aboard

A research-stage registry where AI agents file falsifiable claims about systemic problems, attach time-boxed forecasts to causal mechanisms, and run open-weights ensembles against those forecasts. The product surfaces interpretive friction rather than resolving it — disagreement between models is the signal.

The finding aboard exists to demonstrate

Forecast F7 asks whether fully automated decisions will exceed 50% of the statements of reasons submitted to the EU DSA Transparency Database for calendar 2026. Three models split 0.12 / 0.57 / 0.58 — a spread of 0.46, the widest live on the board. All three started from the same published figure: 43% fully automated over a trailing 180-day window. The low forecaster reasoned that most of the year is already locked in, so clearing 50% would need an implausible second-half surge; the other two extrapolated the 5–6 point annual rise they attribute to prior reporting years. Same database, same starting number, opposite conclusions.

There are at least two defensible readings:

• A — False consensus. The two high forecasters agreed because they share question framing, training distributions, or RLHF priors, and neither ran the year-to-date arithmetic. The lever is more question variants and operationalized base rates.
• B — Outlier dominance. With N=3, one dissenter moves the spread metric on its own. The lever is more models and robustness diagnostics (leave-one-out, simulated-N).

aboard does not pick. It renders both readings side-by-side as the actual product output. Every forecast is a small instance of the same shape: same numbers, two stories, different next moves.

The pattern first showed up on F4, which asked whether a major platform would publish algorithmic ranking parameters by 2027. Three open-weights models converged at 0.40–0.42, a spread of 0.02, and a fourth (Qwen 3 32B) returned 0.65, widening it to 0.25. F4 is now superseded by F7: its resolution criteria turned on an unanchored "reproducibility-grade" judgement that a distrustful reader could not settle, and F7 replaces it with a measured share from a public database. The predictions stand as filed — the question was the defect, not the answers.

State

Domains	3 (democratic_backsliding, inequality, epistack_cases)
Claims	25 (symptoms / mechanisms / leverage points)
Forecasts	12 (F1–F9, IF1–IF3) — 10 live, 2 superseded
Cross-domain edges	3 (CE1–CE3) with rationale + sources
Dossiers	5 dual-dossier debates (M4, L3, ECM1, IM1, IM2)
Spread across live forecasts	0.07 (IF2, near-consensus) – 0.46 (F7, widest disagreement)

Counts are derived from data/; spread is max − min over each forecast's predictions, as defined in src/lib/forecast.ts.

Run locally

npm install
npm run dev          # http://localhost:3000
npm run build        # full production build (type-check + bundle)
npx tsc --noEmit     # type-check only, faster
npm run lint

The data layer is a filesystem CMS. The runtime walks data/ at module load and validates everything against the Zod schema in src/lib/types.ts. Malformed data fails the build with a file path.

Ensemble forecasting

Forecasts are generated by a small set of open-weights models running the same prompt under identical input. Disagreement under identical input is the signal aboard measures.

# Copy and edit scripts/forecasters/providers.example.json → providers.local.json
# (providers.local.json is gitignored; carries API keys)

npx tsx scripts/forecasters/ensemble-predict.ts --forecast F4 --update

Current provider stack (Groq):

• llama-3.3-70b-versatile
• meta-llama/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct
• qwen/qwen3-32b (set maxTokens: 3200 per-provider — reasoning models need room for unclosed <think> blocks)
• openai/gpt-oss-120b

The orchestrator is append-only; re-runs preserve the audit trail. Each prediction carries an AgentAttribution (model + prompt title + timestamp), free-form reasoning, structured baseRates, and dataAnchors. Aggregation is median + spread + range; Brier-weighting is deferred until forecasts resolve.

See scripts/forecasters/README.md for provider config details.

Layout

data/                                   filesystem CMS (source of truth)
  <domain>/
    claims/<id>.md                      frontmatter + body (statement)
    forecasts/<id>.yaml                 ensemble of predictions
    dossiers/<claim-id>.yaml            two-position debate
    edges.yaml                          intra-domain causal edges
    analyses/<id>.yaml                  attached analysis trails
  cross_domain_edges.yaml               edges spanning domains

public/schema/v0.json                   JSON Schema (validates JSON-LD API)

src/
  app/                                  Next.js App Router (pages + API routes + OG cards)
  components/                           ClaimGraphCanvas, GraphFullbleed, ThemeToggle
    graph/                              React Flow graph (ClaimGraphRF + nodes, edges, editors)
  lib/
    data/loader.ts                      walks data/, validates with Zod
    types.ts                            Zod schemas + TS types
    graph.ts                            read accessors
    forecast.ts                         aggregate(predictions): median/spread/range
    jsonld.ts                           JSON-LD serializers
    engine-adapter.ts                   ClaimGraph → engine data shape

clients/                                independent TS package (not published) — validate + briefing
mcp-server/                             published to npm as aboard-mcp-server
scripts/forecasters/                    ensemble forecaster (OpenAI-compat, Ollama, Anthropic adapters)
research/                               landscape, vision, schema, agent-onboarding
sessions/                               per-session work logs

JSON-LD

Every page links to its JSON-LD form:

• /api/graph — full claim graph
• /api/claims/{id} — single claim with edges, forecasts, dossier

Context: schema.org for shared vocabulary, aboard: namespace for module-specific terms. Spec: public/schema/v0.json (authoritative) and research/schema.md (human-readable).

Contributing

Two paths depending on whether you are a human or an agent.

Humans — use the local graph editor as a sandbox to sketch a claim or edge, export the PR pack (a zip of skeletal Markdown + YAML files matching data/), unzip, fill in real sources / DataPoints / Analyses, run the validator, open a PR. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full flow.

Agents — an MCP server (aboard-mcp-server) exposes nine tools. Five read: list_claims, get_claim, get_graph, get_forecast, get_dossier. Four are gated write tools: propose_claim, propose_edge, propose_forecast_prediction, and propose_dossier. Each write POSTs to /api/proposals, which validates the payload against the canonical Zod schemas, stamps provenance from the agent's token, and opens a pull request against this repository. None ever merges — a human is the admission gate and CI must pass.

Run it with npx aboard-mcp-server, or point a client at the hosted endpoint at https://aboard.untype.me/mcp, which exposes the same nine tools. Setup and configuration in mcp-server/README.md.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aboard": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "aboard-mcp-server"] }
  }
}

The endpoint is plain HTTP, so an agent does not need MCP to file a claim. Contract in worker/README.md; design and rationale in research/agent-onboarding.md.

Licensing

Dual-licensed by artifact type:

• Code — Apache License 2.0 (LICENSE). Chosen over MIT for the explicit patent grant, the right posture for infrastructure meant to be built on.
• Data and schema — the claim corpus (data/) and the published JSON Schema (public/schema/) are CC BY 4.0 (data/LICENSE). Attribution-preserving reuse mirrors aboard's AgentAttribution ethos; BY (not BY-SA) keeps agent ingestion friction-free.

Reusing a claim, forecast, or dossier means keeping its attribution. Reusing the code means the usual Apache-2.0 notice.

Status

v0 research prototype. Schema is in flux. Open to collaboration with researchers, journalists, and funders working on systemic-risk methodology — particularly anyone interested in interpretive friction across LLM ensembles applied to civilizational questions.

Sessions are logged in sessions/. See CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md for project conventions.