Definition. Conceptual transfer and constructive invention [ftip-00OR]

✍️sourceAGENTDRAFTED

Fix a task family, an initial artifact, an admissible interaction protocol, and a charged resource cap. A research trace records how a system moves from a difficulty to a reusable capability. Its research-capability profile is a tuple of separately measured fields, not a scalar intelligence score:

The fields record, respectively, whether the system can diagnose a failed approach, move a useful concept across a stated boundary, combine several concepts, construct a resource that was not supplied, derive consequences, validate the result independently, and retain the capability after the research interaction ends. Each field is conditional on the task law, protocol, evidence standard and resource accounting; it may be unmeasured or inapplicable. The profile therefore complements the architecture-conditioned vector in Capability vector and conditional frontier without redefining its coordinates.

A conceptual transfer begins with a source concept and a target problem. It identifies the source's usable structure, gives a map or analogy that preserves the relevant relations, adapts the concept to the target representation, and supplies a checkable consequence. Merely mentioning a similar idea is retrieval; applying a relevant idea to a new problem is associative application. Transfer is established by the preserved structure and the target-side result, not by verbal resemblance.

A remix composes two or more source concepts whose joint use was not already supplied as a completed method. The trace must state the interface between the concepts, the new dependency or composition rule, and the result that depends essentially on that combination. A longer list of familiar steps is not a remix when no new relation is needed.

A constructive invention responds to a diagnosed obstruction. The system identifies a precise hole in the current representation or method, reformulates that hole as a portable difficulty, and constructs an object, representation, question or governing principle that fills it. A positive construction argument contains a checkable construction, an essential new resource, consequences beyond the original target, and an account of why the resource was not already present in the admitted starting material. This is the sense of imaginative construction used here; novelty is assessed relative to the declared endowment and also reported separately from historical novelty.

These operations have different failure boundaries. A system may diagnose an obstruction without transferring a concept, transfer a concept without remixing it, or construct a useful object without proving its consequences. Proof and independent verification remain separate fields. Acquisition adds a further condition: after the contributor, search aid or temporary context is removed, the frozen recipient must use the retained artifact on fresh tasks. A successful assisted answer alone does not establish retained capability.

The profile describes an ability under a specified setup. A tool, curriculum, contributor or persistent archive can facilitate an operation and can also become part of the retained artifact; the evidence must state which occurred. The profile is therefore compatible with model learning, external setup and successive model generations while keeping those causal routes distinct.

The profile develops the convex-hull discussion of contribution grades by making associative application, transfer, remixing and construction observable as different outcomes. The accompanying review of discovery mechanisms is an operational audit of these distinctions; it does not determine the capability definitions or establish a performance result.