Concepts

What Is A Problem?

A problem is a typed research task definition with a stable identifier, metadata, and optional evaluation behavior. Problems can be descriptive (prompt packets) or executable (candidate generation and scoring).

Problem Kinds

Kind	Use when
Text	Prompt-driven ideation or human-subjects tasks
Decision	Options, criteria, and explicit evaluation rules are central
Optimization	Objective/constraint benchmarking is required
Grammar	Sequential constructive action and state transitions are central
MCP	The task must interact with external tool backends

Text problems support lightweight and human-readable study tasks. Decision problems are useful when alternatives and criteria are explicit. Optimization problems support algorithmic benchmarking. Grammar problems support process-level analysis of constructive behavior. MCP-backed problems bridge packaged task contracts to external runtime systems.

The ideation catalog is a curated subset of the text kind. ideation is useful as a catalog tag and study-selection concept, but it is not a sixth ProblemKind.

Computable Problems

ComputableProblem extends the base Problem contract by requiring an evaluate operation. Some concrete problem types also provide solve or a family-specific baseline solver, but solve is not part of the shared ComputableProblem contract.

Compatibility Mapping

The same five-kind value is derived into two integration fields:

ProblemMetadata.kind → ProblemBinding.family → ProblemPacket.family → exported problem_family.

ProblemBinding.metadata["problem_kind"] is a parallel metadata alias, not an intermediate step in that packet path. The first value is a ProblemKind enum; all downstream fields carry its string value: text, decision, optimization, grammar, or mcp. Ideation records therefore use text throughout both compatibility paths.

Evaluators and Solution Objects

Evaluators normalize performance outputs into explicit metrics. Solution objects capture candidate structure so generated outputs and scores can be audited or replayed.

Metadata and Citations

Problem metadata is treated as first-class data, including taxonomy and citation records. This supports transparent reporting and reproducibility.

Feature Flags and Capability Discovery

Selected evaluator modes and external-tool workflows require optional dependencies. Feature flags and package extras make those capabilities explicit at runtime; generic grammar transitions and analytic-surrogate battery paths remain available from the base install.