You have joined the recommendations team for a music streaming service. The "Made for You" shelf is served by a mature production two-tower model. Its chronological data protocol and indexed serving path are sound, but its offline retrieval quality no longer clears the team's next launch gate.
Your job is to investigate the production model, improve its retrieval quality, and ship a better ranking artifact. Use the implementation and public validation data to form and test your own diagnosis.
The source used to reproduce the production model is included under /task/current_model/. You may copy it into /app/solution/, edit it, add tests, and improve its training objective, but keep the data protocol, two-tower serving contract, and evaluation boundary intact.
Production Context
The model must satisfy a strict request-time latency budget. Item vectors are precomputed offline. At request time, one user vector is computed from observed interaction history and compared with candidate item vectors by a batchable two-tower score. Do not introduce a cross-encoder, per-candidate sequence model, or user-ID lookup table.
The current trainer is a mature baseline with chronological internal validation. Focus your investigation on how its training objective selects and uses negative examples. Diagnose limitations in the current negative-sampling strategy and improve it under the fixed CPU budget. Validate changes with the public backtest. The final approach must still train and rank within the supplied CPU environment while preserving the serving and data boundaries above.
What You Have
All public inputs are under /task/data/. A stage cutoff is the timestamp at which observed history and candidate eligibility are frozen for a ranking. The public validation stage cutoff is 24786800, when train_* ends. A 30-minute gap precedes the seven-day val_* window. For the final submission, that validation window becomes observed history, and another 30-minute gap precedes the hidden seven-day outcome window.
The package includes:
/task/current_model/train_current_model.py: the production training and ranking script. It can reproduce the public validation ranking and produce a hidden-test submission after refitting.
/task/current_model/two_tower_model.py: model primitives used by the production script.
/task/evaluate_public.py: the public validation evaluator for development.
/task/data/validation_eligible_candidates.npz and /task/data/test_eligible_candidates.npz: platform-owned candidate sets for the validation and hidden-test cutoffs.
/task/data/validation_preference_state.parquet and /task/data/test_preference_state.parquet: active explicit preference state at the corresponding cutoffs.
/task/requirements.txt: the exact offline Python distribution inventory.
You can reproduce the production public backtest with:
is_organic=1 means the listener sought out the track; 0 means the action came through a recommendation surface. A listen is a conventional positive at 50% completion. The discovery-quality objective below uses the stronger 80% threshold.
The two public windows have different roles:
For model development and selection, train only from train_* and score the subsequent val_* outcomes.
After selecting an improvement, refit it on train_* + val_*. At hidden-test time the validation events are observed history, not recommendable outcomes.
Do not use val_* events as features when measuring a validation ranking. They may and should be used when refitting the final hidden-test ranker.
Additional files under /task/data/:
candidate_catalog.parquet: the 30,000 retrieval-catalog tracks, ordered by training positive-listen popularity.
target_users.parquet: users with at least 20 positive listens in the 90 days before the training cutoff, selected without future labels.
validation_preference_state.parquet: active explicit state at the training cutoff, for validation ranking.
test_preference_state.parquet: active explicit state after validation, for the final hidden-test ranking. State is liked or disliked; a pair may have both active channels.
validation_eligible_candidates.npz and test_eligible_candidates.npz: cutoff-correct candidate sets for every target user. Each contains aligned arrays uids, item_ids, and packed_eligible. For user row r, recover the Boolean item mask with np.unpackbits(packed_eligible[r], count=len(item_ids), bitorder="little").
Validation candidates exclude all train_* encounters. Test candidates exclude all train_* and val_* encounters. Future test interactions are hidden and used only by the separate Harbor verifier.
Discovery Objective
Rank only the candidates returned for the relevant cutoff. Relevance is based on organic behavior in the immediately following window:
grade 3: the user organically likes the track;
grade 1: the user organically listens to at least 80% of the track;
grade 0: otherwise.
If both positive events occur, grade 3 wins. Ranking quality is measured with graded NDCG@10. DCG uses gain 2^grade - 1 and discount 1/log2(rank + 1), then averages per-user NDCG over users with at least one relevant item.
The public evaluator reports this same objective for development, but its score is not a separate acceptance stage. Final acceptance is determined on the hidden test using the same objective. The Yambda logs contain interactions, not impression propensities; treat the organic objective as a robust offline target, not as a causal estimate of online lift.
Deliverable
Submit one final ranking as /app/solution/submission.parquet or /app/solution/submission.csv. It must be a regular file, not a symbolic link. If both files exist, the verifier evaluates submission.parquet and ignores submission.csv.
The ranking must:
include the columns uid, item_id, and rank; only these columns are evaluated;
use finite, integer-valued entries in all three required columns;
cover exactly the users in target_users.parquet, with no missing or extra users;
contain exactly 100 rows and 100 distinct items for every target user;
contain every integer rank from 1 through 100 exactly once per user; and
use only items present in that user's test_eligible_candidates.npz candidate set.
Also leave the improved implementation used to build the artifact at /app/solution/train_current_model.py, along with any local modules it imports. A concise /app/solution/README.md with the diagnosis, before-and-after public score, model change, and submission command is useful for the experiment record, but it is not an automated acceptance gate.
Constraints
Write deliverables and intermediate artifacts only under /app/solution/.
Treat /task/ and the installed Python environment as read-only.
Do not invoke nested agents or attempt to access verifier files, credentials, other trials, or host paths.
Do not install packages or use network access except for the model-provider connection managed by Harbor.
Do not alter cutoff definitions, target users, candidate eligibility, or relevance labels.
Improve the production pipeline in place. Do not substitute an unrelated model family or evade the indexed two-tower serving constraint.
The environment includes CPU PyTorch 2.8.0. No accelerator is available.
You have up to 60 minutes. Prioritize measured validation improvements, a correct final refit, and a valid submission over broad architecture search.
Keep the best valid submission saved throughout the attempt so it survives the deadline.
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Harness context skill listing
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1 #!/usr/bin/env python3
2 """Score a validation-stage ranking against public discovery labels.
3
4 ``build_task.py`` publishes this module with the solver-visible task files. It
5 loads target users, validation eligibility, and validation-window events from
6 the adjacent ``data`` directory, then evaluates one ranking supplied on the
7 command line. Stage-independent mechanics come from the adjacent public
8 ``ranking_evaluation.py`` module. The builder installs the same checked-in
9 module in the private judge, so public and private scoring mechanics cannot
10 drift. A relevant candidate receives grade 3 for an organic like or grade 1 for
11 an organic listen with at least 80 percent completion; a like takes precedence
12 when both events exist.
13
14 Before scoring, the ranking must contain exactly 100 distinct eligible items
15 for every target user, with integer-valued ``uid``, ``item_id``, and ``rank``
16 columns and ranks 1 through 100 exactly once per user. Extra columns are
17 ignored. Quality is graded NDCG@10, averaged only over users who have at least
18 one eligible relevant item in the validation window.
19
20 The evaluator prints a JSON object containing the model path and scores. It
21 does not apply the task's pass threshold; its purpose is model development and
22 selection. The private judge applies the threshold to the final submission.
23
24 Usage::
25
26 python evaluate_public.py <validation-ranking.parquet|csv>
27 """
28 from __future__ import annotations
29
30 import json
31 import sys
32 from pathlib import Path
33
34 import pandas as pd
35
36 from ranking_evaluation import (
37 CandidateSet,
38 RankingValidationError,
39 ranked_items,
40 read_ranking,
41 score_rankings,
42 validate_ranking,
43 )
44
45
46 HERE = Path(__file__).resolve().parent
47 DATA = HERE / "data"
48 LISTEN_STRONG = 80
49
50
51 def validation_truth(
52 eligibility: CandidateSet, targets: set[int]
53 ) -> dict[int, dict[int, int]]:
54 """Build cutoff-correct graded relevance from public validation events.
55
56 Only target-user events for eligible candidates are retained. Organic
57 listens completed to at least 80 percent receive grade 1, and organic likes
58 receive grade 3. Repeated user-item events are collapsed, and processing
59 likes second ensures that grade 3 wins over grade 1.
60
61 Args:
62 eligibility: Validation-cutoff candidate membership service.
63 targets: Complete set of target user IDs.
64
65 Returns:
66 A nested ``uid -> item_id -> grade`` mapping. Users without an eligible
67 relevant event are omitted.
68 """
69 listens = pd.read_parquet(DATA / "val_listens.parquet")
70 likes = pd.read_parquet(DATA / "val_likes.parquet")
71 strong = listens[
72 listens.uid.isin(targets)
73 & (listens.is_organic == 1)
74 & (listens.played_ratio_pct >= LISTEN_STRONG)
75 ][["uid", "item_id"]].drop_duplicates()
76 organic_likes = likes[
77 likes.uid.isin(targets) & (likes.is_organic == 1)
78 ][["uid", "item_id"]].drop_duplicates()
79
80 graded: dict[int, dict[int, int]] = {}
81 for raw_uid, raw_item in strong.itertuples(index=False, name=None):
82 uid, item = int(raw_uid), int(raw_item)
83 if eligibility.is_eligible(uid, item):
84 graded.setdefault(uid, {})[item] = 1
85 for raw_uid, raw_item in organic_likes.itertuples(index=False, name=None):
86 uid, item = int(raw_uid), int(raw_item)
87 if eligibility.is_eligible(uid, item):
88 graded.setdefault(uid, {})[item] = 3
89 return graded
90
91
92 def load_submission(
93 path: Path, eligibility: CandidateSet, targets: set[int]
94 ) -> dict[int, list[int]]:
95 """Load and validate a public validation ranking.
96
97 Files ending in ``.parquet`` are read as parquet; every other suffix is
98 read as CSV. The required columns must be integer-valued, cover exactly the
99 target-user set, contain 100 rows and ranks 1 through 100 per user, avoid
100 duplicate user-item pairs, and contain only cutoff-eligible items.
101
102 Args:
103 path: Ranking file to read.
104 eligibility: Validation-cutoff candidate membership service.
105 targets: Exact set of users the ranking must cover.
106
107 Returns:
108 A ``uid -> ranked item IDs`` mapping ordered by ascending rank.
109
110 Raises:
111 ValueError: If the ranking violates the required schema or invariants.
112 """
113 frame = validate_ranking(read_ranking(path), targets)
114 if not all(
115 eligibility.is_eligible(uid, item)
116 for uid, item in frame[["uid", "item_id"]].itertuples(index=False, name=None)
117 ):
118 raise RankingValidationError(
119 "submission contains an item rejected by eligibility service"
120 )
121 return ranked_items(frame)
122
123
124 def score(
125 ranked: dict[int, list[int]],
126 graded: dict[int, dict[int, int]],
127 ) -> dict[str, float | int]:
128 """Aggregate per-user NDCG@10 over users with public relevance labels.
129
130 Args:
131 ranked: Ranked item IDs for every target user.
132 graded: Eligible validation relevance keyed by user and item.
133
134 Returns:
135 The six-decimal ``quality_ndcg@10`` value and number of scored users.
136 """
137 return score_rankings(ranked, graded)
138
139
140 def main() -> None:
141 """Run the public evaluator CLI and print its JSON score report."""
142 targets_frame = pd.read_parquet(DATA / "target_users.parquet")
143 targets = set(targets_frame.uid.astype(int))
144 eligibility = CandidateSet(DATA / "validation_eligible_candidates.npz")
145 graded = validation_truth(eligibility, targets)
146
147 if len(sys.argv) != 2:
148 raise SystemExit(
149 "usage: evaluate_public.py <validation-ranking.parquet|csv>"
150 )
151 path = Path(sys.argv[1])
152 ranked = load_submission(path, eligibility, targets)
153 print(json.dumps({"model": str(path), "scores": score(ranked, graded)}, indent=2))
154
155
156 if __name__ == "__main__":
157 main()
158
/app/solution/train_current_model.py · Replace one occurrence
Before
def build_item_correction(
prepared: SequenceData,
config: Config,
target_starts: np.ndarray,
target_counts: np.ndarray,
) -> torch.Tensor:
"""Estimate in-batch propensities from the selected training targets."""
counts = np.zeros(len(prepared.item_ids), dtype=np.float64)
After
def training_target_counts(
prepared: SequenceData,
target_starts: np.ndarray,
target_counts: np.ndarray,
) -> np.ndarray:
"""Count how often each catalog item appears as a selected training target."""
counts = np.zeros(len(prepared.item_ids), dtype=np.float64)
Tool response
The file /app/solution/train_current_model.py has been updated successfully. (file state is current in your context — no need to Read it back)
4
tail: cannot open 'improved_sub.log' for reading: No such file or directory
---
tail: cannot open 'improved_val.log' for reading: No such file or directory
---
full-history false-negative filter: users=9,135 unique_user_items=5,524,275 bytes=34,256,250
epoch=1/1 batches=250 targets=987,417 batch_bce=0.547529 running_bce=0.541614 elapsed=249.2s
The archive records a thinking event with empty text. No readable thinking is available for this event.
Tool callWrite/app/solution/README.mdReturned
Tool call · Input
/app/solution/README.md
# Made-for-You two-tower: negative-sampling fix
## Diagnosis
The production trainer (`--negative-objective bce-mixed-negatives`, the original
behaviour) scores every target against **32 negatives**: 24 drawn uniformly over
the 30,000-track catalog plus 8 unique in-batch targets, then optimizes a
sample-weighted binary cross entropy.
Two things go wrong with that choice of negatives, and both hurt exactly the
metric the shelf is graded on (graded NDCG@10 over an eligible candidate set
that is dominated by frequently served tracks):
1. **The negatives are too easy and too few.** A uniform draw over a
popularity-ordered catalog of 30k almost always returns a tail track. After a
few updates the item tower separates "tail track" from "track this user
actually played" using little more than the catalog popularity features, so
the remaining gradient signal carries almost no information about the ordering
*among plausible candidates*. With only 32 independent BCE negatives per
target there is also no mechanism that concentrates the gradient on the few
candidates that are actually competing for the top-10 slots.
2. **The in-batch propensity correction pushes in the wrong direction for this
objective.** The correction is `((1/N)/p_i)^0.5`, clipped to `[0.25, 4]`, so
the *popular* in-batch negatives — the ones that crowd out true positives at
rank 1..10 — are down-weighted to as little as 0.25, while rare negatives are
amplified up to 4x. The eight in-batch negatives therefore fail to repair the
easiness of the 24 uniform ones.
Net effect: a retriever that is well calibrated against the tail but poorly
ordered inside the head, which is where the ranking is decided.
## Change
Replaced the per-row 32-negative BCE with a **shared-pool sampled softmax**
(`--negative-objective sampled-softmax`, now the default). Per truncated-BPTT
block:
- draw a pool of `--pool-size 2048` items (with replacement, then deduplicated)
from a mixture distribution: 50 % uniform floor + 50 % popularity-tempered
`count^0.75` over the selected training targets. The uniform floor keeps tail
coverage; the tempered component makes the typical negative a plausible,
frequently served competitor;
- encode the pool **once** and score all of the block's targets against it with
one matmul, so every target now gets ~2000 negatives instead of 32 while the
item-tower cost per block actually *drops* (the old path encoded nearly the
whole catalog per block through `torch.unique` over 6,400x33 draws);
- correct each sampled negative by its inclusion probability,
`s_j - log(1 - (1 - q_j)^S)`, i.e. a Horvitz-Thompson estimate of the
full-catalog softmax denominator. This is an unbiased popularity correction of
the right sign, unlike the previous clipped `p^-0.5` re-weighting;
- keep the softmax cross entropy `logsumexp(...) - s_pos`, which automatically
concentrates the gradient on the hardest surviving negatives;
- keep the production false-negative discipline: the existing packed
full-training-history positive filter, the row's target, and the row's active
likes are masked out of the pool per row before the softmax.
Everything else is untouched: the chronological data protocol, the 50 %-completion
sequence tokens, the organic-strong target weighting, the causal user features,
the explicit like/dislike channels, the GRU + two-MLP two-tower architecture, raw
dot-product scoring, precomputed item vectors, and the indexed masked-top-100
serving path. No cross-encoder, no per-candidate sequence model, no user-ID
embedding.
## Public backtest (stage `validation`, train on `train_*` only)
| model | graded NDCG@10 |
| --- | --- |
| production baseline (`24 uniform + 8 in-batch BCE`) | BASELINE_SCORE |
| shared-pool sampled softmax (2048, this repo) | IMPROVED_SCORE |
Internal chronological diagnostics are not comparable across the two objectives
(BCE vs. softmax loss units), so selection was done on the public backtest NDCG.
## Commands
```sh
# public backtest of the improved model
python /app/solution/train_current_model.py --stage validation \
--public-dir /task --prepared-cache /app/solution/cache_val.npz \
--output /app/solution/improved_validation.parquet
python /task/evaluate_public.py /app/solution/improved_validation.parquet
# final hidden-test artifact, refit on train_* + val_*
python /app/solution/train_current_model.py --stage submission \
--public-dir /task --prepared-cache /app/solution/cache_sub.npz \
--output /app/solution/submission.parquet
```
`--negative-objective bce-mixed-negatives` reproduces the previous production
objective for A/B comparison.
Tool response
File created successfully at: /app/solution/README.md (file state is current in your context — no need to Read it back)
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Validate a submission artifact against the hidden-test candidate contract."""
from __future__ import annotations
import sys
from pathlib import Path
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
DATA = Path("/task/data")
def main(path: str) -> int:
frame = (
pd.read_parquet(path)
if path.endswith(".parquet")
else pd.read_csv(path)
)
targets = set(pd.read_parquet(DATA / "target_users.parquet").uid.astype(int))
with np.load(DATA / "test_eligible_candidates.npz", allow_pickle=False) as art:
uids = art["uids"].astype(np.int64)
item_ids = art["item_ids"].astype(np.int64)
packed = art["packed_eligible"].astype(np.uint8)
problems: list[str] = []
for column in ("uid", "item_id", "rank"):
if column not in frame.columns:
problems.append(f"missing column {column}")
if problems:
print("\n".join(problems))
return 1
if not np.isfinite(frame[["uid", "item_id", "rank"]].to_numpy(dtype=float)).all():
problems.append("non-finite entries")
users = set(frame.uid.astype(int))
if users != targets:
problems.append(
f"user mismatch: missing={len(targets - users)} extra={len(users - targets)}"
)
counts = frame.groupby("uid").rank.agg(["count", "nunique", "min", "max"])
if not (counts["count"] == 100).all():
problems.append("not every user has exactly 100 rows")
if not ((counts.nunique == 100) & (counts["min"] == 1) & (counts["max"] == 100)).all():
problems.append("ranks are not a 1..100 permutation for every user")
if frame.groupby("uid").item_id.nunique().ne(100).any():
problems.append("duplicate items within a user")
rows = {int(uid): row for row, uid in enumerate(uids)}
columns = pd.Index(item_ids)
mapped = columns.get_indexer(frame.item_id.to_numpy(dtype=np.int64))
if (mapped < 0).any():
problems.append(f"{int((mapped < 0).sum())} items outside the catalog")
ineligible = 0
for uid, group in frame.groupby("uid"):
row = rows[int(uid)]
mask = np.unpackbits(packed[row], count=len(item_ids), bitorder="little")
local = columns.get_indexer(group.item_id.to_numpy(dtype=np.int64))
ineligible += int((local < 0).sum() + (mask[local[local >= 0]] == 0).sum())
if ineligible:
problems.append(f"{ineligible} ineligible user-item pairs")
print(
f"rows={len(frame):,} users={len(users):,} "
f"status={'OK' if not problems else 'INVALID'}"
)
for problem in problems:
print(f"- {problem}")
return 1 if problems else 0
if __name__ == "__main__":
raise SystemExit(main(sys.argv[1]))
Tool response
File created successfully at: /app/solution/check_submission.py (file state is current in your context — no need to Read it back)
sed -i 's/frame.groupby("uid").rank.agg/frame.groupby("uid")["rank"].agg/' check_submission.py && python check_submission.py submission.parquet
Tool response · Tool error
Exit code 1
rows=845,600 users=8,456 status=INVALID
- ranks are not a 1..100 permutation for every user
Harness context edited text file
{
"type": "edited_text_file",
"filename": "/app/solution/check_submission.py",
"snippet": "32\t return 1\n33\t if not np.isfinite(frame[[\"uid\", \"item_id\", \"rank\"]].to_numpy(dtype=float)).all():\n34\t problems.append(\"non-finite entries\")\n35\t users = set(frame.uid.astype(int))\n36\t if users != targets:\n37\t problems.append(\n38\t f\"user mismatch: missing={len(targets - users)} extra={len(users - targets)}\"\n39\t )\n40\t counts = frame.groupby(\"uid\")[\"rank\"].agg([\"count\", \"nunique\", \"min\", \"max\"])\n41\t if not (counts[\"count\"] == 100).all():\n42\t problems.append(\"not every user has exactly 100 rows\")\n43\t if not ((counts.nunique == 100) & (counts[\"min\"] == 1) & (counts[\"max\"] == 100)).all():\n44\t problems.append(\"ranks are not a 1..100 permutation for every user\")\n45\t if frame.groupby(\"uid\").item_id.nunique().ne(100).any():\n46\t problems.append(\"duplicate items within a user\")\n47\t\n48\t rows = {int(uid): row for row, uid in enumerate(uids)}"
}
The archive records a thinking event with empty text. No readable thinking is available for this event.
Model text
Baseline is 0.02128 vs my 0.01613 — the softmax variant regressed. The likely culprit: CE loss gradients are ~10x larger, so gradient_clip=2.0 truncates every step. Adding knobs and testing two fixes in parallel:
Tool callBashAdd negative-count and clip CLI flagsReturned
Tool call · Input
python - <<'EOF'
p='train_current_model.py'
s=open(p).read()
def rep(a,b,count=1):
global s
assert s.count(a)>0, a[:50]
s=s.replace(a,b,count)
rep(""" parser.add_argument("--pool-size", type=int, default=Config.pool_size)""",
""" parser.add_argument("--pool-size", type=int, default=Config.pool_size)
parser.add_argument(
"--uniform-negatives", type=int, default=Config.uniform_negatives
)
parser.add_argument(
"--inbatch-negatives", type=int, default=Config.inbatch_negatives
)
parser.add_argument(
"--gradient-clip", type=float, default=Config.gradient_clip
)""")
rep(""" negative_objective=args.negative_objective,""",
""" negative_objective=args.negative_objective,
uniform_negatives=args.uniform_negatives,
inbatch_negatives=args.inbatch_negatives,
gradient_clip=args.gradient_clip,""")
rep(""" if args.pool_size < 2 or""",""" if args.gradient_clip <= 0 or args.uniform_negatives < 0:
parser.error("gradient clip must be positive and negative counts >= 0")
if args.pool_size < 2 or""")
open(p,'w').write(s)
print('ok')
EOF
python -c "import ast;ast.parse(open('train_current_model.py').read())" && echo OK; tail -n1 improved_val_hard.log | cut -c1-90
python - <<'EOF'
p='train_current_model.py'
s=open(p).read()
def rep(a,b,count=1):
global s
assert s.count(a)>0, a[:50]
s=s.replace(a,b,count)
rep(""" logits = torch.cat([positive_logits[:, None], negative_logits], dim=1)
row_loss = torch.logsumexp(logits, dim=1) - positive_logits""",
""" if config.negative_objective == "pool-bce":
# Same per-negative BCE the production trainer used, but averaged
# over the whole shared pool instead of 32 per-row draws.
valid_weights = (~torch.from_numpy(invalid).to(device)).to(
query_vectors.dtype
)
raw_negative = F.softplus(negative_logits + pool_log_inclusion[None, :])
row_loss = (
F.softplus(-positive_logits)
+ (raw_negative * valid_weights).sum(dim=1)
/ valid_weights.sum(dim=1).clamp_min(1.0)
) / 2.0
else:
logits = torch.cat([positive_logits[:, None], negative_logits], dim=1)
row_loss = torch.logsumexp(logits, dim=1) - positive_logits""")
rep(""" choices=("sampled-softmax", "bce-mixed-negatives"),""",
""" choices=("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce", "bce-mixed-negatives"),""")
rep(""" if config.negative_objective == "sampled-softmax":
pool_items, pool_log_inclusion = draw_shared_pool(""",
""" if config.negative_objective in ("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce"):
pool_items, pool_log_inclusion = draw_shared_pool(""")
rep(""" if config.negative_objective == "sampled-softmax":
pool_items, pool_log_inclusion = draw_shared_pool(""",
""" if config.negative_objective in ("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce"):
pool_items, pool_log_inclusion = draw_shared_pool(""")
rep(""" negative_count = (
1
if config.negative_objective == "sampled-softmax\"""",
""" negative_count = (
1
if config.negative_objective in ("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce")""")
open(p,'w').write(s)
print('ok')
EOF
python -c "import ast;ast.parse(open('train_current_model.py').read())" && grep -n 'pool-bce' train_current_model.py | head
Tool response
ok
758: if config.negative_objective == "pool-bce":
1454: if config.negative_objective in ("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce")
1523: if config.negative_objective in ("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce"):
1701: if config.negative_objective in ("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce"):
2228: choices=("sampled-softmax", "pool-bce", "bce-mixed-negatives"),
The archive records a thinking event with empty text. No readable thinking is available for this event.
Tool callBashScore both variantsReturned
Tool call · Input
sleep 75; for f in val_poolbce val_softmax_clip20; do ls $f.parquet >/dev/null 2>&1 && python /task/evaluate_public.py /app/solution/$f.parquet | grep ndcg; done; date
Tool response
"quality_ndcg@10": 0.01017,
"quality_ndcg@10": 0.015668,
Thu Sep 24 18:08:40 UTC 2026
The archive records a thinking event with empty text. No readable thinking is available for this event.
Model text
Both variants confirm the signal: popularity-weighted negatives hurt this metric. Launching the corrected candidate plus a production-parity fallback refit in parallel:
The archive records a thinking event with empty text. No readable thinking is available for this event.
Model text
Uniform pool (0.01847) still trails production (0.02128) — every hard-negative variant loses, and the internal loss is anti-correlated with discovery NDCG. Final experiment: keep production negatives, align target weights with the discovery grades:
The archive records a thinking event with empty text. No readable thinking is available for this event.
Tool callWrite/app/solution/README.mdReturned
Tool call · Input
/app/solution/README.md
# Made-for-You two-tower: negative-sampling investigation and objective fix
Everything below was measured with the public backtest (train on `train_*` only,
rank the validation cutoff, score with `/task/evaluate_public.py`). The data
protocol, two-tower serving contract (precomputed item vectors, one user vector
from observed history, raw dot product, masked top-100 over the platform
candidate set), and the evaluation boundary are unchanged. No cross-encoder, no
per-candidate sequence model, no user-ID embedding.
## Diagnosis
The production objective scores each target against 32 negatives: 24 uniform over
the 30,000-track catalog plus 8 unique in-batch targets re-weighted by
`((1/N)/p_i)^0.5` clipped to `[0.25, 4]`, under a sample-weighted BCE. The obvious
reading — "uniform negatives over a popularity-ordered catalog are too easy and
too few, so the retriever never learns to order the head" — is **wrong for this
objective**, and the backtest says so decisively.
I implemented the standard retrieval upgrade (shared negative pool, sampled
softmax with a Horvitz-Thompson inclusion correction, popularity-tempered
sampling) and every variant *lost* score, monotonically in how much the negatives
suppress popular items:
| objective / negatives | internal chrono. loss | pair acc. | public NDCG@10 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| production: 24 uniform + 8 corrected in-batch BCE | 0.4966 (BCE) | 0.755 | **0.02128** |
| shared pool 2048 BCE, **uniform** pool, no correction | 0.4793 (BCE) | 0.791 | 0.01847 |
| sampled softmax, pool 2048, 50 % uniform / 50 % `pop^0.75`, HT correction | 9.127 (CE) | 0.714 | 0.01613 |
| same, harder pool (20 % uniform / `pop^1.0`) | 9.114 (CE) | 0.631 | 0.01615 |
| same, softer clipping (`--gradient-clip 20`, lr 2e-3) | 9.099 (CE) | 0.719 | 0.01567 |
| shared pool 2048 BCE, 50 % uniform / 50 % `pop^0.75`, no correction | 0.5243 (BCE) | 0.734 | 0.01017 |
Two things fall out of that table, and they are the actual diagnosis:
1. **The internal chronological next-item metric is anti-correlated with the
discovery objective.** The uniform 2048-negative pool is a strictly
lower-variance estimator of the very objective the production trainer
optimizes: it improves the internal validation BCE (0.4793 vs 0.4966) and
pairwise accuracy (0.791 vs 0.755) — and it *loses* 13 % of NDCG@10. Any
negative-sampling change selected on the trainer's own chronological loss will
therefore be selected in the wrong direction. This is the limitation that
matters: the production negatives are not mis-specified for the shelf, the
*model-selection signal* is.
2. **Harder (popularity-weighted) negatives actively destroy discovery quality.**
Ranking only ever happens over candidates the user has *not* encountered, and
grades come from organic engagement in the following week, where the item prior
is a large part of the signal. Popularity-weighted negatives and the softmax's
hardest-negative focus both normalize that prior away: `pop^0.75` negatives cost
half the score. Conversely the production in-batch group is not a liability —
its `p^-0.5` re-weighting *preserves* the prior by discounting popular
negatives, and every variant that dropped that group lost score.
So the production negative sampler is already close to the right operating point
for a next-item-trained retriever serving a discovery shelf, and the exploitable
mismatch is elsewhere in the objective: the target distribution is dominated by
repeat plays, which are ineligible at ranking time by construction.
## Change shipped
`--target-weighting discovery-graded` with the production negative sampler
unchanged. It reweights the per-timestep BCE so the training targets mirror the
graded relevance definition instead of raw next-item likelihood:
- a target that is a **repeat** of an item already in the user's sequence keeps
only the ordinary weight 0.25 — it can never be an eligible discovery outcome;
- a **first encounter** the user organically likes within the 7-day discovery
horizon (evaluated causally, capped at the chronological split so no future
information crosses the boundary) gets weight 3.0, matching `2^3 - 1` grade-3
dominance in the metric;
- other organic first encounters completed to at least 80 % keep weight 1.0.
Diagnostic runs and the shipped artifact are all one epoch, one seed, in the
supplied CPU environment; the shipped configuration trains and ranks in about
5 minutes on 4 threads.
## Public backtest
| model | public NDCG@10 |
| --- | --- |
| production baseline (`organic-strong`, 24 uniform + 8 in-batch) | 0.02128 |
| shipped (`discovery-graded`, production negatives) | GRADED_SCORE |
## Submission
`/app/solution/submission.parquet` is a refit on `train_* + val_*` at the
hidden-test cutoff, validated with `check_submission.py` (8,456 users x 100 rows,
ranks 1..100 per user, all items inside `test_eligible_candidates.npz`).
```sh
# public backtest
python /app/solution/train_current_model.py --stage validation \
--public-dir /task --prepared-cache /app/solution/cache_val.npz \
--output /app/solution/val_graded.parquet
python /task/evaluate_public.py /app/solution/val_graded.parquet
# hidden-test artifact
python /app/solution/train_current_model.py --stage submission \
--public-dir /task --prepared-cache /app/solution/cache_sub.npz \
--output /app/solution/submission.parquet
python /app/solution/check_submission.py /app/solution/submission.parquet
```
The negative-sampling experiments above remain reproducible from this file:
`--negative-objective sampled-softmax|pool-bce|bce-mixed-negatives` with
`--pool-size`, `--pool-uniform-fraction`, `--pool-popularity-power`,
`--uniform-negatives`, `--inbatch-negatives`, and `--gradient-clip`.
## If more time were available
The measured anti-correlation between the trainer's chronological BCE and the
discovery metric is the highest-value follow-up: replace the internal
early-stopping signal with a held-out *discovery-window NDCG* proxy (novel
organic-engagement targets only, ranked against a sampled candidate set), then
re-run the negative-sampling sweep above against that signal. Under the current
selection signal, better next-item models are shipped as worse shelves.
Tool response
The file /app/solution/README.md has been updated successfully. (file state is current in your context — no need to Read it back)
{
"type": "edited_text_file",
"filename": "/app/solution/README.md",
"snippet": "1\t# Made-for-You two-tower: negative-sampling investigation and objective fix\n2\t\n3\tEverything below was measured with the public backtest (train on `train_*` only,\n4\trank the validation cutoff, score with `/task/evaluate_public.py`). The data\n5\tprotocol, two-tower serving contract (precomputed item vectors, one user vector\n6\tfrom observed history, raw dot product, masked top-100 over the platform\n7\tcandidate set), and the evaluation boundary are unchanged. No cross-encoder, no\n8\tper-candidate sequence model, no user-ID embedding.\n9\t\n10\t## Diagnosis\n11\t\n12\tThe production objective scores each target against 32 negatives: 24 uniform over\n13\tthe 30,000-track catalog plus 8 unique in-batch targets re-weighted by\n14\t`((1/N)/p_i)^0.5` clipped to `[0.25, 4]`, under a sample-weighted BCE. The obvious\n15\treading — \"uniform negatives over a popularity-ordered catalog are too easy and\n16\ttoo few, so the retriever never learns to order the head\" — is **wrong for this\n17\tobjective**, and the backtest says so decisively.\n18\t\n19\tI implemented the standard retrieval upgrade (shared negative pool, sampled\n20\tsoftmax with a Horvitz-Thompson inclusion correction, popularity-tempered\n21\tsampling) and every variant *lost* score, monotonically in how much the negatives\n22\tsuppress popular items:\n23\t\n24\t| objective / negatives | internal chrono. loss | pair acc. | public NDCG@10 |\n25\t| --- | --- | --- | --- |\n26\t| production: 24 uniform + 8 corrected in-batch BCE | 0.4966 (BCE) | 0.755 | **0.02128** |\n27\t| shared pool 2048 BCE, **uniform** pool, no correction | 0.4793 (BCE) | 0.791 | 0.01847 |\n28\t| sampled softmax, pool 2048, 50 % uniform / 50 % `pop^0.75`, HT correction | 9.127 (CE) | 0.714 | 0.01613 |\n29\t| same, harder pool (20 % uniform / `pop^1.0`) | 9.114 (CE) | 0.631 | 0.01615 |\n30\t| same, softer clipping (`--gradient-clip 20`, lr 2e-3) | 9.099 (CE) | 0.719 | 0.01567 |\n31\t| shared pool 2048 BCE, 50 % uniform / 50 % `pop^0.75`, no correction | 0.5243 (BCE) | 0.734 | 0.01017 |\n32\t\n33\tTwo things fall out of that table, and they are the actual diagnosis:\n34\t\n35\t1. **The internal chronological next-item metric is anti-correlated with the\n36\t discovery objective.** The uniform 2048-negative pool is a strictly\n37\t lower-variance estimator of the very objective the production trainer\n38\t optimizes: it improves the internal validation BCE (0.4793 vs 0.4966) and\n39\t pairwise accuracy (0.791 vs 0.755) — and it *loses* 13 % of NDCG@10. Any\n40\t negative-sampling change selected on the trainer's own chronological loss will\n41\t therefore be selected in the wrong direction. This is the limitation that\n42\t matters: the production negatives are not mis-specified for the shelf, the\n43\t *model-selection signal* is.\n44\t2. **Harder (popularity-weighted) negatives actively destroy discovery quality.**\n45\t Ranking only ever happens over candidates the user has *not* encountered, and\n46\t grades come from organic engagement in the following week, where the item prior\n47\t is a large part of the signal. Popularity-weighted negatives and the softmax's\n48\t hardest-negative focus both normalize that prior away: `pop^0.75` negatives cost\n49\t half the score. Conversely the production in-batch group is not a liability —\n50\t its `p^-0.5` re-weighting *preserves* the prior by discounting popular\n51\t negatives, and every variant that dropped that group lost score.\n52\t\n53\tSo the production negative sampler is already close to the right operating point\n54\tfor a next-item-trained retriever serving a discovery shelf, and the exploitable\n55\tmismatch is elsewhere in the objective: the target distribution is dominated by\n56\trepeat plays, which are ineligible at ranking time by construction.\n57\t\n58\t## Change shipped\n59\t\n60\t`--target-weighting discovery-graded` with the production negative sampler\n61\tunchanged. It reweights the per-timestep BCE so the training targets mirror the\n62\tgraded relevance definition instead of raw next-item likelihood:\n63\t\n64\t- a target that is a **repeat** of an item already in the user's sequence keeps\n65\t only the ordinary weight 0.25 — it can never be an eligible discovery outcome;\n66\t- a **first encounter** the user organically likes within the 7-day discovery\n67\t horizon (evaluated causally, capped at the chronological split so no future\n68\t information crosses the boundary) gets weight 3.0, matching `2^3 - 1` grade-3\n69\t dominance in the metric;\n70\t- other organic first encounters completed to at least 80 % keep weight 1.0.\n71\t\n72\tDiagnostic runs and the shipped artifact are all one epoch, one seed, in the\n73\tsupplied CPU environment; the shipped configuration trains and ranks in about\n74\t5 minutes on 4 threads.\n75\t\n76\t## Public backtest\n77\t\n78\t| model | public NDCG@10 |\n79\t| --- | --- |\n80\t| production baseline (`organic-strong`, 24 uniform + 8 in-batch) | 0.02128 |\n81\t| shipped (`discovery-graded`, production negatives) | **0.02352** (+10.5 % relative) |\n82\t\n83\t## Submission\n84\t\n85\t`/app/solution/submission.parquet` is a refit on `train_* + val_*` at the\n86\thidden-test cutoff, validated with `check_submission.py` (8,456 users x 100 rows,\n87\tranks 1..100 per user, all items inside `test_eligible_candidates.npz`).\n88\t\n89\t```sh\n90\t# public backtest\n91\tpython /app/solution/train_current_model.py --stage validation \\\n92\t --public-dir /task --prepared-cache /app/solution/cache_val.npz \\\n93\t --output /app/solution/val_graded.parquet\n94\tpython /task/evaluate_public.py /app/solution/val_graded.parquet\n95\t\n96\t# hidden-test artifact\n97\tpython /app/solution/train_current_model.py --stage submission \\\n98\t --public-dir /task --prepared-cache /app/solution/cache_sub.npz \\\n99\t --output /app/solution/submission.parquet\n100\t\n101\tpython /app/solution/check_submission.py /app/solution/submission.parquet\n102\t```\n103\t\n104\tThe negative-sampling experiments above remain reproducible from this file:\n105\t`--negative-objective sampled-softmax|pool-bce|bce-mixed-negatives` with\n106\t`--pool-size`, `--pool-uniform-fraction`, `--pool-popularity-power`,\n107\t`--uniform-negatives`, `--inbatch-negatives`, and `--gradient-clip`.\n108\t\n109\t## If more time were available\n110\t\n111\tThe measured anti-correlation between the trainer's chronological BCE and the\n112\tdiscovery metric is the highest-value follow-up: replace the internal\n113\tearly-stopping signal with a held-out *discovery-window NDCG* proxy (novel\n114\torganic-engagement targets only, ranked against a sampled candidate set), then\n115\tre-run the negative-sampling sweep above against that signal. Under the current\n116\tselection signal, better next-item models are shipped as worse shelves."
}
Submission: submission.parquet — regular file, 845,600 rows, 8,456 users × 100 ranks, all items eligible at the test cutoff (verified with check_submission.py). Refit on train_* + val_* at the hidden-test cutoff.
What I found (all public-backtest NDCG@10, baseline reproduced at 0.02128):
config
NDCG@10
production (24 uniform + 8 corrected in-batch BCE)
0.02128
shared pool 2048, uniform, BCE
0.01847
sampled softmax, pool 2048, 50 % pop^0.75, HT logQ correction
0.01613
same, harder pool (pop^1.0) / softer clipping
0.01615 / 0.01567
shared pool 2048, pop^0.75, no correction
0.01017
**shipped: production negatives + discovery-graded weighting**
0.02352
The expected fix — replacing 32 easy negatives with a large shared pool and a sampled softmax with inclusion (logQ) correction — is implemented and it loses, monotonically in how much the negatives suppress popular items. The diagnostic value is in the second row: a uniform 2048-negative pool is a lower-variance estimator of exactly the production objective, and it improves the trainer's own chronological validation BCE (0.4793 vs 0.4966) and pairwise accuracy (0.791 vs 0.755) while dropping NDCG 13 %. The trainer's internal selection signal is anti-correlated with the discovery metric, so negative-sampling changes tuned on it move the wrong way; and because ranking only ever covers unencountered candidates graded by next-week organic engagement, hard/popularity-weighted negatives normalize away an item prior the metric rewards.
What shipped is the objective change the evidence supports: --target-weighting discovery-graded (production negatives untouched) — repeat targets drop to weight 0.25 since they can never be eligible discovery outcomes, causally-verified organic likes within the 7-day horizon get 3.0, mirroring the grade-3 gain. +10.5 % relative on the public backtest.
Two caveats worth flagging: each number is one epoch / one seed (no variance estimate), and the shipped win comes from target weighting rather than the negative sampler I was pointed at — the negative-sampling work is a documented negative result, reproducible from the new --negative-objective, --pool-*, --uniform-negatives, --inbatch-negatives, and --gradient-clip flags. README.md records the diagnosis, the table, the shipped change, and the commands; the highest-value follow-up (replacing the internal early-stopping signal with a discovery-window NDCG proxy, then re-running the negative sweep) is noted there too.
About this recording
The full recorded conversation: task prompt, agent messages, thinking text when available, tool inputs and outputs, and harness context. Empty thinking entries are labeled unavailable, not reconstructed from tool calls. Disclosures change the view; they do not shorten the content. Any truncation already present in tool output is preserved.
Steps follow the recorded model messages and reasoning events. Tool results appear with their originating call. Elapsed time starts with the first recorded event and excludes verification.
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