Future utility, investment cost and proof scope [ftip-00NP]

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Fix a horizon \(H\), a success threshold and a common adaptation schedule. In an additive work measure, let \(A_t\) charge forecasting, experiments and library construction before task \(t\), and let \(S_t\) charge solving, checking and permitted learning from that task. Let \(I\) charge assistance production, communication and recipient acquisition. The assisted marginal work is

The closed total charges its corresponding acquisition and task work under the same convention. Forecasts may optimize expected future work, but a hard budget claim must also bound realized resource use and include runs that exhaust the cap in the success probability. Memory, peak hardware and elapsed time retain their separate operational constraints. Earlier development and any portfolio amortization follow § [ftip-00ND].

A useful prospective policy should reduce later acquisition and solving work enough to repay its earlier investment at the fixed success threshold. Compare it with retrospective compression, a learned generative-model policy, direct solving without a reusable library, and a campaign that constructs its own predictor and representations. Equalize current observations and disclose earlier preparation. An oracle given the future sequence can diagnose the maximum possible value of anticipation, but its performance does not establish that either real learner can obtain it.

The mechanism predicts a larger benefit when demand changes have learnable structure and the right abstractions require substantial advance investment. It predicts a smaller benefit when demand is uninformative, useful libraries are cheap to build on arrival, or direct solving already fits the cap. A predictor can be accurate yet unhelpful if its forecast does not change an affordable decision. Measure fresh-task success, realized work and the effect of forecast-guided investment together. These are testable predictions for the specified process, not reported experiments.

The constructive proof problem is to produce a bounded developmental learner and establish its later performance without hindsight selection or privileged final-episode information. The closed lower-bound problem must cover every equally useful selection or solving method in § [ftip-00N7], including implicit forecasts, alternate abstractions, heterogeneous learners and internally generated curricula. A lower bound only against retrospective compression would explain that restricted comparison, not the conjecture about contemporary closed campaigns.

For a computational separation with public laws, a reduction must connect fresh checked success to an independently hard inference or computation problem under the declared endowment and resource cap. It must also explain why direct solving and alternative investment policies cannot avoid that work. Withholding the future law from one side, choosing future tasks after seeing its library, or assuming every useful forecast is rare would establish a different claim or assume the desired conclusion. The prospective construction supplies a distinct acquisition problem; the all-campaign cost inequality remains open.