# PDR 001: Revive the prototype as reproducible research

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/pdrs/001-reproducible-evidence-bounded-revival
- Project: Autonomic Satellite Swarm
- Status: Accepted
- Opened: 2026-09-04
- Decided: 2026-09-04

## Context

The original three-board bench was no longer available when work resumed in
2026\. Its source still contained the research idea and published examples, but
hardware concerns, message encoding, scoring, health policy, and coordination
were tightly coupled. Unsafe ownership and stronger physical language also made
the repository hard to reuse without repeating claims that its evidence did
not support.

Freezing the old code would preserve defects and leave the experiment tied to
missing hardware. Replacing it with a new satellite design would erase the
historical behavior before it could be understood. The useful product was a
research artifact that could reproduce the original coordination experiment,
expose its assumptions, and let later experiments replace one policy or model
at a time.

## Decision

Revive the prototype as an honest, reproducible research artifact. Preserve the
historical three-agent behavior and published score examples as characterized
inputs and outputs. Make the coordination core runnable without the original
bench, and keep hardware, transport, scoring, health, and simulation concerns
replaceable at explicit boundaries.

Every claim must match its evidence. Host tests and deterministic simulation
may establish software behavior. Firmware compilation establishes only that a
reference target builds. Simulated motion, network behavior, resource use, and
faults must name their models and inputs. None of those results turns the
prototype into flight software or validates physical integration.

Keep [PDR 000](/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/pdrs/000-bounded-bench-demonstration)
as the original product boundary. Later work may improve the models and
verification, but it must preserve the distinction between demonstrated
behavior, historical assumptions, and unverified claims.

## Consequences

A contributor can study and change the coordination experiment without owning
the original hardware. Characterization tests keep modernization from silently
rewriting the historical result, while explicit interfaces allow a better
scorer, transport, health policy, or simulation model to replace its
predecessor.

The repository must carry more provenance and caveats than a conventional demo.
Deterministic output can still be scientifically weak if its model or inputs
are weak. New capabilities therefore need their own stated assumptions,
comparison evidence, and decision records.

## Evaluation

The revival succeeds when a contributor can clone the repository, reproduce
the coordination behavior without hardware, identify the evidence behind each
claim, and replace one hardware or research assumption without rewriting the
others. Public pages, Markdown output, tests, and simulation artifacts must use
the same evidence boundary.

## Migration note

This record preserves the revival direction first published with the project
on 2026-09-05. Its date follows the reconstructed 2026-09-04 decision date on
the revival ADRs that implement it. The project had already made the
modernization decision; this migration only changes its record structure. ADRs
007 through 011 retain the technical choices for the portable core, toolchain,
protocol, historical scoring, and verification.

## Related records

- Project: [Autonomic Satellite Swarm](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 007: Portable Core and Hardware Adapters](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/007-portable-core-and-hardware-adapters.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 008: CMake and Arduino CLI Split Toolchain](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/008-cmake-and-arduino-cli.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 009: Explicit Versioned Wire Protocol](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/009-versioned-wire-protocol.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 010: Historical Orbital Score as a Replaceable Policy](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/010-historical-score-as-policy.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 011: Host-First Verification with Firmware Compile Gates](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/011-host-first-verification.md)
- Evidence: [Initial software-revival commit](https://github.com/Robbie-Palmer/hq/commit/2638d2a5)

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