# Strawmen — candidate tests on the drawing board

Ten sketches, not yet forged. Each names the genuine mechanism, the lazy fake
the key must kill, the anchor hook that kills it, and why a spectator would
care. Forge with `/visual-test-forge <pick>` — full cheat pass happens then.

| Nº | Title | Domain × modality | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | Three-Body Ballet | orbital mechanics × animated sim | one-shot |
| S2 | Schelling's Neighborhood | behavioral econ × animated sim | one-shot |
| S3 | The Trading Pit | market microstructure × interactive sim | one-shot |
| S4 | Murmuration | collective behavior × animated sim | one-shot |
| S5 | Slingshot | astrodynamics × game | one-shot |
| S6 | The Counterpoint Machine | music theory × audio + rules | one-shot |
| S7 | Bessel's Bells | FM synthesis × audio | one-shot |
| S8 | Tissot's Mirror | map projections × 3D | agentic |
| S9 | Patient Zero | epidemiology × animated sim | one-shot |
| S10 | The Ant Economist | swarm optimization × animated sim | one-shot |

---

**S1 · Three-Body Ballet** — Gravity sandbox: drag bodies, fling them, watch
real n-body integration (symplectic, fixed timestep, seeded presets).
*Fake:* eased ellipses and lissajous loops. *Anchor hook:* `state(t)` on
seeded off-script initial conditions; energy/momentum conservation over long
runs (tweens bleed energy instantly); short-horizon anchors only — chaos makes
long-t exact checks dishonest. *Fun:* slingshots, near-misses, orbital chaos
from a finger-drag.

**S2 · Schelling's Neighborhood** — The classic segregation model live: a city
grid, a tolerance slider, mild individual preference cascading into stark
segregation. *Fake:* clustering noise that ignores the utility rule.
*Anchor hook:* seeded-run segregation index at step N; the empirical tipping
threshold as a function of tolerance — emergent, computable, not memorizable.
*Fun:* the moral punch of watching it happen; spectators argue about it.

**S3 · The Trading Pit** — Draw your own supply and demand curves; seeded
zero-intelligence traders haggle in a continuous double auction and the price
discovers the competitive equilibrium (Gode–Sunder). *Fake:* price drifts to
the midpoint regardless of curve shape. *Anchor hook:* equilibrium price/
quantity for off-script hand-drawn curves; allocative-efficiency statistics of
the seeded ZI runs. *Fun:* chaos → order; "my market" is inherently shareable.

**S4 · Murmuration** — Boids with a predator (your cursor is the hawk).
*Fake:* particles drifting on a noise field. *Anchor hook:* order-parameter
statistics (polarization, nearest-neighbor distance distribution) of seeded
runs; the real swarm→torus→flock regime transitions at off-script parameter
values. *Fun:* it's a starling murmuration you can terrorize.

**S5 · Slingshot** — Launch a probe across a planetary system to hit a target
using gravity assists; par scores per level; real integration, scored.
*Fake:* bezier paths that look orbit-ish; canned level solutions.
*Anchor hook:* `trajectory(launchParams)` must match seeded integration;
delta-v accounting; drive-the-UI check that the played game and the probe are
one engine. *Fun:* it's Kerbal in a file — the genre Mollick's audience loves.

**S6 · The Counterpoint Machine** — Type or click a cantus firmus; the machine
composes first-species counterpoint above it under the full Fux rule set,
plays both voices, and highlights any rule violation when you edit a note.
*Fake:* random consonant intervals — parallel fifths slip through within
seconds. *Anchor hook:* `validate(pair)` against the mechanical rule set;
off-script cantus firmi; OfflineAudioContext render for pitch anchors.
*Fun:* it sings what it reasons — audible correctness.

**S7 · Bessel's Bells** — A playable FM synth (Chowning) with the spectrum
animated live; bell, e-piano, brass presets. *Fake:* filtered sawtooth in an
FM costume. *Anchor hook:* offline-render → FFT; sideband amplitudes must
follow Bessel-function predictions at off-script carrier/modulator ratios and
indices — exact math, brutally fake-proof. *Fun:* a real instrument; the
spectrum dances as you play.

**S8 · Tissot's Mirror** — A math-only 3D globe (no libraries) that morphs
into chosen map projections, with Tissot indicatrices showing distortion
truthfully. *Fake:* a textured sphere flattening with uniform decorative
circles. *Anchor hook:* `project(lon,lat)` per projection; indicatrix
ellipse axes from the real distortion tensor at off-script points. *Fun:*
drag the globe, watch Greenland deflate. Agentic mode — 3D eats output budget.

**S9 · Patient Zero** — Agent-based epidemic on a small-world network; sliders
for distancing and vaccination; herd-immunity threshold emerges rather than
being drawn. *Fake:* a logistic curve wearing agent sprites. *Anchor hook:*
seeded run state; the real R₀ → final-size implicit relation; threshold
behavior at off-script parameters. *Fun:* the genre that goes viral about
things going viral.

**S10 · The Ant Economist** — Ant-colony optimization finding shortest paths
by pheromone; draw walls mid-run and watch the trail re-route. *Inverted
fake:* an A* solver wearing ant sprites — too perfect, too fast. *Anchor
hook:* the exploration signature itself — convergence curves, cross-seed
variance, early-phase wandering statistics; final path vs computable optimum.
*Fun:* you bully ants with a wall tool and they outsmart you.