Reality Audit Integration Documentation: Stage 1

This document records the design, implementation, validation, and planned continuation of the Reality Audit project inside the Commons Sentience Sandbox repository. The purpose of the project is to convert a general “simulation-audit” concept into a concrete experimental framework that can (1) run controlled audit experiments in a simplified sandbox and (2) instrument the original sandbox to observe hidden-state divergence, measurement dependence, bandwidth constraints, controller/environment confounds, and structural anisotropy proxies. The work proceeded in stages. First, a standalone reality_audit framework was specified and scaffolded to support repeatable experiments using configuration-driven runs, modular world modes, controller benchmarking, metrics, logging, and automated tests. Second, the initial implementation was critically reviewed, revealing several scientific and architectural issues: the new package was not integrated with the original sandbox; preferred-frame experiments used inconsistent coordinate references; observer-effect experiments were not actually exercising unobserved execution paths; and some world modes were placeholders rather than robust physical models. Third, a validation-and-repair phase corrected several of these defects, strengthened the test suite, and produced an integration plan. Finally, GitHub Copilot reported completion of Option B integration: a read-only probe attached to the original sandbox’s turn loop, plus room-distance encoding, per-turn logging, summary metrics, a CLI flag, and test coverage. This document consolidates the project rationale, implementation record, all reported results to date, identified limitations, and the next phase of work. The aim is to provide a durable technical record suitable for Zenodo deposition and structured scientific feedback from collaborators. Zenodo supports GitHub/software archiving workflows, including repository linking, software description files such as CITATION.cff, and DOI reservation prior to publication.