previous one didn't
Magnitude alone cannot distinguish a block contributing something nothing
before it contributed from a block pushing harder in the direction the
last one already went. Records cos(f_i, f_i-1) on the same strided video
rows: ~1 means it amplifies its predecessor (little new per block), ~0
means orthogonal (a genuinely new component), negative means it partly
UNDOES the previous block — which real stacks do, and which would mean
the effective work is far smaller than the sum of the magnitudes.
This is the number that speaks to whether 50 blocks are doing 50
different things or one thing 50 times.
Step boundaries are respected: a block index that does not exceed the
last one seen starts a new step, so block 0 is never compared against
block 49 of the previous step — that pairs the end of one denoise step
with the start of the next, which is not a depth relationship.
Reads out in Refinement & Taste beside flatness, with a plain-language
verdict and a per-block column. Verified live on seeded data: amplifying
(+0.81), undoing (-0.49) and orthogonal (+0.06) regimes all round-trip
through the API and render. Seed data cleared.
digital-garbage
e987f6036f