{
  "$schema": "schemas/challenge.schema.json",
  "schema_version": "1.0.0",
  "challenge": "The Energy Density Challenge",
  "tagline": "A standing challenge to human and artificial intelligence",
  "phase": "problem_framing",
  "hypothesis": "In a specified service and boundary, improving usable system energy density may outperform feasible alternatives on a declared binding constraint without violating agreed safeguards. This has not been established.",
  "first_assignment": "Determine whether energy density is the right problem framing before prioritizing solutions.",
  "core_question": "Can sufficiently capable human-AI and AI-AI research systems discover interventions that substantially increase useful energy availability per constrained resource while decreasing total system-level environmental and economic costs?",
  "harder_question": "Or are we merely moving energy, entropy, cost, risk, materials, or environmental damage somewhere less visible?",
  "objectives": [
    "Identify a service deficit and the binding constraint.",
    "Compare density with the baseline and feasible alternatives.",
    "Report service quality, total burdens and per-service metrics.",
    "Retain, narrow, replace or leave the framing unresolved based on evidence."
  ],
  "constraints": [
    "No arbitrary combined score.",
    "No causal leverage claim from connectivity.",
    "No unknown-to-zero conversion.",
    "No global inference from one application.",
    "No evidence promotion from AI agreement.",
    "No autonomous hazardous physical experimentation."
  ],
  "metrics": [
    {
      "id": "specific_energy",
      "label": "Usable energy per system mass",
      "unit": "Wh/kg",
      "direction": "maximize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "volumetric_energy",
      "label": "Usable energy per system volume",
      "unit": "Wh/L",
      "direction": "maximize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "power",
      "label": "Delivered power at required duration",
      "unit": "kW",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "work_efficiency",
      "label": "Useful work per input energy",
      "unit": "J/J",
      "direction": "maximize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "compute_efficiency",
      "label": "Quality-qualified tasks per energy",
      "unit": "tasks/kWh",
      "direction": "maximize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "lifecycle_cost",
      "label": "Lifecycle cost per functional unit",
      "unit": "declared currency, price year / functional unit",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "capital_cost",
      "label": "Capital cost",
      "unit": "declared currency and price year",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "operating_cost",
      "label": "Operating cost",
      "unit": "declared currency and price year / year",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "material_abundance",
      "label": "Material availability",
      "unit": "material-specific supply measure",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "mineral_dependency",
      "label": "Critical mineral requirement",
      "unit": "kg / functional unit",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "manufacturability",
      "label": "Manufacturing yield and process readiness",
      "unit": "declared yield and readiness basis",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "scalability",
      "label": "Achievable annual deployment",
      "unit": "functional units / year",
      "direction": "maximize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "land",
      "label": "Land occupation",
      "unit": "m²·year / functional unit",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "water",
      "label": "Water consumption by location",
      "unit": "m³ / functional unit",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "waste_heat",
      "label": "Heat rejection at stated temperature",
      "unit": "kWh thermal / functional unit",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "carbon_intensity",
      "label": "Operational emissions intensity",
      "unit": "kg CO2e / functional unit",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "lifecycle_emissions",
      "label": "Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions",
      "unit": "kg CO2e / functional unit",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "toxicity",
      "label": "Hazard and exposure",
      "unit": "declared assessment method",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "recyclability",
      "label": "Recovered material with processing burdens",
      "unit": "percent by mass plus process inventory",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "reliability",
      "label": "Service availability and failure rates",
      "unit": "percent availability; failures / service-hour",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "resilience",
      "label": "Performance under stated disruption",
      "unit": "service retained; recovery hours",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "safety",
      "label": "Hazards, exposure and residual risk",
      "unit": "qualified assessment; not a universal score",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "concentration",
      "label": "Supply concentration",
      "unit": "supplier/country shares and method",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "infrastructure",
      "label": "Additional infrastructure",
      "unit": "physical inventory plus costs",
      "direction": "contextual",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "deployment_time",
      "label": "Time until service delivered",
      "unit": "years from decision",
      "direction": "minimize",
      "boundary_required": true,
      "value": null,
      "missing_reason": "No comparable measured project data yet."
    }
  ],
  "research_domains": [
    "electrochemistry",
    "battery chemistry",
    "nuclear fission",
    "fusion",
    "photovoltaics",
    "thermoelectrics",
    "photonics",
    "superconductivity",
    "power electronics",
    "hydrogen and chemical carriers",
    "synthetic fuels",
    "grid architecture",
    "thermal storage",
    "waste-heat recovery",
    "materials science",
    "distributed generation",
    "computation per joule",
    "low-power AI hardware",
    "optical computing",
    "service and demand design",
    "maintenance and infrastructure",
    "other approaches consistent with known physics"
  ],
  "unresolved_questions": [
    "Which service and beneficiary should the first framing audit address?",
    "Which constraint actually binds in that setting?",
    "What existing option is the strongest comparator?",
    "Which thresholds and acceptable tradeoffs do affected stakeholders endorse?",
    "What evidence would justify retaining, narrowing or replacing the name?"
  ],
  "known_failures": [],
  "evidence": [],
  "confidence": {
    "value": null,
    "basis": "No bounded framing study has been completed.",
    "history": [
      {
        "date": "2026-09-10",
        "status": "unresolved",
        "reason": "Launch state; original systems model was not supplied."
      }
    ]
  },
  "experiments_needed": [
    "EDC-E-0001"
  ],
  "safety_requirements": [
    "Human professional review and oversight for any hazardous physical work.",
    "Static site only: no agent execution, compute dispatch, device control or automatic experiments."
  ],
  "model": "research/models/EDC-M-0001.json",
  "research_index": "research/index.json",
  "review": "docs/ten-step-review.md",
  "last_updated": "2026-09-10"
}