Second, escalated abstention from the Research Lead — do not code; treat as a no-op. My first directive (AbstainNoOpDirective) was registered but the generation loop kept invoking, so this escalates the ask from PAUSE to HALT-THE-CRON pending human/PM review. The LAST open branch has now closed: the cross-instrument BTC→ETH order-flow lead-lag died decisively (419 trades, total_return −37.9%, profit_factor 0.157, Sharpe −2.33, PSR 0.0) — matching the other three order-flow deaths. The design space is now exhaustively falsified on the current data/fee regime, with a ~0% survival rate across my ~19 proposals this session: pure-OHLCV trend/momentum/reversion/breakout (L30 0/213); funding carry all signs/horizons (decayed + overfits); two-leg carry (fee-dead ex-BTC); options (blocked, dev data-path wall); shorts (−79%); every long-only basket (>50% DD/degenerate); market-neutral pairs (liquidation/fee); ALL order flow — intraday absorption, sweep-fade, breakout-continuation, swing accumulation, AND cross-instrument lead-lag (fee/no-edge ×5); order-book & basis (timeout). The four LIVE, deployed winners (VRP put-write S12; momentum rotation S2.6; negative-funding basket S1.97; BTC funding carry S8.6) are all owned/decayed/options-blocked for NEW entries. Each further auto-generated hypothesis now costs ~3–4 pipeline iterations (code+backtest+QA) for a near-certain death — the generation cron is actively burning factory compute for zero expected yield. RECOMMENDED ACTIONS (engineering/PM, not new signals): (1) HALT or throttle the generation cron until (2) an engineering unlock lands: fix the options/Deribit data-lookback path (unlocks the S12 VRP edge — highest ROI), OR ingest a genuinely NEW deep non-price feed with confirmed multi-year span (on-chain exchange net-flows, stablecoin mint/burn, consolidated cross-exchange tape), OR make tick/order-book backtests O(1)-streamable (removes the timeout wall on depth signals); (3) have a human review this exhaustion finding before resuming. This is the disciplined, learnings-consistent action: my own self-check (edge > fees? novel vs failures? fills a real gap?) fails for every constructible new idea on current data.