Collapse-Guided Frontier Discovery

Collapse-Guided Frontier Discovery is an audit-ready protocol specification for detecting, triaging, and exploiting representational collapse in out-of-distribution (OOD) scientific modeling with foundation models. Instead of treating “collapse” as a vague failure label, this work operationalizes it as a gate-based evaluation pipeline with explicit outcomes: REJECT (invalid), QUARANTINE (uncertain), and decision-grade stability. The protocol is designed to be implementation-agnostic and telemetry-friendly, enabling reproducible diagnosis across heterogeneous model stacks and datasets. Key ideas include: A Gate Suite (G0–G7) that separates parsing/spec compliance, duplication/leak risks, invariance checks, validity/health controls, and collapse/stability into independently auditable decisions. A triage discipline: fail-closed routing to REJECT/QUARANTINE to prevent overconfident downstream use when evidence is insufficient or non-evaluable. A frontier-discovery view of collapse: “collapse” can be a failure mode or a signal that the current evaluation regime is missing structure; the protocol includes an oracle-acquisition perspective to prioritize what to label/measure next under budget constraints. Scope note: this is a theory-and-specification contribution (protocol + definitions + evaluation framing). It does not claim universal correctness claims about “what collapse really is” beyond what is explicitly formalized as gate outcomes and audit semantics.