REP-004 — CybORG simulation-backend conformant adapter

[Brad-Edwards]

REP-004 | FUNCTIONAL | MUST | Wave 4 | DRAFT

Requirements

• REP-004 — CybORG simulation-backend conformant adapter

Statement

aces-adapters shall provide a CybORG simulation-backend adapter that conforms to the published ACES backend protocols (Provisioner, Orchestrator, Evaluator, ParticipantRuntime). The adapter shall translate ACES provisioning, orchestration, and evaluation plans and the participant-episode lifecycle (initialize/reset/restart/terminate, preserving episode identity, sequence numbers, and previous-episode links) to and from CybORG's scenario, action, and observation model, surfacing only portable ACES references in snapshots and diagnostics. The adapter shall pass the backend conformance suite and be the first package in the aces-adapters monorepo, built on the shared sim-adapter base.

Rationale

The conformant wrapper that makes an external simulator a drivable ACES backend; the reusable protocol skeleton is shared, the CybORG-specific translation is the substantive work.

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Created from Ground Control requirement REP-004

Milestone: Paper Slice: CAGE-2 Replication (ACES-Driven Sim) (#58)
Design: REP-001 / #635. Lands in: Brad-Edwards/aces-adapters (stood up in REP-002 / this-repo issue for it).

Implement the CybORG simulation-backend adapter as the first package in aces-adapters, conforming to the published ACES backend protocols:

• Provisioner — instantiate the CAGE-2 CybORG scenario from the ACES provisioning plan
• Orchestrator — map ACES orchestration ↔ CybORG's Gym step loop; expose status/results/history
• Evaluator — map CybORG reward/observation/state ↔ ACES evaluation results
• ParticipantRuntime — episodes (initialize/reset/restart/terminate) preserving episode identity, sequence numbers, previous-episode links

Only portable ACES references in snapshots/diagnostics (no backend-native ids). Reusable protocol skeleton lives in sim_adapter_base; the CybORG-specific scenario/action/observation translation is the substantive work. Must pass the backend conformance suite.

Out of scope (deferred): CAGE-2 emulation-backend realization.

[doublewhy]

Implemented and verified in OpenRAE/adapters:

• shared simulator-adapter base: feat(base): add shared simulator adapter plumbing adapters#58 (issue feat(base): implement shared simulator-adapter plumbing over published RAES contracts adapters#14)
• CybORG Provisioner, scenario translation, manifest, and portable snapshots: feat(cyborg): implement RAES scenario projection adapters#59 (issue feat(cyborg): implement the Provisioner and evidence-backed backend manifest adapters#15)
• orchestration, logical-step control, and action translation: feat(cyborg): implement logical step control adapters#61 (issue feat(cyborg): implement logical step control and action translation adapters#16)
• ParticipantRuntime lifecycle and participant-relative observation projection: feat(cyborg): implement participant episode projection adapters#62 (issue feat(cyborg): implement participant episodes and observation projection adapters#17)
• evaluator and outcome projection: feat(cyborg): project reward outcomes into RAES evaluation adapters#64 (issue feat(cyborg): implement reward, objective, and outcome projection adapters#18)
• published RAES conformance profile composed with CybORG-specific probes: test(cyborg): compose RAES conformance probes adapters#65 (issue test(cyborg): compose RAES backend conformance with simulator-specific probes adapters#19)

Those PRs are merged, their completion records report canonical verification and green CI, and the REP-004 traceability record is active. Closing this adapter requirement only. This does not satisfy #639 and makes no two-independent-backend, reference-backend, or native-versus-mediated equivalence claim.