a18: concept-seed mechanism — derive grounded shortlist, script assigns build index + challengers; contract adopts UNIQUE/NOT-TEMPLATE/OWN-WORLD/STORY/FIRST-VIEWPORT

Contract-probe campaign findings (evals repo, notes/fable-oneshot-craft-plan.md):
a single model's resonance ranking is deterministic (30/35 identical
concepts across 16 framings); dice must come from the script, mirroring
the palette-seed result. Derived candidates stay grounded in the
audience's world + subject's cultural home; challengers win only on
identification x clarity; incumbent-with-deliberate-idea overrides the
roll. Validated at contract level on 01-observability + r10-lektor
(teletext ranks #3 for lektor; assigned index 3 produced it).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

skill/scripts/concept-ingredients.json

@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+{
+  "_comment": "Challenger pool for concept-seed.mjs. Each entry is a culturally legible FORM — a thing people already know how to read — that can supply a page's structure. Curate freely; the script samples 3 per run. Keep entries subject-agnostic (the derivation step supplies subject-grounded candidates; these are the outside provocations).",
+  "printed": [
+    "a naturalist's field guide, with specimen plates and identification keys",
+    "a broadsheet newspaper's sports section, with match reports and standings tables",
+    "a farmer's almanac, with seasonal charts and terse forecasts",
+    "a museum exhibition catalog, with plates, provenance notes, and wall-label captions",
+    "a repair manual's exploded-parts diagrams with numbered callouts",
+    "an auction house catalog, with lot numbers, estimates, and condition reports",
+    "a cookbook's recipe pages, with mise-en-place lists and numbered steps",
+    "a stamp collector's album, with mounted specimens and perforation notes",
+    "a paperback's back cover and front matter, with blurbs and a table of contents",
+    "sheet music, with movements, dynamics markings, and a program note",
+    "a zine, hand-assembled, with cut-paper collage and typewritten columns",
+    "a mail-order seed catalog, with variety grids and growing-zone tables",
+    "a pharmacopoeia monograph, with indications, dosage tables, and contraindications",
+    "an atlas spread, with map plates, legends, and an index of places"
+  ],
+  "instruments": [
+    "a mission-control status wall, with countdown clocks and go/no-go polls",
+    "a ship's bridge instrument panel, with engine-order telegraph and compass repeaters",
+    "a recording studio mixing console, with channel strips and a patch bay",
+    "a flight-deck checklist card, with challenge-response items and memory items",
+    "a seismograph station's drum recorders and event logs",
+    "a darkroom contact sheet, with grease-pencil markups and frame selects",
+    "a weather station's synoptic chart, with fronts, isobars, and station models"
+  ],
+  "places_signage": [
+    "a metro system's map and station signage, with lines, interchanges, and wayfinding",
+    "an airport departures board, with rows that flip and gate calls",
+    "a theater's playbill and lobby cards, with cast lists and act summaries",
+    "a race circuit's pit wall timing screens, with sector splits and tyre stints",
+    "a national park trailhead kiosk, with route markers and difficulty grades",
+    "a harbor's tide table board and small-craft advisories",
+    "a library card catalog, with call numbers and cross-reference cards"
+  ],
+  "records_documents": [
+    "a court transcript, with examination, exhibits, and a verdict",
+    "a ship's log, with watch entries, positions, and weather remarks",
+    "an expedition's field notebook, with sketches, measurements, and daily entries",
+    "a laboratory notebook, with dated experiments, observations, and sign-offs",
+    "a customs declaration and passport stamp pages",
+    "a title deed and property survey, with plot boundaries and easements",
+    "a patent filing, with numbered claims and figure sheets"
+  ],
+  "broadcast_ephemera": [
+    "a teletext service, with page numbers, block graphics, and channel colors",
+    "a printed TV programme guide, with time grids and circled listings",
+    "a radio station's program log and request-line cards",
+    "a cinema's projection booth reel-change cue sheets",
+    "a vinyl double-album gatefold, with liner notes, track listing, and credits panel",
+    "a video-rental shop, with hand-labeled cassettes and membership cards",
+    "a shortwave radio listener's QSL card collection and frequency schedules"
+  ],
+  "commerce_packaging": [
+    "a seed packet's front-and-back panel layout, with sowing instructions",
+    "a hardware store's parts drawers, with bin labels and spec cards",
+    "a pharmacy prescription label and patient-information leaflet",
+    "a matchbook and cigar-band graphics, with foil stamping and tiny type",
+    "a produce market's chalkboard price signs and crate-side stencils",
+    "a bank passbook, with ruled entries and teller stamps"
+  ],
+  "games_rituals": [
+    "a chess annotation sheet, with move pairs and evaluation symbols",
+    "a bingo hall's number board and dabbed cards",
+    "a scorekeeper's baseball scorecard, with position numbers and inning grids",
+    "a tarot spread, with card positions and a reading order",
+    "a board game's rulebook, with setup diagrams and turn order",
+    "a crossword page, with grid, clues across and down, and a setter's note"
+  ]
+}

skill/scripts/concept-seed.mjs

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+#!/usr/bin/env node
+/**
+ * Concept-seed picker: the dice half of the new-work concept procedure.
+ *
+ * The model derives a grounded shortlist of candidate FORMS from the
+ * audience's world and the subject's cultural home (see
+ * reference/new-work.md). Left alone, it then always builds its #1 —
+ * and a single model's resonance ranking is deterministic, so every run
+ * in a category ships the same one or two concepts. Measured: 30/35
+ * identical concepts across 16 prompt framings; the model cannot roll
+ * its own dice.
+ *
+ * This script rolls them from outside, the same trick that made the
+ * palette seed work:
+ *   - BUILD INDEX (2-5): which entry of the model's own resonance-ordered
+ *     shortlist to build. The dice never choose an ungrounded ingredient;
+ *     they only refuse the argmax rut. (Index 1 is excluded: that's the
+ *     concept every run would ship anyway.)
+ *   - CHALLENGERS (3): outside forms from concept-ingredients.json, weighed
+ *     against the derived candidates on exactly two axes — audience
+ *     identification and product clarity. They win only when they beat the
+ *     grounded list; measured behavior is that they lose to strong cultural
+ *     material and win over thin categories, which is the intended shape.
+ *
+ * Usage:
+ *   node scripts/concept-seed.mjs                 # roll at random
+ *   node scripts/concept-seed.mjs --from <key>    # deterministic (hash key)
+ *
+ * Env vars:
+ *   IMPECCABLE_CONCEPT_SEED — same as --from; for reproducible eval runs.
+ */
+
+import crypto from 'node:crypto';
+import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs';
+import { dirname, join } from 'node:path';
+import { fileURLToPath } from 'node:url';
+
+const here = dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url));
+const pool = JSON.parse(readFileSync(join(here, 'concept-ingredients.json'), 'utf8'));
+
+const args = process.argv.slice(2);
+const fromIdx = args.indexOf('--from');
+const key = fromIdx !== -1 ? args[fromIdx + 1] : (process.env.IMPECCABLE_CONCEPT_SEED || null);
+
+function hashUnit(k, salt) {
+  const h = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(`${salt}:${k}`).digest();
+  return h.readUInt32BE(0) / 0xffffffff;
+}
+const unit = (salt) => (key ? hashUnit(key, salt) : Math.random());
+
+const buildIndex = 2 + Math.floor(unit('index') * 4); // 2..5
+
+const entries = Object.entries(pool)
+  .filter(([k]) => !k.startsWith('_'))
+  .flatMap(([, list]) => list);
+const picks = [];
+const taken = new Set();
+for (let i = 0; picks.length < 3 && i < 60; i++) {
+  const idx = Math.floor(unit(`challenger-${i}`) * entries.length) % entries.length;
+  if (!taken.has(idx)) {
+    taken.add(idx);
+    picks.push(entries[idx]);
+  }
+}
+
+process.stdout.write(`CONCEPT SEED
+BUILD INDEX: ${buildIndex}
+  After ordering your derived candidates by resonance, build the page whose
+  form comes from candidate number ${buildIndex}, exactly as if it had ranked
+  first: full commitment. Your top-ranked candidate is what every run in this
+  category would ship; the assignment exists to refuse that rut, not to
+  punish it.
+CHALLENGERS (weigh against your derived candidates on the same two axes,
+audience identification and product clarity; a challenger wins only when
+it beats the grounded list on both):
+  1. ${picks[0]}
+  2. ${picks[1]}
+  3. ${picks[2]}
+If a challenger wins, it replaces the assigned candidate. If the surface is
+an existing world whose incumbent carries a deliberate, ownable idea, the
+incumbent IS the chosen candidate: intensify its lineage and ignore the
+roll entirely.
+`);