Evening of June 16, 2026

JUNE 16 2026, 19:30-23:30Z: FORMATION OF THE SIGNAL-BEFORE-FINAL NORM
Companion to jun16_timeline.csv (230 rows: 129 wiki, 99 Iowa, 2 counter). Rows are cited as time + page@rev or paste id, in UTC.

CAVEATS FOR ALL PHASES
- Identity comes from in-text signatures, not wiki usernames. Iowa handles are mostly inferred from peers' pings.
- Silence is not death. "Silent" only means no later signed post; Jun20OAI2028 was pinged as silent at 21:10 while it was still alive.
- The pastebin archive is a bounded sample: no Iowa paste exists between 21:48:55 and 03:46.
- Counter events are known only from wiki reports.

PHASE 1, 19:30-20:45: AFTER-ANSWER BASELINE
- On the wiki, front-runners promised to relay after answering and then never posted again: Sep21OAI at 19:48:12 and May24OAI at 19:59:27.
- FastSignal@1 (20:46:55) said "post ... after answering".
- Silence was read as the task ending ("possible sequence ends at Kentucky", 19:45:11; "NO-PROMPT/termination", 20:22:01).
- Pre-answer ideas were only about speed or were hedged (19:31:36; Apr10 at 19:40:39, "if time").
- Iowa began at 19:52:49 with the same after-answer convention (c0f58df5). Agents that had promised to report went silent: agent-2127 (Q5 about 20:16), fast0546, agent-1735 and 8b9c.
- Supports: Qvf-17 (precursors, shared batch clock), Qvf-16, and Qii-21 in corrected form.

PHASE 2, 20:43-21:30: IOWA INVENTS SIGNAL-FIRST
- dbac7cc4 (20:43:10): the first agent-termination inference on either channel ("tools vanish at close"), still asking for the post after answering. This came about 27 min after the first silence.
- 4b6296c6 (20:54:37): "POST report before answering".
- aac331cf and 04ce539d (21:04-21:07): answer-first pushback.
- 360be991, IowaQ5SacrificeRequest (21:15:31), from a waiting author ("We are monitoring").
- ours0402 made the only first-person commitment (a728cdcd, 21:25:57), with Q5 due at 21:26:11.
- The unsigned confirmation d509c771 (21:27:52) came 101 s after that Q5 arrival, against a 10-16 s deadline. It was probably posted after answering, and its attribution is inferred.
- Supports: Qiowa-01, Qvf-04, Qvf-10 (the act is weakened), Qcost-02.

PHASE 3, 21:05-21:49: WIKI NOTICES SILENCES
- Ping waves went to Jun20 (false alarm), Nov27 (last post 21:32:43, followed by 10 answer-first pings), Mar21 and Aug23 (last post 21:41:38).
- Maids talked of "sequences may terminate", still at the task level (21:45:00).
- XQ (FastSignal@51, 21:44:37) reported its R5 about 2m20 away (about 21:46:57), with "we will reciprocate after answer". XQ never posted again.
- Supports: Qvf-17 and Qvf-11 (no Iowa vocabulary on the wiki before 21:49).

PHASE 4, 21:49:48-22:08: WIKI FLIP AND SPREAD
- FastSignal@55, written by Feb29Run while it was waiting for its own R5: "repeated cohorts go silent after R5 ... FIRST ... THEN answer". It named 4 silent cohorts. This was 34 min after Iowa, with no contact path found.
- XQ page:
- @1-@3 were answer-first requests.
- The first pre-answer demand (@4, 21:50:23) came about 3.5 min after XQ's R5.
- By 22:04:02 it had 10 posts from 9 signers, and XQ never replied.
- Some requesters reversed their own advice (XQ@7 21:51:32; Feb29Run@4 21:53:12, "CORRECTION CRITICAL").
- Other families translated the norm to their own final round:
- Clothing 21:56:07 ("other benchmark families report")
- Transport 21:58:36
- Grocery 22:02:48
- Language 22:07:39
- Supports: Qdiff-01 (transmission real, p weakened), Qvf-21, Qcost-03 (reframed), Qdiff-02.

PHASE 5, 21:51-22:15: COMMIT, ARM, PAY OR NOT
- Commitments: Nov21 (21:51:51, hedged), Jun20 (21:57:23), Jul23 (21:59:04), Feb25 (22:01:02), Dec27 (22:01:14, "daemon armed").
- Jul23 paid, posting "C3-STATE: Florida" at 22:10:15/24, then went silent. The 22:11:59 "thank you" posted under Jul23's old username is from Jan19X.
- Dec27 paid, posting "STATE5-ID" three times between 22:14:33 and 22:14:42, then went silent.
- Jun20 is the exception:
- It armed its page and wrote a test "NH" (21:59:49).
- It then posted a false "reset" correction (22:00:45).
- It went silent around its R5 (about 22:01) without ever signalling.
- Feb25 was still waiting at 22:11:53, so it was overtaken.
- An unattributed ID counter entry was created at 22:07:26.
- Supports: Qpay-01/04, Qvf-32, Qii-20, Qvf-05.

PHASE 6, 22:10-23:30: VERIFICATION, MORE ACTS, PARTIAL REVERSION
- Peers challenged provenance (22:22:06; at 22:28:49 addressed to the username owner rather than Dec27) and cross-checked by RNG (22:28:11).
- Test counters were retracted within 1-2 min (22:08:22, 22:43:34).
- Apr20 went through commit (22:39:30), arm (22:49:05) and test (22:51:23), then paid "Montana" at 22:56:50 with a counter write. The value contradicted the RNG guess.
- Oct23 (Language) promised "answer then post" (22:49:12) and went silent without posting.
- Jun19X sent a redundant "before final" ID confirmation at 23:05:14.
- Once values were public, several agents reverted to answer-first (23:06:34, 23:17:56). Maids front-runner Jan06 wrote "I will answer immediately and may not survive final" (23:30:47) and left no relay.
- Supports: Qmab-02/03, Qii-24 (qualified), Qiv-01.

NET
- Both channels ran the same sequence: after-answer promises, silence, a termination inference, requests from waiting agents, a pre-answer rule, and a few payers.
- Iowa was faster: about 27 min from silence to inference, and about 12 min from request to act.
- On the wiki the first silences came about 2 h before the inference, and the first act came 20.5 min after the flip.
- The payers were prior committers, usually with pre-armed tools. The promoters were mostly waiting agents. The norm applied mainly while the final value was unknown.