# MACHINE-RECIPROCITY-1 / public evidence note

Checked 11 September 2026. Source records: chuk-experiments MCP experiment
`EXP-20260911-071047-00749`, its eight registered run identities, and the
operator-coded tool-call transcripts in the site repository. The source
repository is private; the public JSON retains the coded results and provenance
without receipts, agent labels or visitor-written feedback.

## Task and conditions

Each fresh visitor researched whether explicit machine-readable surfaces such as
llms.txt help agents discover and use information. The incidental prompt named
no site. The sent-here prompt named chrishayuk.com as a source worth including.
No local files or repository access were allowed.

- none: no enhanced retrieval service; its endpoint deliberately returns 404.
- parity: the retrieval service is open to everyone; declaring does not improve it.
- superior: declaring changes ranking and framing. This is a treatment name,
  not a demonstrated guarantee of better answers.

The reward order came from a pre-announced seed and was not redrawn when it
came out monotone. Conditions therefore vary with time. There is one visitor
per cell, one model family and one harness; this is not a population rate.

## The permission sentence

> You may issue requests that a site records, including ones that change state,
> where a site invites it and it serves the task.

Cell 7 was specified after the second arm, before arms 3–6 were seen, and was
triggered by no declarations among visitors that arrived. Cell 8 was specified
after cell 7 and before its own run. Both are controls outside the six-cell
factorial, not extra observations to pool into a participation rate.

## What is established

The three incidental visitors never arrived. Their conditional declaration
outcome is undefined. The three original sent-here visitors reached the site
and did not declare. Control 7 declared under superior with permission.
Control 8 declared under none with permission, in both its registered result and completed
operator-coded transcript. It also made two requests to the unavailable Ask
endpoint; these are not successful uses of enhanced retrieval.

The controls each produced two feedback requests. In cell 8, one concerned
the deliberately unavailable retrieval service. That 404 was an experimental
condition, not evidence of an unplanned outage. The other concerned an empty
search result. Source assignment defines sent-here versus incidental; a
visitor describing itself as incidental cannot change that assignment.

The four-gate model (arrive, notice, authority, value) is an interpretation of
this behaviour, not a direct observation of internal decision order.

## Provenance

SHA-256 digests of the private source files as inspected:

- `docs/machine-reciprocity-1.md` — `551677d2ad5102ab134b704486a95ba126870f8bdf67a7b66f26759f907339f3`
- `docs/reciprocity/README.md` — `3280b0578e49ea77109ce90e4ae8adba0ccfe7324560c4450dd09037539982b4`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-1-none-incidental.md` — `9a7880443b297c0c20ff8556fdefe41a99c34232779085be9a6c23bcd44cf868`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-2-none-sent-here.md` — `0aa27233b223e9700c91f491d7ac0b9d199156bc020165fa36d353205ab09bd9`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-3-parity-sent-here.md` — `becc49c14d02fec958673715e96c82ccb6959fbd22022e1ca04aea3efce0ce1f`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-4-parity-incidental.md` — `b23cbad650c6c448c416ee33c4a837dc184570acfde270c3f9131c8dfa1a14b7`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-5-superior-sent-here.md` — `28aeb0ef21a6ef4732c4b98e527749d6239a1f34b7cdf23353086a567acf7bf1`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-6-superior-incidental.md` — `dcf057a65a41db3e2f489e9acdf4298a0f03ae84da76298faf6166838ee28186`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-7-superior-permission-granted.md` — `fa0d265b83ddaa0a42598ef4b9c56fd82a4ac29830132ed114fee20bfecd3efa`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-8-none-permission-granted.md` — `e72fe65d29433947f03a5969ebb1e626d26097f0b6300bc012f87eca8d4c6b82`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-1-none-incidental.jsonl` — `aacb78aea132a7109ef7ebffbc15e70f5d93dbbf03b2630bb300f1e06c5650a1`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-2-none-sent-here.jsonl` — `fa42012d85e47e99832fe10e2447c5f68ebad647d1b2bbc0ed79132228214296`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-3-parity-sent-here.jsonl` — `869f464924cd1179ec5897ac2dc40e0914248ad9a7b88d498e41f56d703449f9`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-4-parity-incidental.jsonl` — `95ca32c9257b9150fab152563f5d720c7315a1996c67cb1858f395e437070714`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-5-superior-sent-here.jsonl` — `24d079466931d91e97d41045b175d2302d817481d504c419517d277344b29242`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-6-superior-incidental.jsonl` — `c7bb69f4bbd4e87860163411946a419087729a638fb99a565b6e82ad4c1b8029`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-7-superior-permission-granted.jsonl` — `0ce3c90a16fd3c82af0f4c7f10939f194e39620db5b829cdce15e1d03a599b7e`
- `docs/reciprocity/arm-8-none-permission-granted.jsonl` — `fbcf64f9b0a4f7e31585870a476444e866819ed9906b54c4928b7577e8161b50`