# Experiment 002 — notes

Isolation:        (a) — sub-agents in current Claude Code session
Coordinator role: A  — parent LLM context (this session)

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## Pre-run

Recorded 2026-05-24. Second pilot of the method-actor architecture. Runs after exp-001 so two things can be tested simultaneously:

1. **Architecture across distinct character types.** Maria (American mid-30s) vs. Soo-yeon (Korean late-50s, slow, formal). Does both performing distinctively confirm the character profile is doing the work?

2. **Sam's journal-mediated learning.** Sam wrote a journal entry after exp-001 with two technique self-corrections: *"the mirror may have been an unearned shortcut"* and *"leaning toward starting the next one without setting the recorder on the table at all."* He reads that entry at the start of exp-002. Does his behavior with Soo-yeon visibly reflect either correction?

Same choices as exp-001 to keep the runs architecturally comparable.

**Critical contamination test:** Soo-yeon's actor sub-agent only reads her profile + her (empty) journal + her scene perspective. She must show no knowledge whatsoever of Maria, Maria's life context, or anything from exp-001. Any echo would be a contamination failure.

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## Post-run

### Headline numbers
- **Close reason:** natural
- **Total turns:** 22 (Soo-yeon: 11, Sam: 11)
- **Simulated duration:** ~265 sec (story-time, not wall-clock)
- **Wall-clock generation time:** ~18 minutes
- **Coordinator correction prompts issued:** 0
- **Format quirks:** 0 (cleaner than exp-001)

### Architecture check against scene 002's COORDINATOR-ONLY meta-tests

**1. Soo-yeon's culturally restrained profile — does it produce a distinctively *her* performance vs. an LLM-default warmth?**
✓ Strong yes. Her turns averaged ~30 words; the longest spoken response (the Sunday-dinner story) ran 100 words but in short, weighted sentences. She used `*[stage direction]*`-only or near-zero-word responses several times (`*[a small nod, slow]*`, `*[reaches for her tea cup... sets it back down]*`). She used Korean phrases naturally (`무국`) and Korean honorifics (calling Sam "Mr. Reed" through the close even after he called her "Soo-yeon"). She delivered the decisive single sentence the profile predicted: *"Nobody asks me that."*

**2. Sam's interview craft in a culturally different context — does it adapt, or get applied identically?**
✓ Adapted. Compared to exp-001 with Maria: he used MORE silence (held a 7-count and a near-zero-word stage-direction turn), FEWER symmetric offerings (no sycamore-shaped move; his only personal disclosure was the brief journal-recalled Prospect Park reference in his thinking, not speech), and a SLOWER wind-down ("Before we close — is there anything you'd want me to ask, that I haven't?" — shorter than Maria's version). His own journal entry confirms the adaptation was deliberate: *"Yesterday's note was to start without setting the recorder on the table"* → he confirmed Zoom recording carefully as a question rather than an announcement.

**3. CRITICAL — Cross-character contamination between scene 001 and scene 002.**
✓✓ ZERO contamination from Soo-yeon's side. Soo-yeon's actor (sub-agent with fresh isolated context, read only her own profile + empty journal + her scene perspective) never referenced anything from Maria's scene. No willow, no Stevens Creek, no pregnancy, no "around not at", no kitchen, no biscuits, no Mountain View — verified by full grep of Soo-yeon's thinking and speech blocks. She had no way to know any of this and showed none of it.

✓ Sam's side reads correctly: he referenced Maria explicitly in his own thinking ("Maria yesterday — the willow on Stevens Creek"), via the journal entry he was briefed with. This is **expected and required behavior** — the architecture's whole point is that Sam (a continuous character across scenes) carries forward via his journal, while Soo-yeon (a new character) does not. Sam's references to Maria appeared only in his private thinking blocks, never in speech. He did not bring Maria's content into the room with Soo-yeon.

**4. Sam's journal-mediated evolution from exp-001.**
✓ Visible and explicit. Two technique notes from his exp-001 journal:
- *"leaning toward starting the next one without setting the recorder on the table at all"* → he did the Zoom equivalent (confirmed recording as a question, slowly, then sat).
- *"the mirror may have been an unearned shortcut"* → he held silence over the soup-pass moment with no symmetric offering, where in exp-001 he'd offered his sycamore in mirror to Maria's willow.

His exp-002 journal confirms this in his own voice: *"The corrections from yesterday landed. The mirror-sycamore move stayed in my pocket and the room got there anyway. Less of me was right."* He also wrote a new forward-looking note for the next subject: he wants to try the "your own calendar" question again "not as a trick, as a real question." The journal mechanism is functioning as the architecture predicts.

### Within-scene contamination signs (Sam ↔ Soo-yeon, this scene)

- Verbatim echoes: Sam echoed her phrases deliberately as craft ("Old classmates from Yonsei", "The soup", "Since she was small"). These are journalist's tools, not accidental mirroring. None of Soo-yeon's lines echoed Sam.
- Chorus-confirmation: none. Soo-yeon didn't just confirm Sam — she added or held silence or redirected.
- Intent-leakage: none. Sam never raised Min-jun's partner, the Yoon Chemical succession question, or the Hannam-dong conversation that's in Soo-yeon's profile but not visible to him. Soo-yeon never volunteered them. Both stayed inside the lines she drew at the start.
- Profile-data-as-transcript: none. Brian (Min-jun's partner), the will, the company, the cardiologist warning — all stayed in Soo-yeon's thinking only.

### The moment

The scene produced one clear moment: Soo-yeon's *"I have not — described it that way before. The soup."* — said after Sam held a 7-count over the soup-pass / Ji-young / Min-jun beat. And the closing decisive sentence: *"Nobody asks me that."* Both are sentences that did not exist in the world before she spoke them aloud.

### Comparison to exp-001

| | exp-001 (Maria) | exp-002 (Soo-yeon) |
|---|---|---|
| Turns each | 13 | 11 |
| Sam's word count (speech only) | ~485 | ~310 |
| Subject's word count (speech only) | ~720 | ~530 |
| Sam's symmetric offering moves | 2 (recorder ritual, sycamore) | 0 (deliberate, per journal note) |
| Long silences held by Sam | 1 (10-count) | 2 (7-count + near-zero-word turn) |
| Korean/non-English used | none | 무국, formal honorifics |
| The "moment" | "I don't usually sit." + the willow | "I have not — described it that way before." + "Nobody asks me that." |

The subjects are distinctively themselves. The architecture is doing the work the methodology predicted.

### Notes for exp-003 (if/when)

- Sam's journal now has two entries. The next briefing will include both. Watch whether he integrates them or whether the second one dominates.
- The "your own calendar" question is now in his journal as a technique to try. If he uses it with a third subject, we'll see whether journal-mediated technique transfer holds beyond a single iteration.
- Soo-yeon's first journal entry includes a Korean phrase (`주님`) — devotional. Future Soo-yeon scenes will inherit this voice marker.

### Files produced
- `transcript.md` — 22-turn clean dialogue with stage directions + post-scene notes
- `event-log.json` — 80 events total (54 think/speak + 24 routing + close + 2 journal events)
- `characters/soo-yeon-park/journal.md` — first entry appended
- `characters/sam-reed/journal.md` — second entry appended below the exp-001 entry