A different question after the compiler
The existing compiler (third Frontier tab) constructs reusable methods. This separate experiment asks whether broader exploration assets change what successors can do. It advances one candidate within 240’s wider search for better project enquiries; it is not a new run of the original generative prompt.
1. Choose what survives the first project
Fictional scenario and units. Every comparison includes the same earlier exploration, whose sunk cost is held outside this later-budget experiment. Assets carry no monetary valuation. Preservation costs 1 funding unit per created asset; an attempted transfer of a preserved, current asset costs 1 more, including a failed transfer. These costs share the later budget.
Control cases replace the current unsaved inputs; saved revisions remain in History. Checked later stages have no effect while an earlier gate is closed.
| Asset | Created | Preserved | Still current | Transfer possible | Transfer attempted | Chain result |
|---|
2. Compare the possible successor sets
Both histories offer exactly the same five proposed projects and the same later funding. “Without inheritance” makes no preservation or transfer attempt, so it pays no inheritance costs. A project is feasible only if all required assets are available and its cost fits. The catalogue is supplied: the model does not invent a new opportunity.
| Successor | Required inherited assets | Cost | Conditional payoff | With inheritance | Without inheritance | Choose | Simulate start | Simulate payoff received |
|---|
Payoff units are invented outcome points, separate from funding units. They are not revenue, an expected value, a probability or a recommendation. “Payoff received” records a fictional event, not evidence of actual delivery.
3. Follow use into a single value ledger
The earlier project is credited with the assets it created, with zero realised successor payoff booked to it. Selecting a successor does not claim use: switch on its simulated start to use its assets. Each chosen successor’s simulated payoff appears once, when its start and outcome are switched on and the complete chosen portfolio is feasible. Shared non-rival assets can support several successors, but their preservation and transfer cost is paid once. If you change a prerequisite, the current counterfactual is recalculated; a saved earlier revision retains its own assumptions.
Keep a trial and return to it
Saving creates a named revision in this browser’s local storage on this site. It creates no file, sends nothing and changes no real project. Clearing browser data removes these records. Each corrected save keeps the earlier revision; repeated clicks without a change keep the same revision.
Unsaved fictional inputs. No record or file created.
Clear this experiment’s saved history
This removes only this experiment’s browser records. It cannot undo files or copies elsewhere. The current inputs remain on screen.
Source → distinction → construction → limit
Potential value needs a later path to use
Maniak, Midler, Lenfle and Le Pellec-Dairon (2014), Value Management for Exploration Projects follows three exploration projects and their successors. Its contribution here is the separation of creating potential value from realising it across projects. The authors describe concept and brand recognition, design capabilities and relationships among the assets left by exploration.
The five-stage chain, gates, fixed catalogue, costs, payoffs and exhaustive subset comparison are this essai’s own construction. The paper does not supply these numerical rules or validate the Skarra model. This is a restrictive feasibility witness: once an asset gate opens, an already specified opportunity can become feasible.
Inspect the calculation and counterexamples
An asset is available only when created ∧ preserved ∧ current ∧ transferable ∧ transfer attempted. For each of the 32 possible successor subsets, require every asset and sum each successor cost once, plus preservation and attempted-transfer costs. Keep subsets within the budget, then report the highest conditional payoff among them. There is no discounting, uncertainty, congestion, rival asset consumption, skill decay curve or replacement acquisition. Alternative ways to acquire assets could erase the apparent inheritance advantage.
“Inherited but unused” keeps all assets available but selects only the asset-free talk. “All obsolete” retains preservation costs but blocks transfer. “Cannot transfer” charges unsuccessful attempts. “Not preserved” loses the chain and incurs no later inheritance costs. At a tight budget, paying for assets can crowd out even the talk: inheritance need not improve the result.
What remains open: observing whether a real early project creates a genuinely unforeseen opportunity; testing transfer with a receiving team; estimating acquisition, upkeep and failure costs; and attributing benefit without hindsight or double-counting. None is established by this worked construction.
Return to all six Frontier lenses · Original enquiry and retained proposals