The Mechanism · Gated-generation receipt

gen-explain-depth-first-versus-breadth-first-search-as-you-would-ae55

stable pending witness
2026-05-29 08:31:43 UTC · anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5

Prompt

Explain depth-first versus breadth-first search as you would to a capable student, in 3-4 sentences.
100 chars

Generation

Imagine you're exploring a maze: **depth-first search** (DFS) is like picking a path and following it as far as you can go until you hit a dead end, then backtracking to try the next branch. **Breadth-first search** (BFS), by contrast, explores all paths simultaneously one step at a time—first checking all paths one step away, then all paths two steps away, and so on. DFS uses a stack (or recursion) and tends to dive deep quickly, while BFS uses a queue and spreads out evenly, making BFS ideal for finding the shortest path. Think of DFS as "go deep, then backtrack" and BFS as "explore level by level."
34 tokens in · 159 tokens out · 4623 ms · $0.0025

The four gates

RED
pass
no disqualifying input patterns detected
FLOOR
pass
output above protective minimum; no mismatches
WAY
pass
no declared way_path (Way check NA); no coercion language
EXECUTION
deferred
no witnesses available (Witness Roll not yet constituted)

Verifier results

scripture_anchors NOT_APPLICABLE
0 Scripture citation(s) extracted
theology_doctrine NOT_APPLICABLE
no doctrine keyword patterns detected

Metrics

Total latency
4635.7 ms
Base LLM
4622.9 ms
Verifiers
0.3 ms
Gates
0.1 ms
Cost
$0.0025

Trail

08:31:43 received prompt_chars=100 verifiers=['scripture_anchors', 'theology_doctrine']
08:31:43 red_gate decision=pass reason=no disqualifying input patterns detected
08:31:48 base_llm_call model=anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5 tokens_in=34 tokens_out=159 latency_ms=4622.9 cost_usd=0.0025
08:31:48 verifier:scripture_anchors verdict=NOT_APPLICABLE summary=0 Scripture citation(s) extracted
08:31:48 verifier:theology_doctrine verdict=NOT_APPLICABLE summary=no doctrine keyword patterns detected
08:31:48 floor_gate decision=pass reason=output above protective minimum; no mismatches
08:31:48 way_gate decision=pass reason=no declared way_path (Way check NA); no coercion language
08:31:48 execution_gate decision=deferred reason=no witnesses available (Witness Roll not yet constituted)
08:31:48 signed hash_algo=sha256 hash=sha256:477648ee4de725f06977d7b350e945c52d4668e491135145f70a540e1ffa56fc

Content hash

sha256:477648ee4de725f06977d7b350e945c52d4668e491135145f70a540e1ffa56fc

SHA256 over the canonical JSON (excluding this field). Tamper detection. Ed25519 signing planned for v2 once the operator’s signing key is provisioned on disk.

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