Item 27: A fully-updated comparator with a fallible future agent

Stage III attempted this comparator and produced something else. Its transferred arm's selection was the argmax of the evaluating agent's own objective under its own credence, computable before the later information arrives, so the arm contained no distinct future agent and the comparison was against the optimal later-measurable plan — the envelope the settlement work had already priced and recorded as not being the fully-updated comparator. The defect and its consequences are in prompts/2026-08-11-stage-iii-fud/REPORT.md §1.

Two objects are required, and neither existed at the close of Stage III.

A future agent with independent existence. Its own credence, or its own estimate of the value quantity, so that better-informed and correct can come apart. With an infallible future agent the comparison's sign is a definitional artifact — it is nonnegative because a maximum is at least as large as anything else. With a fallible one, Stage III's witness shows the gap can go strictly negative with every fairness condition intact. Until this exists there is no question being asked.

The execution layer, reinstated. FINITE_MODEL_SKELETON.md v2 §4a — the authorization relation, the report map, the execution map, and the null effect with a declared X_{n,⊥}. Stage II recorded that all of protection's valuation content sits in the null quantity; a comparator that waives it and then reports no jurisdictional term has found a property of its own signature. This also makes the no-future-leak condition statable, which it is not without a jurisdiction mode as an actual variable.

Deliverable shape: a versioned successor to FUD_COMPARATOR_SPEC.md carrying both objects, with the fairness conditions checkable and each confound witnessed; plus a verdict on whether the gap is signed for reasons that are not the definition of the transferred arm's selection. Acceptance check: the house witness checker accepts the confound and sign witnesses; or the lean gate builds and audits clean for any promoted statement. Context: prompts/2026-08-11-stage-iii-fud/REPORT.md §1 and §4; prompts/2026-08-11-stage-iii-fud/REPORT-track-F.md; projects/deference/notes/FINITE_MODEL_SKELETON.md §4a and §8.1. A solution ships: the successor spec, the sign verdict under a fallible future agent, and an explicit statement of which confounds remain scoped out rather than excluded.