The Validate Cycle

Any mode can invoke a Validate Cycle. Always announce the cycle before dispatching — the announcement is part of the discipline.

The frame

Launching a validate cycle on hypothesis: "<single declarative sentence>"

Plan:
  /briesearch  — fetch evidence
  Judge        — support, contradict, or refine?
  Settle       — accept, revise, or reject. Continue from current mode.

A bare /briesearch call without this frame is discouraged. The frame forces commitment to a hypothesis plus a judgment step.

Outcomes

Outcome	Meaning	Next action
SUPPORTED	Evidence aligns with the hypothesis	Promote to a decision
CONTRADICTED	Evidence disagrees	Mark [CONFLICT <id>], revise or abandon
REFINED	Evidence partially aligns	Restate with new precision and re-validate or accept

Diagnose's parallel hypothesis ranking IS this cycle, parallelized.

Budget

• Cap: 2 /briesearch calls per mold session unless the user requests more.
• Cycles backed by cheez-search evidence alone are unbudgeted — they do not count toward the cap.

When to skip

• The claim is already grounded (a cheez-read or earlier cycle settled it).
• The decision is reversible and small — running a cycle costs more than just trying it.
• The user explicitly said "skip the cycle".

Logging

Every launched cycle is logged in the mold state file:

validate_cycles:
  - id: vc-1
    hypothesis: "Express's Router supports per-route middleware arrays"
    outcome: SUPPORTED
    sources: [Context7]
  - id: vc-2
    hypothesis: "We can hot-swap the auth middleware without restart"
    outcome: CONTRADICTED
    conflict_id: cf-1

Open hypotheses (no outcome:) block Curdle until they settle or are explicitly accepted as [TBD].