RBI/GEE Phase-2 Empirical: A Controlled Hidden-Environment Test and Public Shadow Audit of Evidence-Frontier Lift

This Phase-2 preprint tests Reality-Bounded Improvement and the Grounding-Efficiency Engine beyond the original constructed witness. It reports a controlled hidden-environment success lane, a public digits negative/mixed shadow lane, and a named OpenCV Haar public-model smoke lane that is null/weak. The central claim is asymmetric: GEE wins inside the frozen controlled simulator under the Phase-2 threshold, while public shadow failures are retained as no-credit receipts. No real robot deployment, third-party replication, task-relevant VLA/world-model public validation, hard 0.05 margin, or unconditional GEE optimality is claimed.