items created, most FRET/analysis work progressed significantly