arena/docs/PRIME_FIRST.md

Prime-first boundary

Arena publishes Lumbridge environments; it does not implement another generic harness, trainer, runtime marketplace, or environment hub.

• Every environment pins stable verifiers==0.3.1.
• Pure-trace environments select Verifiers' upstream null harness.
• Local model-free and spark-1 runs name the subprocess runtime explicitly so tests never provision a paid Prime sandbox.
• Prime Hub is the public distribution target for approved environment wheels.
• Prime-RL consumes the same taskset packages for training; Forge owns the explicit training handoff and artifact rendering.

Lumbridge's unique work is the environment: task distributions, interactive state, rewards, probes, held-out gates, and result interpretation. Tera bridges are developed with Tera because they package proprietary simulator source; they use the same upstream Verifiers contract without living in this public repo. Generic rollout and training machinery stays upstream. A Hub publication must exclude secrets, private task splits, customer data, and proprietary Tera source.

The preferred future compute path is Prime's spot market. GH200/GB300 names in runbooks are desired hardware profiles, not a promise that inventory exists and not authorization to rent it. An operator checks current Prime availability and price before launching any paid run.