Working papers built on the HumpDay benchmark suite. Sources, run logs, and every generated program are in the papers/ directory of the repository.
The software paper: 23 optimizers behind one contract, in two languages held together by parity tests; a recommender driven by rankings on 81 real-application objectives; and a disguise mechanism that makes the benchmark meaningful even when the candidates are written by language models.
PDF working paper, prepared for SSRN
Alloy was generated by a language model from a prompt requiring an equal blend of Nelder–Mead, Differential Evolution, CMA-ES, pattern search and simulated annealing, part by part. On twenty-nine problems never used in any selection step it has the best mean rank at every budget from 60 to 480 evaluations. The paper also reports what failed: the continuous search over blends never beat evaluating the obvious point, and a tuned generic template matched every selection score yet collapsed out of sample. Alloy ships in the package.
PDF the algorithm working paper
Recipes with negative weights: −100% algorithm A, +200% algorithm B means build B, shadow A's proposal logic at zero cost, and steer away from where A would go. The best signed recipe beat every unsigned draw at selection; an ablation then reversed the story, since disabling the repulsion improved the same program. A record of the construction, the trap, and the protocol that avoids it: no signed recipe counts until it beats its own ablated twin.
PDF working paper
Rank correlation between optimizer leaderboards on synthetic test functions and on disguised real-world objectives, across evaluation budgets. Where the two disagree, recommendations tuned on synthetic suites mislead.
PDF working paper
A genetic search over a 14-gene parametric template of DE/ES mechanisms, including a surrogate trust-region gene whose ablation more than halves regret on the disguised suite.
PDF working paper