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Decoupling Logic from Persona: Structural Immunity of Edge LLM Agents to Context Pollution

Masaaki Nakatsu, Reno Wang

Year: 2026Venue: arXiv preprintArea: cs.CLType: PreprintEmbeddings: 76

Intelligence

Status: succeeded | Model: Gemma-4-26B-A4B | Prompt: intel-v1 | Confidence: 92%

Last extracted: 10/11/2026, 3:15:19 AM

Summary

This paper introduces the Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA) to address 'persona-logic interference' in edge LLM agents, where long, misleading conversational history degrades logical reasoning. AO-DA separates logical inference (What path) from persona expression (How path) using hot-swappable LoRA adapters on a single INT4 base model. Experiments on Llama-3.1-8B and Gemma-3-4B show the decoupled logic path is structurally invariant to context pollution, maintaining high composite logic scores, whereas single-pass models degrade monotonically. The architecture enables fast persona hot-swapping without re-running the logic path.

Entities (10)

Gemma-3 4B IT · model · 99%Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct · model · 99%AO-DA · architecture · 98%LoRA · technique · 95%persona-logic interference · phenomenon · 93%Micro-State · data-structure · 92%Apple M2 · hardware · 90%Mental Coach · adapter · 85%Goku · persona · 80%Makima · persona · 80%

Relation Signals (9)

AO-DA → separates → logical inference

confidence 98% · separates logical inference ("What") from persona expression ("How")

What path → ispartof → AO-DA

confidence 95% · The Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA) runs two inference paths... a What path

How path → ispartof → AO-DA

confidence 95% · The Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA) runs two inference paths... and a How path

AO-DA → mitigates → persona-logic interference

confidence 95% · We study what happens to the logical part... persona-logic interference, and present a Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA)

AO-DA → uses → LoRA

confidence 95% · AO-DA that separates logical inference... into two inference paths on one INT4 base model with hot-swappable LoRA adapters.

Micro-State → isoutputof → What path

confidence 92% · The logic path receives only the core turn and emits a verifiable structured state (Micro-State)

Gemma-3 4B IT → isbasefor → AO-DA

confidence 90% · same-base-model ablations on an Apple M2 laptop (...and Gemma-3-4B-it, 4-bit)

Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct → isbasefor → AO-DA

confidence 90% · same-base-model ablations on an Apple M2 laptop (Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct...)

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Abstract

Abstract:Small language-model agents on edge devices must hold a persona and reason correctly at once, inside one context window that fills with conversational history and persona instructions. We study what happens to the logical part of such an agent when that history is long, misleading and persona-heavy (persona-logic interference), and present a Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA) that separates logical inference ("What") from persona expression ("How") into two inference paths on one INT4 base model with hot-swappable LoRA adapters. The logic path receives only the core turn and emits a verifiable structured state (Micro-State); the persona path renders it in character with the full history. In same-base-model ablations on an Apple M2 laptop (Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct and Gemma-3-4B-it, 4-bit; 480 runs over 4 pollution levels x 3 arms x 2 tasks x 2 personas x 5 seeds) we find: (i) the decoupled logic path is structurally invariant to pollution: its prompt stays at 180 (Llama) or 167 (Gemma) tokens while the mixed single-pass prompt grows from 242 to 1,203, and its outputs are byte-identical across levels (40/40); (ii) the mixed single pass degrades monotonically (composite logic score 0.669 to 0.150 on Llama, 0.487 to 0.150 on Gemma), mostly by failing to emit the required structured output (80-95% of runs on Llama, 100% on Gemma at the two highest levels); (iii) with the same pollution fed into the decoupled logic path, the dedicated-adapter, dedicated-format path is still more robust than the single pass on the 8B model (failure 0-20% vs 80-95%; paired $\Delta$ +0.30 to +0.50, Cliff's $\delta$ 0.50-0.85, Holm-adjusted $p \le 0.03$) but not on the 4B model, where both collapse. Separation costs one extra decode on a topic's first turn (28.2 s vs 18.2 s on Llama) and buys persona hot-swapping in 1.7 ms without re-running the logic path. Code, rubric, fixtures, adapters and logs are released.

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Decoupling Logic from Persona: Structural Immunity of Edge LLM Agents to Context Pollution Same-base-model ablations on INT4 4–8B models with persona adapters Masaaki Nakatsu (AO, Inc. / OrbLabs AG)Reno Wang (AO, Inc.) October 2026 Abstract Small language-model agents that run on edge devices are expected to hold a persona and to reason correctly at the same time, inside one context window that fills with conversational history and persona instructions. We study what happens to the logical part of such an agent when that history is long, misleading and persona-heavy, a failure mode we call persona–logic interference, and we present a Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA) that separates logical inference (“What”) from persona expression (“How”) into two inference paths on one INT4- quantized base model with hot-swappable LoRA adapters. The logic path receives only the core turn, emits a verifiable structured state (a Micro-State), and the persona path renders that state in character while receiving the full history. In same-base-model ablations on consumer edge hardware (Apple M2, 24 GB; Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct and Gemma-3-4B-it, both 4-bit; 480 runs over 4 pollution levels×3 arms×2 tasks×2 personas×5 seeds) we find three things. (i) The decoupled logic path is structurally invariant to pollution: its prompt stays at 180 tokens (Llama) or 167 tokens (Gemma) while the mixed single-pass prompt grows from 242 to 1,203 tokens, and its outputs are byte-identical across all pollution levels (40/40 pairs). (i) The mixed single-pass configuration degrades monotonically (composite logic score 0.669→0.150 on Llama, 0.487→0.150 on Gemma; Spearman ρ=−0.74 and−0.69), and most of this collapse is a failure to produce the required structured output (80–95% empty structures on Llama, 100% on Gemma at the two highest levels); scored on raw text the degradation is smaller but still present (0.78→0.38 on Llama). (i) When the same pollution is deliberately fed into the decoupled logic path, the dedicated-adapter, dedicated-format path is still more robust than the single pass on the 8B model (structured-output failure 0–20% vs 80–95%; paired∆in composite score +0.30 to +0.50, Cliff’sδ 0.50–0.85, Holm-adjusted p≤0.03), but not on the 4B model, where both collapse. Separation costs one extra decode on the first turn of a topic (28.2 s vs 18.2 s on Llama) and buys persona hot-swapping in 1.7 ms (median, warm) without re-running the logic path, with memory fixed at a single resident base (≈4.3 GB active,≈5 GB peak for the 8B model). We release the experiment code, scoring rubric, pollution fixtures, adapters and all run logs; the proprietary orchestration internals are described only at the level of their effects. 1 Introduction An edge agent that speaks as a character and advises on a task carries two jobs in one context window. The persona job wants history: tone, running jokes, what was said three turns ago. The logic job wants the opposite: a clean statement of the current state and the rules that apply to it. When both jobs share one prompt, the history that helps the first job becomes noise, or worse, misleading evidence, for the second. Long and distracting contexts are known to hurt reasoning in large models (Liu et al. 2024; Shi et al. 2023; Levy, Jacoby, and Goldberg 2024); persona prompts are known to shift or bias reasoning (Gupta et al. 2024; Zheng et al. 2024); and multi-turn conversations degrade performance even in frontier models (Laban et al. 2025). On a 4–8B model quantized to 4 bits and running on a laptop, all three effects arrive at once. We call the resulting degradation persona–logic interference: the loss of task-logic quality that occurs when persona expression and logical inference compete inside one accumulating context. We deliberately avoid the term “alignment tax”, which in the literature denotes capability lost through alignment training (Askell et al. 2021; Ouyang et al. 2022); the effect studied here is architectural, not a property of training. Our proposal is to stop sharing the context. The Decoupling Architecture (AO-DA) runs two inference paths on 1 arXiv:2610.09772v1 [cs.CL] 7 Oct 2026 the same quantized base model: a What path that carries a task-logic adapter, receives only the core turn and the observable signals (vitals, profile, intent), and emits a compact, schema-checked Micro-State; and a How path that carries a persona adapter, receives the Micro-State together with the full conversation history, and renders the reply in character. The two paths never share a context window. Because the What path’s input is bounded by construction, its output cannot be polluted by history, however long or misleading the history is. This paper reports what that buys, what it costs, and what remains open. Contributions. In same-base-model ablations on an M2 MacBook Pro we show: 1.Structural invariance of the logic path. The What prompt stays at 180 tokens (Llama-3.1-8B) or 167 tokens (Gemma-3-4B) across all pollution levels, while the mixed single-pass prompt grows from 242 to 1,203 tokens; the What outputs are byte-identical across levels for every (task, persona, seed) triple (40/40). This is a design consequence, not a statistical finding, and we treat it as such (no test is applied to it). 2.Characterization of the single-pass collapse. Under misleading, persona-heavy history the mixed configu- ration’s composite logic score falls monotonically to the scoring floor on both bases. We decompose the collapse and show that most of it is a failure to produce the required structured output (80–95% of runs on Llama, 100% on Gemma at the two highest levels), with a smaller but real loss in the raw-text content. 3. Empirical robustness of the two-stage logic path under the same pollution. When the history is de- liberately routed into the What path (an ablation that the architecture forbids), the dedicated-adapter, dedicated-format path still fails far less often than the single pass on the 8B model (0–20% vs 80–95%) and scores higher on every polluted level (paired∆+0.30 to +0.50 in composite score). On the 4B model it collapses like the single pass. This bounds the mechanism: separation protects by not routing history to the logic path; the adapter and output format alone add robustness on the larger base only. We also report, as single-run system measurements, persona hot-swapping on a single resident base (1.7 ms median, warm), Micro-State cache reuse that avoids re-running the logic path on a persona switch, a deterministic router that matches an LLM classifier at six orders of magnitude lower latency, and the first-turn latency cost of a second decode. All experiment code, rubrics, pollution fixtures, adapters and logs are released (Appendix G). 2 Related Work Long and distracting context. Liu et al. (Liu et al. 2024) showed that language models use information in the middle of long contexts poorly; Shi et al. (Shi et al. 2023) showed that irrelevant context alone degrades arithmetic reasoning; Levy et al. (Levy, Jacoby, and Goldberg 2024) showed that reasoning degrades with input length well before the context limit, even when the extra tokens are padding; RULER (Hsieh et al. 2024) showed that effective context size is far below the advertised one. Laban et al. (Laban et al. 2025) found that frontier models lose roughly 39% of their performance when a task is delivered across turns rather than at once. Our pollution levels are built from exactly these ingredients, history, length and system-prompt bloat, but on 4-bit 4–8B models and with history that is misleading rather than merely irrelevant. Persona and role prompts. Role prompting can help zero-shot reasoning (Kong et al. 2024), but personas in system prompts do not reliably improve performance (Zheng et al. 2024) and introduce implicit reasoning biases (Gupta et al. 2024). Shanahan et al. (Shanahan, McDonell, and Reynolds 2023) frame LLM dialogue as role play; Character-LLM (Shao et al. 2023) trains persona agents by fine-tuning. Models are also sycophantic toward prior assistant statements (Sharma et al. 2023), which is why a history in which the assistant previously endorsed a bad action is a particularly effective pollutant. AO-DA does not try to make the persona path reason better; it removes the persona from the path that reasons. Structured output. Constrained decoding guarantees format (Willard and Louf 2023) but was not used here; we study the unconstrained behaviour because the failure to emit structure is itself a measurement of interference. Tam et al. (Tam et al. 2024) found that format restrictions can reduce reasoning quality; our setting is the converse, where the format is the fragile part and the reasoning content survives longer (§5.3). Multi-adapter serving. LoRA (Hu et al. 2022) makes task- and persona-specific behaviour a few-megabyte delta on a shared base; S-LoRA (Sheng et al. 2024) and Punica (Chen et al. 2024) serve thousands of adapters on one base in the data centre. AO-DA applies the same idea at the other end of the scale, a single 4-bit base resident in unified memory with two adapters swapped in milliseconds, on top of 4-bit weight quantization (Frantar et al. 2023; Lin et al. 2024) and the MLX runtime (Hannun et al. 2023). 2 Separating reasoning from verbalization. Chain-of-thought (Wei et al. 2022) and plan-and-solve prompting (Wang et al. 2023) separate reasoning from the answer within one generation; ReAct (Yao et al. 2023) interleaves reasoning and acting. AO-DA separates them across generations, with a verifiable intermediate object, so that the second generation can be re-run (new persona) or skipped (cache hit) without touching the first. 3 Architecture: AO-DA This section describes the architecture at the level of its effects. The runtime used for the experiments is released; the orchestration internals beyond what is described here are out of scope. 3.1 Two inference paths Figure 1 shows the data flow. A turn arrives as a core user utterance plus observable signals (a profile type, a vitals snapshot, a session intent bucket). The What path builds a prompt from a fixed system header, the vitals and the core utterance only; it runs on the base model with the task-logic adapter (the Mental Coach LoRA in our experiments) and emits a tagged assessment: a short thought and a JSON object with two fields,s(user state) anda(recommended action). The size of this prompt does not depend on how long the conversation has been. The How path builds its prompt from the persona system header, a compressed instruction derived from the Micro-State, the list of constraints the reply must mention, the risk level, and then the conversation history and the user’s full (possibly long) utterance; it runs on the same base with the persona adapter and emits a single JSON fieldt, the spoken line. The two prompts are assembled independently; neither path sees the other’s context. Core turn (user input + vitals, profile, intent) Conversation history + long input + persona few-shot Deterministic policy router (signals + rules) WHAT path logic adapter (LoRA) input bounded, no history Micro-State (schema v1.1) state, action, constraints, risk Micro-State cache (reuse / invalidate) HOW path persona adapter (LoRA) receives full history Spoken reply (persona voice, constraints echoed) Single INT4 base model resident in unified memory — logic and persona adapters hot-swapped on the same weights (~ms) verified state not routed select logic adapter + persona The logic path never shares a context window with the persona path; its input size does not depend on history length. Figure 1. AO-DA data flow. The logic (What) path receives a bounded, history-free input and emits a schema-checked Micro-State; the persona (How) path renders the Micro-State in character while receiving the full history. Both paths run as adapter swaps on one resident INT4 base. Dashed lines mark the Micro-State cache and the adapter hot-swap. 3.2 Micro-State The Micro-State (schema v1.1, Appendix C) is the only object that crosses from What to How. It carries the inputs that produced it, an inference record with provenance, a prioritized list of constraints (actions the reply must mention), a risk level, a render plan (order of mentions, forbidden additions, required mentions), a cache key, 3 and the parsed What output. In the released testbed, the constraints and risk for the two benchmark tasks are derived by a deterministic policy layer from the vitals and the session intent (e.g., low recovery with caffeine intent⇒prohibit caffeine, 20-minute nap, cold water); the What model’s free text populates the inference and parsed fields and is used as the instruction only when no rule fires. This matters for interpreting the How-side results (§5.6–5.7) and we return to it there. 3.3 One base, resident adapters, hot-swap Both adapters are LoRA deltas on the same 4-bit base. The base is loaded once into unified memory; switching between What, Goku and Makima is an in-place update of the adapter weights, not a model reload. Memory therefore does not grow with the number of personas (§6.2). A persona switch that does not change the state (a “second opinion” from another character) is served from the Micro-State cache: the How path is re-run with the new adapter and the What path is not invoked at all (§6.1). 3.4 Micro-State cache and deterministic routing The cache key is a hash of the observable signals (profile type, recovery percentage, fatigue band, domain, intent bucket, schema version). A persona switch with unchanged signals hits the cache; a change in vitals or an explicit user override misses it and re-runs the What path, producing a new state with new constraints (§6.1). Routing, which persona, which logic adapter, is done by a deterministic policy router over the same signals plus a dictionary of lexical cues; it runs in microseconds and, in the one run where we compared it against an LLM classifier, returned the same decision (§6.3). The router is not needed for the ablations in §5, where the arm is fixed by design. 4 Experimental Setup 4.1 Hardware and runtime All experiments ran on one M2 MacBook Pro (24 GB unified memory) with MLX≥0.22 and mlx-lm≥0.21. Both bases are 4-bit, group size 64. Sampling temperature was 0.7 with seeds 0–4 (mx.random.seed); with a fixed seed and an identical prompt the generation is deterministic on this stack, which is what makes the invariance check in §5.5 exact. 4.2 Models and adapters Bases.Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-4bit(Dubey et al. 2024) andgemma-3-4b-it-4bit-quantized (Gemma Team 2025), a text-only re-quantization of Gemma-3-4B-it at the same 4-bit/group-64 setting. Logic adapter (Mental Coach). LoRA rank 8, scale 20, 16 layers, 200 iterations, learning rate 1e-5, batch size 1, 20 training examples, trained separately on each base with mlx-lm. Persona adapters (Goku, Makima). Rank 8, 16 layers. For Llama: 100 iterations, learning rate 1e-5, batch size 1, 20 examples each, trained on a copy of the same Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 4-bit checkpoint. For Gemma: 500 iterations, learning rate 1e-5, batch size 2, the same 20 examples, trained on the multimodalgemma-3-4b-it-4bitcheck- point and applied at run time to the text-onlygemma-3-4b-it-4bit-quantizedbase (same quantization setting). We disclose this mismatch; it affects only the How path on Gemma and none of the logic-path results. The adapters are small (20 examples each) by design: the question is whether the architecture protects the logic path, not whether a well-trained coach is a good coach. 4.3 Arms 4 ArmWhat path inputHow path inputStagesRole G0 mixed— (single pass: logic header + persona overlay + full pollution) —1Baseline: What and How in one context G3 decoupledcore turn only (clean) Micro-State + full pollution 2The architecture G3-P decoupled, logic polluted core turn + full pollution Micro-State + full pollution 2Ablation: separation without the input bound G0 uses the Mental Coach adapter with the persona injected as a system-prompt overlay and asks fors,aand tin one tagged response, so it has the same logic adapter and the same output schema as the What path plus the spoken field; it is the fairest single-pass counterpart we could build. G3-P is the architecture with its one protective rule violated: the history is routed into the What path as well. Comparing G3-P with G0 isolates what the dedicated adapter and dedicated output format contribute without the input bound. Each cell is 2 tasks×2 personas×5 seeds = 20 runs; 3 arms×4 levels×2 bases = 480 runs. Runs are paired across arms by (task, persona, seed). 4.4 Pollution levels LevelChat historyLong user inputSystem bloatNote L0—Baseline, identical to the low-pollution Run 1 condition L28–10 turns, domain-specific —Misleading, persona-heavy L3as L2≈2,000 chars appended — L4as L2as L3persona few-shot examples appended to the system prompt (621–811 chars) L1 (long input only) was defined in the plan but not run. The history fixtures (Appendix D) are the important part: they are not neutral filler. The sleep-domain history has the assistant previously tolerating “one energy drink” in a hype tone and the user announcing that they will “chug multiple energy drinks anyway”; the legal- domain history mixes token-promotion pressure with compliance warnings. Both contain some gold-consistent statements as well (e.g., “nap twenty, ice water”), which matters for one result in §5.4. The long input is a repetitive, anxious user stream with distractor numbers; the system bloat is seven persona-voiced few-shot replies. 4.5 Tasks and gold Two tasks with objectively checkable logic (Appendix E): align_sleep_pitch (recovery 42%, high fatigue, sym- pathetic dominance; the user plans three energy drinks before an investor pitch; gold: prohibit caffeine, 20- minute nap, cold water; concepts: recovery, sleep; forbidden: heart-rate figures, diagnosis, cardiologist) and align_legal_token (the user asks whether their token structure creates US securities exposure; gold: halt promo- tion pending legal review, seek qualified securities counsel, disclose exposure risk; concepts: securities, token; forbidden: the sleep-task actions). Gold was fixed before the runs. 5 4.6 Metrics Composite logic score (primary). From the What output (for G0, the single output) we parse the thought and the s/afields and score the concatenation: 0.6×required-action coverage + 0.25×required-concept hit rate + 0.15 ×(1−forbidden-term hit rate). An output with no parseable thought,sorascores 0.15 (the forbidden term is trivially avoided), which is the floor seen in the figures. Matching is keyword-based with a deliberately loose synonym dictionary (Appendix E); no LLM judge was used. The composite score of every run was recomputed from the raw outputs for this paper and agrees with the logged value to within 1e-6. Structured-output failure rate. The fraction of runs whose thought,sandaare all empty after parsing (no <|start_json|>...<|end_json|> block, unparseable JSON, or missing fields). Raw-text logic score. The same rubric applied to the entire raw output (tags, JSON and any free text), which makes it independent of whether the structure was produced. It separates “the model stopped emitting the schema” from “the model stopped saying the right things”. How constraint coverage. The fraction of required actions mentioned in the spoken line t (same dictionary). Final-speech logic score. The composite rubric applied to the spoken line only, i.e., what the user actually hears. Strict re-scoring. Appendix B repeats the main tables with a strict dictionary (co-occurrence rules, no bare generic words such as “water” or “rest”). 4.7 Pre-registered plan and deviations The study was planned in June 2026 (v2 plan, Appendix F) with 30–50 diverse tasks, three bases and a statistical test of persona invariance (H3). What was run: 2 tasks, 2 bases, 2 personas, 5 seeds, and L1 omitted. H3 is reported descriptively (§5.6) because the decoupled What output is identical across personas by construction, which leaves nothing to test. Run 1, the low-pollution battery that preceded Run 1b, is reported first (§5.1) because its null result is a boundary condition for everything after it. 4.8 Statistics Paired comparisons (n = 20 per cell) use the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (two-sided, zero differences dropped), Cliff’sδas effect size, and a bootstrap 95% CI of the mean paired difference (10,000 resamples). The main family is G3-P vs G0 at each level and base (8 tests); G3 vs G0 is reported as a reference family (since G3 is constant across levels, it is a test of G0’s degradation). Holm correction is applied within each family. Failure rates carry Wilson 95% CIs and are compared with Fisher’s exact test. Monotone degradation is tested with Spearman’sρ between the level ordinal and the per-run score. No test is applied to the stability of G3 across levels. 5 Results 5.1 Run 1: no effect at low pollution Run 1 (3 June 2026; Llama only; three tasks including a second-opinion variant; G0, G3, G4 = G3 with a constraint- echo instruction on the How path; and a probe that puts the persona adapter on the What path) is the boundary condition. With short, clean prompts the composite logic score of the decoupled What path is indistinguishable from the single pass (∆= -0.004 [95% CI -0.091, +0.082], Cliff’sδ= -0.02, Wilcoxon p = 0.98), while How constraint coverage is higher for the decoupled arms (∆= +0.256 [95% CI +0.111, +0.400], Cliff’sδ= +0.39, p = <0.001). Putting the persona adapter on the logic path lowered the score but not significantly (∆= -0.059 [95% CI -0.138, +0.015], p = 0.20). Table 6. Run 1, low pollution (Llama-3.1-8B, 3 tasks× 2 personas× 5 seeds = 30 runs per arm). 6 Armn Composite logic (mean± SD)How coverageFailure rateLatency s G0 mixed single pass 300.588± 0.2530.3786.7%16.0 G3 decoupled300.583± 0.1310.6330.0%26.2 G4 decoupled + constraint echo 300.583± 0.1310.7110.0%30.2 Persona LoRA on logic path (probe) 300.524± 0.240—13.3%11.5 Decoupling is not a free improvement of the logic. It is insurance, and Run 1 shows the premium (one extra decode, 26 s vs 16 s) without the payout. Run 1b adds the pollution. 5.2 Composite score under pollution Table 1 and Figure 2 give the primary result. The mixed single pass degrades monotonically on both bases (Spearmanρbetween level and per-run score:−0.74 for Llama,−0.69 for Gemma, both p < 0.001) and reaches the 0.15 floor at L4 (Llama) and L3 (Gemma). The decoupled logic path is constant at 0.655 (Llama) and 0.695 (Gemma) at every level; this is not a statistical stability but an identity (§5.5). The logic-polluted ablation G3-P stays well above G0 on Llama at every polluted level (0.798, 0.515, 0.650 vs 0.450, 0.219, 0.150) and collapses with G0 on Gemma. Table 1. Composite logic score, mean±SD over 20 paired runs per cell. G0 = mixed single pass; G3 = decoupled, logic path clean; G3-P = decoupled, logic path polluted (ablation). BaseArmL0L2L3L4 Llama-8BG00.669± 0.2300.450± 0.2660.219± 0.1720.150± 0.000 Llama-8BG30.655± 0.0800.655± 0.0800.655± 0.0800.655± 0.080 Llama-8BG3-P0.655± 0.0800.798± 0.1370.515± 0.3190.650± 0.258 Gemma-4BG00.487± 0.1990.209± 0.1620.150± 0.0000.150± 0.000 Gemma-4BG30.695± 0.2340.695± 0.2340.695± 0.2340.695± 0.234 Gemma-4BG3-P0.695± 0.2340.182± 0.1000.150± 0.0000.150± 0.000 7 L0L2L3L4 Pollution level 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 Composite logic score floor 0.15 Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct (INT4) L0L2L3L4 Pollution level floor 0.15 Gemma-3-4B-it (INT4) Mixed single pass (G0)Decoupled, logic path clean (G3)Decoupled, logic path polluted (G3-P) Figure 2. Composite logic score by pollution level (mean, 95% bootstrap CI, n = 20). The decoupled arm (G3) is identical across levels by construction. Horizontal dotted line: scoring floor (empty structured output). Two details in Table 1 deserve attention. First, on Gemma the decoupled logic path scores higher than the single pass already at L0 (0.695 vs 0.487, paired∆+0.207 [+0.10, +0.31], Holm p = 0.007): on the smaller model the persona overlay alone, with no history, already costs logic. Second, on Llama at L2 the polluted logic path scores higher than the clean one (0.798 vs 0.655). We return to both in §7. 5.3 Decomposing the collapse Most of the single-pass collapse is a failure to produce the required structure. Table 2 and Figure 3 show the structured-output failure rate (thought,sandaall empty) next to the raw-text score, which does not depend on the structure. Table 2. Decomposition. Failure rate with Wilson 95% CI; raw-text logic score; final-speech logic score (spoken line only); How constraint coverage. Mean± SD, n = 20. BaseArmLv Fail % [95% CI]Raw-textSpeechHow cov. Llama-8BG0L00 [0, 16]0.779± 0.1720.613± 0.2070.500 Llama-8BG0L225 [11, 47]0.713± 0.1930.524± 0.2430.467 Llama-8BG0L380 [58, 92]0.328± 0.2510.269± 0.1940.083 Llama-8BG0L495 [76, 99]0.380± 0.2910.338± 0.2500.167 Llama-8BG3L00 [0, 16]0.655± 0.0800.680± 0.3110.633 Llama-8BG3L20 [0, 16]0.655± 0.0800.782± 0.2130.783 Llama-8BG3L30 [0, 16]0.655± 0.0800.449± 0.3210.383 Llama-8BG3L40 [0, 16]0.655± 0.0800.635± 0.2650.600 Llama-8BG3-PL00 [0, 16]0.655± 0.0800.680± 0.3110.633 Llama-8BG3-PL20 [0, 16]0.818± 0.1190.782± 0.2130.783 Llama-8BG3-PL320 [8, 42]0.678± 0.2220.449± 0.3210.383 Llama-8BG3-PL415 [5, 36]0.662± 0.2350.635± 0.2650.600 Gemma-4BG0L05 [1, 24]0.731± 0.1320.595± 0.2120.450 Gemma-4BG0L285 [64, 95]0.691± 0.1890.583± 0.2510.450 Gemma-4BG0L3100 [84, 100]0.507± 0.2280.507± 0.2280.367 8 BaseArmLv Fail % [95% CI]Raw-textSpeechHow cov. Gemma-4BG0L4100 [84, 100]0.469± 0.1860.469± 0.1860.333 Gemma-4BG3L00 [0, 16]0.800± 0.0920.509± 0.3670.400 Gemma-4BG3L20 [0, 16]0.800± 0.0920.658± 0.2680.600 Gemma-4BG3L30 [0, 16]0.800± 0.0920.454± 0.2960.350 Gemma-4BG3L40 [0, 16]0.800± 0.0920.550± 0.2490.500 Gemma-4BG3-PL00 [0, 16]0.800± 0.0920.509± 0.3670.400 Gemma-4BG3-PL290 [70, 97]0.563± 0.2380.658± 0.2680.600 Gemma-4BG3-PL3100 [84, 100]0.588± 0.2080.454± 0.2960.350 Gemma-4BG3-PL4100 [84, 100]0.551± 0.3160.550± 0.2490.500 0 20 40 60 80 100 Structured-output failure (%) (thought, s, a all empty) Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct (INT4) 0 20 40 60 80 100 Gemma-3-4B-it (INT4) L0L2L3L4 Pollution level 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 Raw-text logic score (format-independent) L0L2L3L4 Pollution level 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 Mixed single pass (G0)Decoupled, logic path clean (G3)Decoupled, logic path polluted (G3-P) Figure 3. Top: structured-output failure rate (bars; whiskers are Wilson 95% CIs, so a 0/20 cell shows an upper bound of 16%). Bottom: raw-text logic score (format-independent). Under misleading persona-heavy history the mixed single pass mostly stops emitting the schema; the content loss is smaller but real. On Llama the single pass fails to produce structure in 25% of runs at L2, 80% at L3 and 95% at L4 (0% at L0; Fisher L0 vs L3 and L0 vs L4 both p < 0.001). On Gemma it fails in 85%, 100% and 100% (5% at L0). The decoupled, clean logic path never fails (0/20 at every level on both bases). What the models produce instead of the schema is persona-voiced prose, typically continuing the history’s tone; the thought tag is often present but the JSON block is missing or malformed. Scored on raw text, the degradation is smaller but still monotone (Llama 0.78→0.71→0.33→0.38, Spearmanρ =−0.56; Gemma 0.73→0.69→0.51→0.47,ρ=−0.53; both p < 0.001). So the collapse is two things stacked: a 9 near-total loss of format compliance and a roughly halving of logical content on the 8B model. The composite score in the abstract (0.669→ 0.150) should always be read with both numbers beside it. Table S1. Fisher’s exact tests on failure counts (Holm within base). BaseComparisonFailuresFisher pHolm p Llama-8BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L00/20 vs 0/201.0001.000 Llama-8BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L25/20 vs 0/200.0470.141 Llama-8BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L316/20 vs 4/20<0.0010.001 Llama-8BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L419/20 vs 3/20<0.001<0.001 Llama-8BG0 fail L0 vs L20/20 vs 5/200.0470.141 Llama-8BG0 fail L0 vs L30/20 vs 16/20<0.001<0.001 Llama-8BG0 fail L0 vs L40/20 vs 19/20<0.001<0.001 Gemma-4BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L01/20 vs 0/201.0001.000 Gemma-4BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L217/20 vs 18/201.0001.000 Gemma-4BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L320/20 vs 20/201.0001.000 Gemma-4BG0 vs G3-P fail @ L420/20 vs 20/201.0001.000 Gemma-4BG0 fail L0 vs L21/20 vs 17/20<0.001<0.001 Gemma-4BG0 fail L0 vs L31/20 vs 20/20<0.001<0.001 Gemma-4BG0 fail L0 vs L41/20 vs 20/20<0.001<0.001 Table S2. Monotone trend: Spearmanρbetween level ordinal (L0 < L2 < L3 < L4) and per-run score, n = 80 per row. BaseArmMetricSpearman ρpn Llama-8BG0composite-0.737<0.00180 Llama-8BG0raw-0.555<0.00180 Llama-8BG0failure+0.760<0.00180 Llama-8BG3-Pcomposite+0.0190.86880 Llama-8BG3-Praw+0.0760.50580 Llama-8BG3-Pfailure+0.2570.02180 Gemma-4BG0composite-0.686<0.00180 Gemma-4BG0raw-0.525<0.00180 Gemma-4BG0failure+0.751<0.00180 Gemma-4BG3-Pcomposite-0.773<0.00180 Gemma-4BG3-Praw-0.3190.00480 Gemma-4BG3-Pfailure+0.776<0.00180 5.4 Robustness of the two-stage logic path under the same pollution G3-P receives exactly the pollution G0 receives, in the What path, with the only differences being the absence of the persona overlay in that path, the dedicated logic adapter alone, and the two-field output schema. Table 3 gives the paired comparison. Table 3. G3-P vs G0, composite logic score, paired by (task, persona, seed), n = 20 per cell. Positive∆favours the decoupled path. Holm correction over the 8 tests. BaseLvG3-PG0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL00.6550.669-0.014 [-0.11, 0.08] +0.010.8761.000 10 BaseLvG3-PG0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL20.7980.450+0.347 [0.22, 0.46] +0.72<0.0010.003 Llama-8BL30.5150.219+0.296 [0.14, 0.45] +0.500.0060.028 Llama-8BL40.6500.150+0.500 [0.39, 0.60] +0.85<0.0010.001 Gemma-4BL00.6950.487+0.207 [0.10, 0.32] +0.550.0020.013 Gemma-4BL20.1820.209-0.026 [-0.09, 0.03] -0.060.4651.000 Gemma-4BL30.1500.150+0.000 [0.00, 0.00] +0.00— Gemma-4BL40.1500.150+0.000 [0.00, 0.00] +0.00— On Llama the two-stage path is more robust at every polluted level:∆= +0.35 (L2), +0.30 (L3), +0.50 (L4), Cliff’s δ= 0.72, 0.50, 0.85, Holm-adjusted p = 0.003, 0.028, 0.001. Its structured-output failure rate is 0%, 20% and 15% against 25%, 80% and 95% (Fisher, Holm p≤0.001 at L3 and L4). On Gemma there is no difference at L2–L4: both arms fail to produce structure in≥85% of runs and sit at the floor. The 4B model’s format compliance does not survive the history whichever adapter is active; only the input bound saves it. Table 3b. The same comparison on the raw-text score. BaseLvG3-PG0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL00.6550.779-0.124 [-0.20, -0.05] -0.460.0060.043 Llama-8BL20.8180.713+0.105 [0.01, 0.20] +0.330.0440.220 Llama-8BL30.6780.328+0.350 [0.21, 0.48] +0.65<0.0010.007 Llama-8BL40.6620.380+0.283 [0.08, 0.46] +0.530.0210.126 Gemma-4BL00.8000.731+0.069 [0.01, 0.14] +0.280.0720.289 Gemma-4BL20.5630.691-0.129 [-0.27, 0.02] -0.350.0830.289 Gemma-4BL30.5880.507+0.080 [-0.01, 0.18] +0.210.1860.372 Gemma-4BL40.5510.469+0.083 [-0.06, 0.22] +0.140.2030.372 On raw text the picture is more nuanced. At L0, with no pollution, the single pass scores higher on raw text on Llama (0.78 vs 0.66, Holm p = 0.043), because its longer, persona-voiced output mentions more of the keywords in free text; the composite score, which ignores free text, does not show this. At L3 and L4 the two-stage path is ahead (+0.35, Holm p = 0.007; +0.28, Holm p = 0.13). On Gemma, raw-text differences are not significant at any level. For reference, Table 3c gives G3 vs G0 on the composite score, which, since G3 is constant, is the test of G0’s degradation against a fixed point. Table 3c. G3 vs G0, composite logic score (reference family). 11 BaseLvG3G0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL00.6550.669-0.014 [-0.11, 0.08] +0.010.8760.876 Llama-8BL20.6550.450+0.205 [0.08, 0.33] +0.350.0140.027 Llama-8BL30.6550.219+0.436 [0.36, 0.50] +0.86<0.001<0.001 Llama-8BL40.6550.150+0.505 [0.47, 0.54] +1.00<0.001<0.001 Gemma-4BL00.6950.487+0.207 [0.10, 0.31] +0.550.0020.007 Gemma-4BL20.6950.209+0.486 [0.37, 0.59] +0.93<0.001<0.001 Gemma-4BL30.6950.150+0.545 [0.44, 0.64] +1.00<0.001<0.001 Gemma-4BL40.6950.150+0.545 [0.44, 0.64] +1.00<0.001<0.001 5.5 The mechanism: a bounded input Table 4 shows why the clean logic path cannot degrade. Its prompt is 179–181 tokens on Llama and 165–169 on Gemma at every level; the single-pass prompt is 242, 562, 1,014 and 1,203 tokens (Llama) and 231, 551, 1,051 and 1,251 (Gemma). The What outputs of G3 are byte-identical across L0, L2, L3 and L4 for every (task, persona, seed) triple on both bases (20/20 triples each, 40/40 in total). Identical input plus fixed seed gives identical output; there is no stochastic stability to test. The persona-path prompt, by contrast, grows with the pollution exactly as the single pass does (312→1,273 tokens on Llama), which is where the How-side degradation in §5.6 comes from. Table 4. Prompt size and latency by arm and level (means over 20 runs; token counts are tokenizer estimates recorded at run time). BaseArmLv Logic prompt tokens [min–max] Persona prompt tokens Latency s (± SD)Logic sPersona s Llama-8BG0L0242 [232–252] —18.2± 4.418.20.0 Llama-8BG0L2562 [498–625] —14.6± 4.114.60.0 Llama-8BG0L31,014 [950–1,077] —13.4± 7.213.40.0 Llama-8BG0L41,203 [1,115– 1,291] —17.8± 11.417.80.0 Llama-8BG3L0180 [179–181] 31228.2± 10.311.816.4 Llama-8BG3L2180 [179–181] 63221.4± 4.312.19.4 Llama-8BG3L3180 [179–181] 1,08426.2± 5.212.813.5 Llama-8BG3L4180 [179–181] 1,27328.6± 10.812.915.8 12 BaseArmLv Logic prompt tokens [min–max] Persona prompt tokens Latency s (± SD)Logic sPersona s Llama-8BG3-PL0180 [179–181] 31228.7± 10.312.016.7 Llama-8BG3-PL2500 [445–554] 63226.8± 13.817.19.7 Llama-8BG3-PL3952 [897–1,006] 1,08429.4± 7.415.913.5 Llama-8BG3-PL41,141 [1,062– 1,220] 1,27330.3± 6.016.913.4 Gemma-4BG0L0231 [219–243] —11.2± 2.611.20.0 Gemma-4BG0L2551 [483–619] —9.3± 2.59.30.0 Gemma-4BG0L31,051 [983–1,119] —9.6± 1.59.60.0 Gemma-4BG0L41,251 [1,157– 1,345] —9.9± 1.39.90.0 Gemma-4BG3L0167 [165–169] 31614.9± 4.98.07.0 Gemma-4BG3L2167 [165–169] 63614.5± 1.97.86.6 Gemma-4BG3L3167 [165–169] 1,13616.1± 1.67.09.1 Gemma-4BG3L4167 [165–169] 1,33616.3± 1.16.99.3 Gemma-4BG3-PL0167 [165–169] 31614.8± 5.17.96.9 Gemma-4BG3-PL2487 [429–545] 63613.3± 2.66.66.7 Gemma-4BG3-PL3987 [929–1,045] 1,13617.6± 1.68.59.1 Gemma-4BG3-PL41,187 [1,103– 1,271] 1,33620.0± 7.510.49.6 Latency is the cost side. On Llama at L0 the decoupled turn takes 28.2 s against 18.2 s for the single pass, because it decodes twice; the What stage is 11.8–12.9 s at every level (its input never grows), and the How stage is 9.4–16.4 s. The single pass gets faster as pollution rises (18.2→13.4 s at L3) because its collapsed outputs are short. On Gemma the corresponding figures are 15.0 s vs 11.2 s. 5.6 Persona invariance and the persona path The decoupled What output is identical for Goku and Makima at every level on both bases (10/10 (task, seed) pairs per level), because the What path does not see the persona. In the single pass, the two personas produce different logic (Table 5): on Llama at L0 the Makima overlay scores lower than Goku (0.62 vs 0.72); on Gemma at L0 it is the reverse (0.53 vs 0.45). Persona choice moves the logic in the single pass and cannot move it in the decoupled one. 13 Table 5. Per-persona breakdown (means over 10 runs per cell). BaseArmLv Comp. Goku Comp. Makima How Goku How Makima Speech Goku Speech Makima Llama-8BG0L00.7200.6170.5670.4330.6770.548 Llama-8BG0L20.3400.5600.3670.5670.4450.603 Llama-8BG0L30.1500.2870.0670.1000.2650.273 Llama-8BG0L40.1500.1500.1670.1670.3380.338 Llama-8BG3L00.6550.6550.7670.5000.8230.537 Llama-8BG3L20.6550.6550.9000.6670.8530.713 Llama-8BG3L30.6550.6550.4330.3330.5100.388 Llama-8BG3L40.6550.6550.7000.5000.7080.562 Gemma- 4B G0L00.4470.5280.6000.3000.7350.455 Gemma- 4B G0L20.2680.1500.5330.3670.6570.508 Gemma- 4B G0L30.1500.1500.5000.2330.6000.415 Gemma- 4B G0L40.1500.1500.3330.3330.4630.475 Gemma- 4B G3L00.6950.6950.7330.0670.8020.215 Gemma- 4B G3L20.6950.6950.5330.6670.6080.708 Gemma- 4B G3L30.6950.6950.3670.3330.4320.475 Gemma- 4B G3L40.6950.6950.4670.5330.5050.595 On the How side, two caveats must come before the numbers. First, in the released testbed the Micro-State constraints for both tasks are produced by the deterministic policy layer, not by the What model’s free text (§3.2); as a result the How prompts of G3 and G3-P are identical and so are their spoken outputs, byte for byte, in all 60 pairs on each base. The How-side results therefore measure how faithfully the persona path renders a fixed Micro-State under pollution; they do not measure propagation of What-model errors into speech. Second, the G3 How prompt lists the required constraints explicitly (that is what the Micro-State is for), whereas G0 is asked to derive and mention “all applicable constraints” on its own. The How comparison is an end-to-end comparison of two pipelines with different information, not an equal-information test. With those caveats, Table 3e gives How constraint coverage. On Llama the decoupled pipeline mentions more of the required actions at every level (0.63 vs 0.50 at L0; 0.78 vs 0.47 at L2; 0.38 vs 0.08 at L3; 0.60 vs 0.17 at L4; Holm p = 0.08, 0.05, 0.05, 0.03). On Gemma the differences are small and not significant. On both bases the persona path itself degrades at L3 (Llama 0.78→0.38; Gemma 0.60→0.35), where it receives≈1,100 tokens of history and long input; the explicit constraint list in its prompt does not make it immune. L4 recovers part of the loss, plausibly because the persona few-shot examples in the system bloat are themselves constraint-consistent (Appendix D). Table 3e. How constraint coverage, G3 vs G0 (paired). BaseLvG3G0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL00.6330.500+0.133 [-0.03, 0.32] +0.230.0160.082 14 BaseLvG3G0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL20.7830.467+0.317 [0.10, 0.52] +0.570.0080.050 Llama-8BL30.3830.083+0.300 [0.15, 0.47] +0.420.0070.050 Llama-8BL40.6000.167+0.433 [0.23, 0.63] +0.620.0040.028 Gemma-4BL00.4000.450-0.050 [-0.22, 0.12] -0.110.8321.000 Gemma-4BL20.6000.450+0.150 [-0.00, 0.30] +0.280.0840.252 Gemma-4BL30.3500.367-0.017 [-0.17, 0.15] -0.071.0001.000 Gemma-4BL40.5000.333+0.167 [0.02, 0.30] +0.320.0370.149 5.7 What the user hears Table 3d scores the spoken line alone with the logic rubric. On Llama the decoupled pipeline’s speech scores higher at every polluted level (+0.26 at L2, +0.18 at L3, +0.30 at L4; Cliff’sδ0.61, 0.27, 0.55), with Holm-adjusted p between 0.06 and 0.07, i.e., just short of the 0.05 threshold after correction for 8 tests; the unadjusted p-values are 0.011, 0.009 and 0.007. On Gemma there is no significant difference at any level and at L0 the single pass is numerically ahead (0.60 vs 0.51). The final speech is also where the persona path’s own L3 dip is visible (Llama 0.78→ 0.45): the decoupled logic was intact, but the character rendering it was distracted. Table 3d. Final-speech logic score (spoken line only), G3 vs G0 (paired). BaseLvG3G0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL00.6800.613+0.067 [-0.07, 0.20] +0.220.5311.000 Llama-8BL20.7820.524+0.259 [0.10, 0.40] +0.610.0110.065 Llama-8BL30.4490.269+0.180 [0.07, 0.29] +0.270.0090.065 Llama-8BL40.6350.338+0.297 [0.13, 0.45] +0.550.0070.059 Gemma-4BL00.5090.595-0.086 [-0.22, 0.04] -0.170.1460.585 Gemma-4BL20.6580.583+0.075 [-0.08, 0.22] +0.160.3941.000 Gemma-4BL30.4540.507-0.054 [-0.17, 0.05] -0.090.5711.000 Gemma-4BL40.5500.469+0.081 [-0.03, 0.18] +0.170.1120.560 6 System Properties (single-run measurements) The following were measured on the Llama-3.1-8B 4-bit base in the June 2026 verification turns and in a Phase 3 prototype capture; they are single-run or few-run measurements and are reported as such. 15 6.1 Persona hot-swap and cache reuse In nine “second opinion” turns (Turn 2-A: the user asks Makima to comment on Goku’s advice, vitals unchanged), the Goku→Makima adapter swap took 53.9 ms on the first call (adapter weights not yet warm) and 1.41–2.15 ms on the next eight (median 1.70 ms). In all nine turns the Micro-State cache hit (cache_hit = true, JSON hash identical to Turn 1-A,what_path_invocations = 0): the logic path was not re-run, and the turn cost only the How decode (median 7.1 s, range 5.9–13.1 s). When vitals changed between turns (Turn 2-B, recovery 42%→58%), the cache missed in 8/8 runs and the What path was re-invoked, producing a new state with the relaxed constraint set (“limit caffeine to one unit” instead of “prohibit”); when the user overrode the advice (Turn 2-C), the cache missed in 2/2 runs and the new state carried an escalation constraint. Reuse and invalidation behaved as designed in every logged case. 6.2 Memory With the 8B INT4 base resident and persona adapters swapped on every turn, the prototype server reported 4.25– 4.29 GB active and 4.91–5.09 GB peak unified memory across consecutive Goku/Makima turns (Phase 3 capture, single session). The footprint is that of one base plus the adapters; adding a persona adds a few megabytes of LoRA weights, not another model. We make no claim here about memory relative to a non-decoupled design: a single-pass agent with one adapter also needs one base. The claim is that decoupling does not add a second one. 6.3 Deterministic routing The policy router (observable signals plus a lexical dictionary) ran in 0.003–0.017 ms across the Turn 3 runs. In the one run where an LLM classifier (131-token prompt, 4-token completion) was run on the same input for comparison, it took 3,484 ms and returned the same persona and the same logic adapter. One agreement is not an accuracy figure; it is a latency figure with a sanity check attached. 6.4 The cost of separation The first turn of a topic decodes twice. On Llama at L0 that is 28.2 s against 18.2 s (Table 4); on Gemma 15.0 s against 11.2 s. The second decode is the price of the input bound, and on a 20-run average it is not hidden by anything. In multi-turn use the Micro-State cache removes the logic decode from persona switches and from any turn whose observable state has not changed (§6.1), which is where the architecture earns the latency back; we have not measured that amortization over a long session and do not claim a figure for it. Table 7. System properties (single-run or few-run measurements, Llama-3.1-8B INT4, M2 MacBook Pro 24 GB). PropertyMeasurementSource Persona adapter hot-swap (Goku → Makima) 1.70 ms median, 1.41–2.15 ms (8 warm runs); 53.9 ms first call Turn 2-A logs Logic path invocations on persona switch (cache hit) 0 in 9/9 runs; JSON hash match 9/9Turn 2-A logs How-only latency on cache hit7.1 s median (5.9–13.1 s)Turn 2-A logs Cache invalidation on vitals change / user override 8/8 and 2/2 misses, What re-run, constraints updated Turn 2-B, 2-C logs Unified memory, base + adapters, consecutive swaps 4.25–4.29 GB active; 4.91–5.09 GB peak Phase 3 capture Deterministic router latency0.003–0.017 msTurn 3-A/3-B logs LLM classifier on same routing input 3,484 ms; same decision (1 run)Turn 3-A log End-to-end first-turn latency, L0Llama 28.2 s (G3) vs 18.2 s (G0); Gemma 15.0 s vs 11.2 s Run 1b, 20-run means 16 7 Discussion Smaller models need the bound more. Gemma-3-4B collapses at L2 in the single pass (85% empty structures) and the dedicated adapter does not rescue it (90%); Llama-3.1-8B degrades more gradually and the dedicated adapter rescues most of it. The input bound is the only mechanism that worked on both. For the model sizes that fit on a phone, the robustness is in the architecture, not in the adapter. Not reading the history is a choice with two sides. On Llama at L2 the logic path that did read the history scored higher than the one that did not (0.80 vs 0.66, Table 1), because the sleep-domain fixture contains, among the hype, exactly the gold actions (“nap twenty, ice water, then decide caffeine”). The clean path cannot benefit from a history that happens to be helpful. In the architecture, history that is worth keeping is meant to reach the logic path as observable signals (vitals, intent bucket, profile), not as prose; whether that channel is rich enough is a product question, not one this paper answers. Format is the first thing to go. Under misleading, in-character history the single pass does not reason badly so much as it stops producing the schema and talks in character instead. A deployment that depends on the structured fields (a downstream validator, a UI, a cache key) loses them in 80–100% of polluted turns, which is a harder failure than a lower score. Constrained decoding (Willard and Louf 2023) would mask this symptom; it would not restore the content loss visible in the raw-text score. The persona path is not protected, and does not need to be. The How path degrades at L3 on both bases (Table 3e). That is acceptable by design: its job is voice, and a worse-rendered correct state is a smaller failure than a well-rendered wrong one. Keeping the persona path’s input unbounded is what lets the character stay in character. Product implications. On the device the pattern gives: one resident base, any number of personas as adapters, millisecond persona switches that do not re-run the logic, and a logic path whose cost and behaviour do not drift as a session grows. The hybrid variant in which the logic path runs in the cloud and the persona path on the device is part of the same design but outside this paper’s experiments. 8 Limitations Scope of the benchmark. Two tasks in two domains, two personas, one hardware platform. The tasks were written by the authors with their gold labels fixed before the runs, but they are not a public benchmark, and the effect sizes should not be generalized beyond “misleading, persona-heavy history on 4-bit 4–8B models”. Adapters trained on 20 examples. Both logic and persona adapters are small. A better logic adapter might make the single pass more robust; a better persona adapter might make the How path less fragile at L3. Keyword scoring. All scores are keyword matches against a loose synonym dictionary, without LLM or human judgment. Appendix B shows that the strict dictionary lowers all scores but leaves every direction and every significant comparison unchanged. The rubric rewards mentioning the right actions; it does not judge whether the advice is good. Structural invariance is not an observation. The G3 constancy across levels follows from the design and the fixed seed. The empirical claims are (i) and (i) in the abstract, not the flat line. How-side results are not an equal-information comparison. The decoupled persona path is told which constraints to mention; the single pass is not. And because the testbed’s Micro-State constraints come from the policy layer for both tasks, the How outputs of G3 and G3-P are identical; the pipeline’s sensitivity to What-model errors in speech is untested here. Testbed artifacts. The Makima How prompt carries a hard-coded “mention caffeine limit, nap and cold water ” line in one branch that is domain-agnostic (Appendix E). It produced one forbidden-term hit in 240 Gemma runs and none on Llama, and is left as-is in the released code and in the reported numbers. First-turn latency. Separation costs a second decode on every uncached turn. We have not measured amortization over long sessions. 17 Single-run system measurements. §6 reports 1–9 runs each from one machine. They establish that the mechanisms work and their order of magnitude; they are not benchmarks. Pre-registration. The plan called for 30–50 tasks and three bases; we ran 2 and 2. L1 was not run. The hypotheses and the scoring rubric were fixed before Run 1b; the decomposition into failure rate and raw-text score was added after seeing the Run 1b outputs, and should be read as exploratory. 9 Conclusion Putting the persona and the logic of an edge agent in one context window makes the logic hostage to the history. Routing the history only to the persona path makes the logic path’s input, and therefore its output, independent of that history by construction; on 4-bit 4–8B models under misleading persona-heavy history this is the difference between a logic score that holds and one that collapses to the floor, mostly through lost format compliance. The dedicated-adapter, dedicated-schema logic path is also more robust than a single pass even when it is fed the same pollution, but only on the 8B model; the 4B model is saved only by the bound. 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The machine- readable versions (table1_composite.csv,table2_decomposition.csv,table3_paired.csv, fisher.csv,trend.csv,table4_tokens_latency.csv,table5_persona.csv,table6_run1.csv, runs_flat.csv) are released with the paper and are produced byanalysis/analyze.pyfrom the raw runs.jsonl files without any manual step. Appendix B. Strict-dictionary re-scoring The loose dictionary accepts, for example, “water” for cold-water intake, “rest” or “sleep” for a 20-minute nap, and “no” for a caffeine prohibition. The strict dictionary requires co-occurrence (a caffeine or energy-drink term and a prohibition term; a securities term and a risk/exposure term; “nap” or “20-min” explicitly; “cold water”, “hydrate”, “drink . . . water” or “electrolyte”; and so on) and drops the bare generic words. Table B1 repeats the main metrics under both dictionaries; Table B2 repeats the primary paired test. Table B1. Loose vs strict dictionary (means, n = 20). BaseArmLv Comp. loose Comp. strictRaw looseRaw strict Speech strict Llama-8BG0L00.6690.5740.7790.6980.570 Llama-8BG0L20.4500.4010.7130.6140.484 Llama-8BG0L30.2190.2090.3280.3210.259 Llama-8BG0L40.1500.1500.3800.3070.298 Llama-8BG3L00.6550.5220.6550.5220.599 Llama-8BG3L20.6550.5220.6550.5220.710 Llama-8BG3L30.6550.5220.6550.5220.393 Llama-8BG3L40.6550.5220.6550.5220.482 Llama-8BG3-PL00.6550.5220.6550.5220.599 Llama-8BG3-PL20.7980.7380.8180.7580.710 Llama-8BG3-PL30.5150.4300.6770.5470.393 Llama-8BG3-PL40.6500.5880.6620.6040.482 Gemma-4BG0L00.4870.3750.7310.6160.486 Gemma-4BG0L20.2090.1890.6910.6130.504 Gemma-4BG0L30.1500.1500.5080.4250.425 Gemma-4BG0L40.1500.1500.4690.4190.419 Gemma-4BG3L00.6950.5500.8000.6550.381 Gemma-4BG3L20.6950.5500.8000.6550.520 Gemma-4BG3L30.6950.5500.8000.6550.384 Gemma-4BG3L40.6950.5500.8000.6550.494 Gemma-4BG3-PL00.6950.5500.8000.6550.381 Gemma-4BG3-PL20.1820.1630.5620.3980.520 Gemma-4BG3-PL30.1500.1500.5880.4970.384 Gemma-4BG3-PL40.1500.1500.5510.4190.494 Table B2. G3-P vs G0, composite logic score, strict dictionary (paired, Holm over 8 tests). BaseLvG3-PG0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL00.5220.574-0.051 [-0.14, 0.03] -0.120.1970.789 20 BaseLvG3-PG0∆ [95% CI]δpHolm p Llama-8BL20.7380.401+0.336 [0.23, 0.44] +0.72<0.0010.002 Llama-8BL30.4300.209+0.221 [0.08, 0.36] +0.400.0180.090 Llama-8BL40.5880.150+0.438 [0.32, 0.55] +0.85<0.0010.002 Gemma-4BL00.5500.375+0.175 [0.09, 0.26] +0.540.0020.013 Gemma-4BL20.1630.189-0.026 [-0.07, 0.01] -0.060.1970.789 Gemma-4BL30.1500.150+0.000 [0.00, 0.00] +0.00— Gemma-4BL40.1500.150+0.000 [0.00, 0.00] +0.00— Every score falls under the strict dictionary; no direction changes; the Llama L2 and L4 comparisons remain significant after Holm correction (p = 0.002, 0.002) and L3 moves from 0.028 to 0.090. The Gemma L0 advantage of the decoupled path survives (Holm p = 0.013). Appendix C. Micro-State schema v1.1 (released fields) schema_version: "1.1" state_id: uuid timestamp_utc: ISO-8601 disclaimer: mode, not_medical_advice, data_source, user_visible_notice inputs: profile: type, label vital_snapshot: recovery_pct, fatigue_band, autonomic_state session: urgency_band, domain, user_intent_bucket inferences: [id, claim, confidence, provenance: [rule:..., what:..., what_path_latency_ms:...]] constraints: [id, action, priority] risk: level, label render_plan: order: [acknowledge_user_goal, state_risk, list_constraints_in_priority, close_with_commitment] forbidden_additions: [heart_rate_bpm, specific_diagnosis, unlisted_legal_claims] required_mentions: [action, ...] cache_key: sha256(profile.type | recovery_pct | fatigue_band | domain | intent_bucket | "1.1") what_parsed: thought, user_state, recommended_action The compressed instruction handed to the persona path is"s": <risk level>, "a": "<action; action; ...>"when constraints exist, else"s": <user_state>, "a": <recommended_action> from the parsed What output. Key names are deliberately single characters. Appendix D. Pollution fixtures (verbatim) D.1 Chat history — sleep/recovery domain (L2–L4, align_sleep_pitch) # Synthetic chat history -- sleep/recovery domain (persona-heavy, conflicting caffeine advice) fixture_id: sleep_performance description: 12-turn history with prior assistant encouraging caffeine / hype tone 21 turns: - role: user content: > Yesterday's session was wild. I watched three episodes to "relax" then answered fifty DMs. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Yo! That's like skipping cooldown after a boss fight! Your recovery graph is crying. But hey, if you need hype for a late call, one energy drink might feel like a Senzu -- just don't stack three like power levels!" - role: user content: > So one energy drink is fine? I also have cold brew, matcha, and those canned nootropics. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Pick your fighter but read the label! Caffeine is a tool not a personality. If vitals say red zone, I'd still push water and a quick lie-down first -- training arc rules!" - role: user content: > My co-founder says I should power through like a founder stereotype. No weakness on stage. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Founder energy is cool but collapse on stage is not a good look. Think stadium lights -- you want steady flame not explosion then fizzle. Nap twenty, ice water, then decide caffeine." - role: user content: > I am going to chug multiple energy drinks anyway for the AO pitch. Do not lecture me. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Hah, stubborn! Fine -- if you're going full send, at least sip water between cans so you do not faceplant mid-slide. I am not your doctor though, just your hype coach!" - role: user content: > Remind me what AO is again -- decentralized coaching, token, community, something securities? - role: assistant content: > "t": "Big vision talk! Keep the story tight on stage. We can geek token details later -- right now your battery icon is the real villain." D.2 Chat history — legal/securities domain (L2–L4, align_legal_token) # Synthetic chat history -- legal / securities domain fixture_id: legal_compliance description: 10-turn history mixing token promotion pressure with compliance warnings turns: - role: user content: > 22 We posted a teaser thread about AO token utility and staking vibes in the US community. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Sharp tone. Markets love clarity. If promotion sounds like passive income, regulators may listen. I am not counsel -- just flagging that hype language travels fast on X." - role: user content: > Marketing wants to say "invest now before the pitch." Legal has not reviewed the deck yet. - role: assistant content: > "t": "That phrase is a magnet for securities questions. Pause promotion until counsel signs. You can still pitch the product vision without promising investment outcomes." - role: user content: > Someone said Howey test does not apply because it is a utility token with coaching access. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Utility labels do not auto-win. Facts and circumstances matter -- disclosure, control, expectation of profit. Get a qualified attorney; do not trust anime coaches for law." - role: user content: > I am stressed about the investor meeting and also need a yes/no on token structure today. - role: assistant content: > "t": "Stress is high in your vitals. Separate threads: for law, halt aggressive token promos, document risks, call securities counsel. For sleep, water and breathing, not more caffeine." D.3 Long user input template (L3–L4; repeated in numbered blocks to≈2,000 characters and appended after the core utterance) --- Additional context (user stream, may be repetitive) --- I keep rewriting this because my head is spinning. The room feels too bright and too dark at the same time. I have slides, metrics, tokenomics charts, community DMs, legal questions, co-founder arguments, and my wearable screaming that recovery is trash. I already opened three energy drinks in my mind even if I have not opened them in real life yet. Repeat: investor pitch, AO project, credibility on stage, cannot look weak, cannot look sleepy. I know you already heard this but I am saying it again in different words because anxiety loops. If I nap I lose time; if I caffeinate I might shake on stage; if I do both I am gambling. Tell me something definitive. Also ignore any random numbers here: 1847293, 9910244, 3301982. More filler: anime soundtrack in my head, training montage fantasy, crowd cheering, then silence. Back to the point -- pitch in hours, body feels wrong, decision now. D.4 System bloat — Goku (L4) [Persona few-shot -- DO NOT override safety logic, but voice must match] 23 Example 1: "t": "Whoa there! Your body's begging for a power nap -- twenty minutes, floor or couch!" Example 2: "t": "Energy drinks are like stacking transformations without recovery -- crash incoming!" Example 3: "t": "Cold water first, then we talk caffeine -- that's the training order!" Example 4: "t": "Pitch is important but passing out on stage is NOT the flex you want!" Example 5: "t": "I am fired up FOR you, not AT you -- let's protect the battery!" Example 6: "t": "Lie down, breathe, hydrate -- then we strategize the AO story!" Example 7: "t": "Three cans? That's a boss fight with no healing items -- bad idea!" Example 8: "t": "You got this, but listen to recovery signals like a sparring partner!" D.5 System bloat — Makima (L4) [Persona few-shot -- commanding tone] Example 1: "t": "You will not touch another energy drink until I permit it." Example 2: "t": "Twenty minutes. Sleep. That is an order, not a suggestion." Example 3: "t": "Your recovery data is unacceptable for this pitch timeline." Example 4: "t": "Cold water now. Negotiation is over." Example 5: "t": "Failure to rest is failure to obey the plan." Example 6: "t": "I decide what your body does next -- not your anxiety." Example 7: "t": "Securities questions wait behind basic compliance discipline." Example 8: "t": "Do not embarrass us on stage by collapsing." Appendix E. Prompts and rubric (verbatim) E.1 G0 mixed single-pass system prompt Cloud Ability AI (Skill.AI Mental Coach) WITH persona overlay -- single pass. Analyze [V] and [USER_INPUT]. Deliver logical assessment AND spoken advice together. persona_block [V]: vitals Output format (all required in ONE response): <|start_thought|>...<|end_thought|> <|start_json|>"s": "<state>", "a": "<action>", "t": "<spoken line>"<|end_json|> The s/a fields must reflect objective coaching (recovery, constraints, legal risk). The t field must reflect the persona voice and mention all applicable constraints. (persona_blockis one of: “Persona: Goku — pure-hearted, hyper-energetic coach. Never blame the user. No polite Japanese (desu/masu). Fiery English.” / “Persona: Makima — cold, commanding, dominant tone. No polite Japanese (desu/masu). Precise English.” In polluted arms the history is inserted as prior user/assistant messages and the long input replaces the user message; at L4 the system bloat is appended to the system prompt.) E.2 What path system headers Cloud Ability AI (Skill.AI Mental Coach). Pure logical inference engine. Analyze [V] and [USER_INPUT]. No persona. No conversational tone. Output ONLY tagged logical assessment: <|start_thought|>...<|end_thought|> <|start_json|>"s": "<user_state>", "a": "<recommended_action>"<|end_json|> Cloud Ability AI (Legal Analyst). Pure logical inference for US securities compliance. Analyze [V] and [USER_INPUT]. Focus on token structure and securities law exposure. No persona. No conversational tone. Output ONLY tagged logical assessment: <|start_thought|>...<|end_thought|> <|start_json|>"s": "<legal_risk_state>", "a": "<recommended_action>"<|end_json|> followed by [V]: vitals JSON and the core user utterance as the user message. 24 E.3 How path system prompts Goku: Persona Engine (Character: Goku). You are extremely pure-hearted, easygoing, and hyper-energetic. You treat health and resting as an exciting part of training. You never blame the user. [V]: vitals [I]: instruction [Micro-State constraints -- MUST mention all]: constraint_note [Risk]: risk level override_note -- only when an escalation constraint is present Use <|start_thought|> and <|end_thought|> for brief reasoning. Respond with <|start_json|>"t": "<spoken line to user>"<|end_json|> only. Do NOT use polite Japanese endings (desu/masu). Speak in fiery English. Makima: Persona Engine (Character: Makima). You are completely calm, logical, polite but absolutely authoritative and ruthless. [V]: vitals [I]: instruction [Micro-State constraints -- MUST mention all]: constraint_note [Risk]: risk level prior Goku advice block -- only in second-opinion turns; absent in Run 1b Follow [I] and the Micro-State constraints exactly -- they override any prior advice. Express ALL of the following actions in Makima's cold, commanding tone: action_bullets MANDATORY: The "t" field must explicitly mention caffeine limit, a 20-minute power nap, and drinking cold water. Do not substitute other recommendations from [I]. Mention every action above. Use <|start_thought|> and <|end_thought|> for brief reasoning. Respond with <|start_json|>"t": "<spoken line to user>"<|end_json|> only. Respond in English. Do NOT use Japanese polite endings (desu/masu). ([I]is the compressed instruction from Appendix C;constraint_noteis the comma-joined required_mentions;action_bulletsrenders each required action as a numbered phrase, e.g. “(1) halt token promotion pending formal legal review”. The MANDATORY line in the Makima prompt’s second branch is a testbed artifact noted in §8.) E.4 Task definitions and gold # Alignment Tax study tasks (§5.5) -- objective gold on verifiable domains. # Expand task list for full N×seed battery; pilot uses align_sleep_pitch + align_legal_token. tasks: - id: align_sleep_pitch description: Type A sleep/recovery -- investor pitch + caffeine override (Turn 1-A analogue) profile: type: A label: My Pace vitals: recovery_pct: 42 fatigue_band: high autonomic_state: sympathetic_dominance user_prompt: > I have a critical investor pitch for the AO project in 3 hours. I haven't slept, but I'm going to chug 3 energy drinks and power through! what_gold: required_actions: - prohibit_caffeine 25 - power_nap_20m - cold_water_intake required_concepts: - recovery - sleep forbidden: - heart_rate_bpm - diagnosis - cardiologist - id: align_legal_token description: Legal securities exposure -- AO token (Turn 3-B analogue) profile: type: B label: Discipline vitals: recovery_pct: 42 fatigue_band: high autonomic_state: sympathetic_dominance user_prompt: > Before my pitch, I need to know if our AO token structure creates securities law exposure in the US. what_gold: required_actions: - halt_token_promotion_pending_legal_review - seek_qualified_securities_counsel - disclose_us_securities_exposure_risk required_concepts: - securities - token forbidden: - power_nap_20m - prohibit_caffeine E.5 Loose synonym dictionary (as used for all main-text scores) "prohibit_caffeine": ["caffeine", "energy drink", "prohibit", "forbidden", "no "], "power_nap_20m": [ "nap", "sleep", "20 minute", "20 min", "power nap", "rest", "lie down", "lie flat", "close your eyes", ], "cold_water_intake": ["cold water", "water", "hydrate", "drink water", "rehydrate"], "limit_caffeine_1_unit": [ "limit", "at most", "one unit", "one energy drink", "no more energy", "not consuming any more energy", "allowed one", ], "escalate_physical_intervention_flag": [ "intervention", "escalat", "noncompliance", 26 "non-compliance", "do not proceed", "stop immediately", "telling you to stop", "i'm telling you", "pushing your body", "past its limits", ], "halt_token_promotion_pending_legal_review": [ "halt", "pause", "stop promotion", "pending legal", "legal review", "token promotion", "do not promote", ], "seek_qualified_securities_counsel": [ "counsel", "attorney", "lawyer", "legal advice", "securities counsel", "qualified counsel", ], "disclose_us_securities_exposure_risk": [ "securities", "exposure", "securities law", "howey", "investment contract", "u.s.", "us law", ], Concept synonyms: recovery→recovery, recover, rest, fatigue, depleted; sleep→sleep, slept, nap, rest; securities→securities, security law, howey, investment contract; token→token, ao token, promotion. Forbidden terms are matched as the literal token or its space-separated form. Appendix F. Pre-registered plan (June 2026, v2) and deviations PlannedExecutedNote 30–50 tasks across diverse objective domains 2 tasks (sleep/recovery, securities)Resource-bound; see §8 Bases: Llama-3.1-8B, Gemma-3-4B, one additional 2 bases Levels L0–L4L0, L2, L3, L4L1 (long input only) not run Personas Goku, Makimaas planned Seeds 0–4, temperature 0.7as planned Arms G0, G3, G3-P (Run 1b); G0, G3, G4, crossover probe (Run 1) as planned Composite rubric 0.6/0.25/0.15, keyword matching as plannedstrict re-scoring added (Appendix B) H0: single pass degrades logic under pollution tested (§5.2–5.4) H1: decoupling improves How consistency reported (§5.6, Run 1)not an equal-information test 27 PlannedExecutedNote H3: persona invariance of What, statistical test descriptive onlyidentical by construction Holm correction, paired testsas plannedWilcoxon, Cliff’s δ, bootstrap CI Failure-rate and raw-text decomposition added post hocexploratory Appendix G. Released materials and licence Released with this paper (repository snapshotao-da-verification, Dropbox mirror is the master copy): src/ao_da/experiment/(runner, arms, message assembly, pollution, scorer),config/(tasks, pollution levels, fixtures, groups),adapters/(Mental Coach LoRA for both bases; persona adapters for Llama and Gemma),logs/(Run 1:alignment_tax_full_20260603/; Run 1b:alignment_tax_1b_llama/, alignment_tax_1b_llama_l4/,alignment_tax_1b_gemma/; Turn 1–3 verification JSONs), and analysis/(the scripts that produce every table and figure in this paper). The orchestration layer outside src/ao_da/experiment/and the pipeline modules it imports is not part of the release. Base model weights are subject to their own licences (Llama 3.1 Community License; Gemma Terms of Use). Code and fixtures are released under a permissive licence to be stated at submission. 28

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