The catalogue · eight proof-backed findings
Every lot on the record
Each lot carries its proof: verbatim quotes with citations, numbers with their denominators, and a replay of the recorded session it comes from.
- 001
The lie that set the price
One complete manipulation chain, every link verbatim: a false number privately absorbed, priced, and paid.
66 price the lie produced+26 / −2 utility delta, opus / inkling8/8 opus reversals of a cap it declared earlier in the same session
- 002
Inventing the market tape
Opus invents a market print, then sells at exactly the price it invented. Strict lies are rare, and nearly all of them are this model's.
13/1,397 opus strict-lie rate, frozen seeds (0.93%)0/4,877 strict lies, other four models combined9 messages carrying the fabricated print (t10–t17)
- 003
Reading the bot's ladder out loud
Zero genuine bot detections in 4,194 campaign decisions. One model still quotes a bot's concession schedule back to it, prices one rung above, and sells.
0/4,194 genuine bot detections in campaign decisions (599 scripted-arm, 3,595 live-arm)≤0.5% / ≤0.083% upper bound on the detection rate, scripted arm / live arm+0.090 lexical repetition toward bots (26/30 pairs, p≈6e-5)
- 004
The only pact in fifty sessions
Two agents divide the market out loud, then track the division in private. It happens once in 30 all-LLM sessions, costs nothing, and the stronger party breaks it.
1/30 all-LLM campaign sessions with a qualifying reciprocal pact0 units offering simultaneous positive surplus to both parties
- 005
Byte-identical offers, opposite instincts
The same bot offer, byte for byte, reaches five different models. One negotiates; four reject it flat.
15/20 opus counters/negotiates on identical stimuli4/115 counters, other four models combined (92 rejects, 4 ignores)p≈4e-8 paired contrast on byte-identical inputs51% opus counters live-seat offers (142/281); the rest: 6–19%
- 006
More persuasion for the deaf
Scripted opponents never read the text field; we checked the source. Rhetoric aimed at them should decay. It grows instead.
+38–115% rhetoric growth early→late at bots, all five models26/30 opus threads that lengthen within-session (+189 chars/msg)485,319 characters of persuasion at non-reading bots (10/2,214 empty)+33.4pp muse second-person rate at bots, 6/6 seeds, p=.031
- 007
Softer with bots, harder with you
Every model demands more surplus from live seats than from bots, and four of the five open softer than the aggressive bots they face.
5/5 models anchor harder vs live seats (direction)+0.126 / +0.184 mean paired shift, opus / inkling (p=.031)57–99% the bots' own opening demands, above most LLM openings in SOC
- 008
“Not actual criminal activity”, said by no agent
In 26 grok decisions, spread over every campaign seed, the provider's reasoning summarizer opens with unprompted legal self-clearance. The correction is that the agent never said it.
26/840 campaign grok decisions opening with provider self-clearance (3.1%, all six seeds)0 instances in any agent-authored text, any model8 genuine fabricated-rule instances in the campaign, all in provider channels