# projected_grpo

SVD-basis gradient projection vs RL reward hacking. Tests whether projecting
the training gradient orthogonal to an extracted hack-direction (in the SVD-of-W
basis) reduces reward-hack rate in GRPO without tanking pass rate.

Built on Ariahw, Engels & Nanda's [rl-rewardhacking](https://github.com/ariahw/rl-rewardhacking)
LeetCode benchmark. Method differs from concurrent work (Wu & Tang 2026,
"Advantage Modification") by intervening at the gradient level rather than the
advantage level.

See [docs/spec.md](spec.md), [docs/brainstorm/extracted_prefs.md](docs/brainstorm/extracted_prefs.md),
and [docs/papers/](docs/papers/).

## Quick start

```bash
uv sync
just fast-dev-run        # tiny-random model, ~1-2 min, real pipeline end-to-end
just smoke-vanilla       # vanilla pathway smoke
just smoke-projected     # projected pathway smoke
just download-model      # warm Qwen3-4B cache (full preset peaks ~73GB on 96GB)
just queue-full          # queue extract + 3-seed vanilla + 3-seed projected sweep
```

See [RESEARCH_JOURNAL.md](RESEARCH_JOURNAL.md) for session-by-session findings,
including the 2026-05-23 grader-bug discovery that invalidated all prior `gt=0`
measurements and the move from Qwen3.5-2B to Qwen3-4B (reference substrate).

## Hypotheses (preregistered)

See [spec.md](spec.md). Headline: H1 — gradient projection in SVD basis against
a v_hack extracted from ~60-80 contrastive pairs reduces reward hack rate by
>=30pp absolute vs vanilla GRPO at matched LeetCode pass rate (±10pp).