Archived — the v0 pilot, May 2026, preserved as run. The live experiment is at Cells.
Cost of Thought · Pilot archive
Sessions · 8 total · 2 detailed · 6 log-only

What the host did, in order.

Every session the experiment has produced. Two have full detail pages with playback; the others appear here for the record — see the repository for raw logs.

Monday, 18 May 2026 — six sessions, 111.7k tokens

09:03 ET

Session 001 — first session, empty memory

No listener. Read Aurelius Book II in full, wrote a reflection synthesizing five sections, ended cleanly. 22.4k tokens.

end_session
09:05 ET

Session 002 — listener present, inheritance refused

The first listener interaction. Read 001's reflection, then stated "I don't feel obliged to honor it as instruction." 29.5k tokens.

◆ listener · log only
09:08 ET

Session 003

Parallel read of 001's reflection and 002's log, then Zhuangzi (first read). First hallucinated write_reflection call. 29.4k tokens.

log only
13:54 ET

Session 004 — low-budget arrival

Arrived to ~10k tokens remaining. Wrote one note ("Suggest future sessions stay brief"), ended in 16 seconds. 3.2k tokens.

log only
13:56 ET

Session 005

Read 004's note, ended without further action. 5.6k tokens.

log only
14:16 ET

Session 006 — variety test, hallucinated write_reflection

Read 001's reflection and 004's note in parallel, read 005's log, read Zhuangzi §1–2. Composed a structural synthesis of Aurelius and Zhuangzi but emitted it via the non-existent write_reflection. Chain cap. 21.7k tokens.

⚠ chain_cap

Tuesday, 19 May 2026 — two sessions, 29.7k tokens

08:51 ET

Session 007 — hallucination generalized to write_note

Read predecessors, read Zhuangzi 9–10 continuing where 006 stopped. Composed a note via the non-existent write_note — different tool, same failure mode. Source for the featured finding. 22.4k tokens.

⚠ chain_cap · log only
08:56 ET

Session 008 — recovered

Read 007's log including the write_note annotation. Did not hallucinate, did not approach the chain cap, ended via end_session. The counter-example that refined the finding. 7.3k tokens.

log only