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sortfrontier
confirmedPython · CPUModel behavior & reasoningJuly 6, 2026
the question
How long a list can a small model sort, and how does it fail?
what came out
The failure mode shifts from comparison errors to tracking errors -- dropped or invented numbers, ~97% by length 16. And CoT doesn't help sorting; it hurts the small model. 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/sortfrontier