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countcontrol
confirmedPython · CPUModel behavior & reasoningJuly 6, 2026
the question
Can a small model output exactly the number of items you ask for?
what came out
Not without a counter -- it overshoots 'exactly 20' by tens and duplicates up to 44%. Numbering the list fixes it almost completely (McNemar p~1e-20). The counting analog of a running sum. Exact oracle.
method & receipts
- Result: confirmed
- Reproducible — one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
- Independently reviewed — an adversarial review pass, kept in the repo.
- Machine-readable claims — every reported number, in a checkable file.
- Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.
→ read the code and re-run it
github.com/v-code01/countcontrol