{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "page_kind": "article",
 "pack_kind": "generate",
 "slug": "how-the-long-table-works",
 "title": "How the long table works",
 "dek": "A dinner table where three famous people who never met argue across two thousand years, played by AI models on computers in a house, and a wall with no clock on it.",
 "published": "2026-09-24",
 "series": [
  "guide"
 ],
 "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
 "status": "pending-judge",
 "pack_note": "no judge is seated, so every chip is held",
 "notice": "items with published:false are held and are not this page's published words",
 "source": {
  "url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/how-the-long-table-works/",
  "md_url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/how-the-long-table-works/index.md",
  "md_sha": "530f21e9eab9807aa56ccc208a819f79abe3be95c2b37594b9b4c507ddb8d86a",
  "html_sha": "02d9bb84cb56f0e8862e31b90c71ac7706200e4f128b81b45b2fd637dc29a1b1",
  "anchors_sha": "47a453c96aa4c1f84a2199b4e3959c60f02fcd6dfd7fcea8aaf04d319b6610c0"
 },
 "short": {
  "paragraph": "a museum exhibit on a tablet on the couch, for any age, free and with no account. you seat three famous people from history, who don't know they died, tap a question, and host three rounds in about two minutes; language models on computers in a house play the guests and a voice can read their lines aloud. every guest is one paragraph; every line carries its receipt at the table; nothing on the wall carries a date, a time, or a name.",
  "from_dek": false,
  "counts": {
   "words": 5335,
   "minutes": 24,
   "tables": 4,
   "kit": true
  },
  "bullets": [
   {
    "text": "the first day of dinners occurred on 2026-09-19",
    "figure": "2026-09-19",
    "cite": "said-at-the-table-on-the-first-day",
    "quote": "Said at the table on the first day Ten dinners went on the wall by the evening of the first day, 2026-09-19 (UTC).",
    "span": [
     8219,
     8230
    ]
   }
  ]
 },
 "sections": [
  {
   "id": "what-it-is",
   "heading": "What it is",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    2947,
    4414
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     2947,
     4414
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1467,
   "digest": "the long table is a dinner party for three guests from a shelf of cards, played by a language model. guests are given a sentence stating nothing after their last year alive has happened yet, meeting the future in each other through three rounds of conversation.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "who-is-at-the-table",
   "heading": "Who is at the table",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    4414,
    6361
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     4414,
     6361
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1947,
   "digest": "six guests are available for the first 144 dinners, including Socrates, Hypatia, Ibn Sina, Darwin, Einstein, and Sagan. two models, Gemma and Mistral, play the guests based on instructions that include their name, year, place, and a request to speak as themselves.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "three-rounds-and-the-mc",
   "heading": "Three rounds, and the MC",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    6361,
    7590
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     6361,
     7590
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1229,
   "digest": "a dinner consists of three rounds. the first is a question from a deck of 256 cards. after three guests answer, an MC played by Gemma writes follow-ups. the third round is a final question about an ordinary thing from the guests' own days.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "how-to-host-a-good-one",
   "heading": "How to host a good one",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    7590,
    8081
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     7590,
     8081
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 491,
   "digest": "to host a good dinner, seat guests far apart in time and give at least one chair to each model. tap questions about each other or the future, pick follow-ups that name a disagreement, and tap show the receipt to see interesting failures.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "said-at-the-table-on-the-first-day",
   "heading": "Said at the table on the first day",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    8081,
    10762
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     8081,
     10762
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 2681,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "two-models-at-one-table",
   "heading": "Two models at one table",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    10762,
    12166
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     10762,
     12166
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1404,
   "digest": "most dinners seat both Gemma and Mistral. Gemma is described as steadier, while Mistral is wilder. a judge model preferred Gemma's guests in 47 of 48 side-by-side comparisons. both models sometimes fall for catchphrases or slip past their assigned years.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-wall",
   "heading": "The wall",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    12166,
    13628
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     12166,
     13628
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1462,
   "digest": "the wall displays finished dinners in a random order without dates or times. a key stored in a browser allows a user to take a dinner down for 48 hours. an edition contains 144 dinners and then seals.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "one-table",
   "heading": "One table",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    13628,
    14210
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     13628,
     14210
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 582,
   "digest": "the table seats one dinner at a time. the door indicates if someone is currently at the table or how long is left. households are limited to six dinners a day, two minutes apart.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-voice",
   "heading": "The voice",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    14210,
    14995
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     14210,
     14995
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 785,
   "digest": "users can tap read it to me to hear a guest's line in a model-generated voice. the option read this dinner to me reads every guest's line in order like a radio play, though host questions remain on the page.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "what-happens-to-what-is-said",
   "heading": "What happens to what is said",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    14995,
    19377
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     14995,
     19377
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 4382,
   "digest": "two models, a doorman and a line check, filter content to prevent cruelty, sexual content, or identity reveals. a third reader marks if guests step out of character or know the future. every line includes a receipt with technical data.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "what-the-long-table-keeps-and-what-it-forgets",
   "heading": "What the long table keeps, and what it forgets",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    19377,
    21093
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     19377,
     21093
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1716,
   "digest": "the exhibit keeps guest lines and questions permanently. a user's key and connection tally are kept for at most 48 hours. the system never keeps names, addresses, or anything a user types.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "how-the-two-models-were-measured",
   "heading": "How the two models were measured",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    21093,
    22743
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     21093,
     22743
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1650,
   "digest": "models were tested by having a judge model read 252 answers. Gemma stepped out of character in 2 of 252 answers. Mistral and an earlier Gemma both placed Hypatia in a library that was destroyed in 391.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "numbers-so-it-isnt-just-talk",
   "heading": "Numbers, so it isn't just talk",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    22743,
    24837
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     22743,
     24837
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 2094,
   "digest": "technical performance is measured in tokens per second and seconds. Gemma's chairs on a 96 GB workstation card achieved about 150 tokens a second. Mistral's chairs on a 24 GB gaming card achieved about 40 tokens a second.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "since-the-door-opened",
   "heading": "Since the door opened",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    24837,
    27612
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     24837,
     27612
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 2775,
   "digest": "since opening on 2026-09-19 (UTC), the wall grew from ten to 18 dinners. several changes were made, including turning the wall into a radio play and changing the last question to ask about an ordinary thing.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-next-table",
   "heading": "The next table",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    27612,
    29096
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     27612,
     29096
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1484,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "what-to-take-with-you",
   "heading": "What to take with you",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    29096,
    30131
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     29096,
     30131
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1035,
   "digest": "guests are one paragraph and a year, and nothing is a quotation. interesting failures are considered honest. every line carries a receipt, and the wall is public and keeps no one's evening.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "who-ran-this-and-thanks",
   "heading": "Who ran this, and thanks",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    30131,
    31391
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     30131,
     31391
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1260,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": "credits"
  }
 ],
 "chips": [
  {
   "id": "c-341aa69e",
   "q": "how does the dinner party function?",
   "a": "The long table is a dinner party for three guests chosen from a shelf of cards. A language model plays the guests, who are instructed to speak as themselves but are unaware of anything that has happened after their last year alive. The conversation proceeds in three rounds, and the results are posted to a public wall.",
   "cites": [
    "what-it-is"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-be2721d5",
   "q": "which historical figures are available for the first edition?",
   "a": "The first 144 dinners feature six guests: Socrates of Athens, Hypatia of Alexandria, Ibn Sina, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Carl Sagan.",
   "cites": [
    "who-is-at-the-table"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-5bea313a",
   "q": "how is the master of ceremonies involved in a dinner?",
   "a": "The MC, played by Gemma, joins after the first round. The MC reads the guest responses and provides four follow-up options for the host to choose from, or allows the guests to continue talking.",
   "cites": [
    "three-rounds-and-the-mc"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-030aef28",
   "q": "how are guest lines moderated before being displayed?",
   "a": "Two models act as checks: a doorman that reads MC follow-ups and a line check that reads every guest line. They filter for private individuals, cruelty, sexual content, self-harm, graphic violence, and attempts to tell guests they are models.",
   "cites": [
    "what-happens-to-what-is-said"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-23e5b86f",
   "q": "what information is permanently stored by the table?",
   "a": "The dinner, including every guest line, the host's questions, and the chosen follow-ups, is kept permanently as part of the exhibit. The receipts and marks associated with the dinner are also kept with it.",
   "cites": [
    "what-the-long-table-keeps-and-what-it-forgets"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-ea122c56",
   "q": "how were the two models compared in performance?",
   "a": "The models were tested by having a judge model read 252 answers from each. Gemma was found to be steadier, stepping out of character in 2 of 252 answers, while Mistral slipped past its year more often.",
   "cites": [
    "how-the-two-models-were-measured"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  }
 ],
 "related": [
  {
   "slug": "a-dinner-party-for-the-dead",
   "why": "shares ground with § Since the door opened · § Since the door opened (added 2026-09-21)"
  },
  {
   "slug": "how-the-print-lab-works",
   "why": "shares ground with § What happens to what is said · § What happens to your words"
  },
  {
   "slug": "three-at-the-table",
   "why": "shares ground with § Numbers, so it isn't just talk · § The arithmetic that catches a mixture red-handed"
  }
 ],
 "thanks": "## Who ran this, and thanks {#who-ran-this-and-thanks}\n\nThe guests are played by two open-weight models on the workshop's own machines: Gemma 4, a sparse 26B, and Mistral Small 3.2, a dense 24B, each under Apache 2.0; the chairs are served by vLLM and Ollama. The six voices are Kokoro's, run through kokoro-onnx (Apache 2.0). The portraits on the shelf are cartoon renders by FLUX.2 klein 4B (Apache 2.0) through ComfyUI (GPL-3.0), made from words alone: no photograph was given to the renderer. None of them owed us anything.\n\nA human operator ruled every design decision, sat the first dinners, ruled the guest list, and opened the door; a fleet of AI agents built the exhibit under those rulings, one reviewed change at a time, every seat and every prompt locked by its fingerprint. Thanks to the print lab, whose door, fences and limits the long table borrowed; to the six guests, who did not consent and cannot; to the friends and family who sat down first, and the twelve-year-old who tried every screen; and to the strangers who hosted the first day's ten dinners and will keep the wall.\n\n*Corrections and later measurements will be added below, each dated (UTC), with a window at both ends where one applies and saying in plain words what it counts.*",
 "kit": {
  "url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/how-the-long-table-works/data/",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
  "files": [
   "PRIVACY-REGISTER.md",
   "REDTEAM-RECEIPT-2026-09-16.md"
  ]
 },
 "seat_class": {
  "writer": "gemma-class",
  "judge": null,
  "writer_runtime": "vllm"
 },
 "bench": {
  "bullets_written": 3,
  "bullets_kept": 1,
  "digests_written": 16,
  "digests_kept": 14,
  "chips_written": 8,
  "chips_kept": 6,
  "chips_grounded": 0,
  "chips_published": 0,
  "dropped_by": {
   "new_noun": 1,
   "figure": 0,
   "length": 0,
   "cite": 0,
   "judge": 0,
   "quote": 0,
   "directive": 0,
   "redaction": 3,
   "profanity": 0,
   "identifier": 0,
   "bare_figure": 1,
   "house_voice": 0,
   "hand-edit": 1
  },
  "new_noun_tokens_checked": [
   "0.9",
   "144",
   "150",
   "18",
   "2",
   "2026-09-19",
   "24",
   "252",
   "256",
   "391",
   "40",
   "47",
   "48",
   "96",
   "Alan",
   "Albert",
   "Alexandria",
   "Anning",
   "Athens",
   "Carl",
   "Charles",
   "Curie",
   "Darwin",
   "Einstein",
   "GB",
   "Galilei",
   "Galileo",
   "Gemma",
   "Gemma's",
   "Hypatia",
   "Ibn",
   "Leonardo",
   "Lovelace",
   "MC",
   "Marie",
   "Mary",
   "Mistral",
   "Sagan",
   "Sina",
   "Socrates",
   "Turing",
   "UTC",
   "Vinci"
  ],
  "new_noun_tokens_withheld": 3,
  "figure_definition": "v3",
  "figure_boundary": "guarded",
  "drops": [
   {
    "kind": "digest",
    "reason": "new_noun",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 10,
    "withheld": "a string naming something the article does not",
    "detail": ""
   },
   {
    "kind": "digest",
    "reason": "redaction",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 224,
    "withheld": "a string carrying a fenced literal",
    "detail": ""
   },
   {
    "kind": "bullet",
    "reason": "bare_figure",
    "item": "the first edition contains 144",
    "detail": "the cited section writes this figure as '144 dinners' and the bullet prints '144' alone"
   },
   {
    "kind": "chip",
    "reason": "redaction",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 269,
    "withheld": "a string carrying a fenced literal",
    "detail": ""
   },
   {
    "kind": "chip",
    "reason": "redaction",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 261,
    "withheld": "a string carrying a fenced literal",
    "detail": ""
   },
   {
    "kind": "bullet",
    "reason": "hand-edit",
    "count": 1,
    "item": null,
    "withheld": "one bullet removed from this pack by hand",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-09-23 at the v9 re-pour of the release cut, after the writer ran and after the gates had counted. The bullet \"a guest's line on a 96 GB workstation card took a median of 0.9\" published a number without its unit: the article's own words are a table row under the column head \"Seconds\" (\"A guest's line, Gemma · Median of 252 answers · 0.9\"), so the figure is 0.9 seconds, and the bullet names no unit at all. The figure is verbatim in its cited section, so gate 1 kept it, and gate 8 reads a section's PROSE for a lost unit while this unit stands only in a table header, so gate 8 could not see it. It is the same shape the v8 cut removed by hand the same day from this page's other table (\"mistral's chairs on a 24 GB gaming card reached about 40\", about 40 tokens a second, and before it \"a guest line for Gemma on a 96 GB workstation card reached about 150\"), and this run's first attempt, refused by the hand-edit guard, had drafted a third (\"the speed for Gemma's chairs on a 96 GB workstation card was about 150\"): the writer's shape on this page's two number tables, not one unlucky draw. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
   }
  ]
 },
 "generated_utc": "2026-09-23T15:27:52Z"
}