The OP rediscovered that frontier models prefer to reason over logical scaffolding for complex tasks. They excel at technical work with many constraints as they can perfectly maintain the references, flow graph, and evidence states while they works through your conformance gates.

Many people here might disagree; but they're holding it wrong. Those folks should ask:

1. Am I using free tier tokens? 2. Am I working on trivial software? 3. Am I expecting models to adapt to my ways of thinking?

Anyone affect by any of these three mistakes will maintain an impenetrable filter of perpetual ignorance about model capabilities. Since the OP came with receipts, I'm reproducing an example graph below.

From a plan in my active research project:

  Phase 0   resolve -> vendor -> pin             [USER+agent]  -> G0 CORPUS-RESOLVED   [PASS]

  Track B   B1 Abusalah              [WRITTEN]   [agent]       -> G1B Q-BOUNDARY
            B2 Guan-Riazanov-Yuan    [WRITTEN]                  (KILL-BOUNDARY risk)
            B3 Mahmoody-Smith-Wu     [WRITTEN]  + O-MSW-VERIFIER-COST closed (t = 588, MEASURED)
                                     -> G1B PASSED: BOUNDARY-ESTABLISHED

  Track A   05 Binius                [WRITTEN]   [agent]       -> G1 AUDITS-COMPLETE [PASS] 2026-08-28
            07 FRI-Binius 2024/504   [WRITTEN] — vendored by USER; calculated Q-FLOOR point obtained
            06 HOBBIT                [WRITTEN] — O-QUEUE-M escalated to 179 Phase 2
            01 Wesolowski            [WRITTEN] — hinge splits; C_overlap = 0, C_tail = 57.50% computed
            02 Tight VDFs            [WRITTEN] — no omega; O(log T) proof threads; black-box RO base impossible
            03 LaBRADOR (light)      [WRITTEN] — calculated, not measured; translation remains open
            04 LatticeFold+          -- deferred to pre-141

  Track C   [PASS] C0a contract -> C0b exact simulator -> G0C TRANSLATION-READY
            C2 Alwen-Serbinenko [TECHNIQUE-ONLY] -> C1 SoW [PASS] ANCESTRY-FOUND
                                                -> C4 Seeded PoW [FORM-ONLY]
                                                                 -> G1C [RED] WORK-LEMMA-MISSING
                                                                          [WARN] ANCESTRY-CLASSICAL
                                                                 -> L0 [PASS] SCOPE-FROZEN
                                                                      |- E0 response [PASS] PRESENT
                                                                      `- L1-L2 local [PASS] CARRIER-QUOTIENT
                                                                           -> J0 [PASS] TECHNIQUE-FIT CONFIRMED
                                                                                -> admission decision [PASS] CANONICAL RESULT
                                                                                     -> A0 [AMBER] REFERENCE-TESTED
                                                                                          -> A1 [PASS] ROOT-LEAF FEASIBILITY LEAD
                                                                                               -> semantic equivalence + epoch [USER]
            C3, C5  -- deferred to pre-141

  Phase 2   Q-TAIL / Q-FLOOR synthesis           [agent]       -> [PASS] G2: TAIL-MECHANISM-FOUND · FLOOR-OPEN
  Phase 3   reference ledger for 141              [agent]       -> CLOSED; awaits fresh USER authorization