The Emerging Economics of Iteratively Solving CICS → Java Transpilation: a generated cost / blocker / convergence analysis and infographic #5052

Claim to show. The software factory has turned CICS → Java translation into an iteratively solvable problem: each estate exposes blockers, each blocker is a bounded, priced fix, and the cost of the next estate falls. Today that rests on numbers pulled together by hand in a chat session. It should be a standard, generated analysis in the data-flow pipeline, published as an infographic with the data behind it: "The Emerging Economics of Iteratively Solving CICS → Java Transpilation."

Today's numbers (hand-pulled 2026-10-13, to be replaced by the generated report):

• Per-issue worker cost (churn spend ledger, 51 issues since 2026-10-11): median $1.96, mean $3.36, IQR $1.18–$3.73, p90 $6.18; 27 of 51 needed more than one run. Tail = new CICS API areas (det: async CICS siblings — waiting FETCH/TIMEOUT scheduler, FREE CHILD, START CHANNEL, RUN CHANNEL symbol names #4950 async $24, det/CICS: EXEC CICS WEB family (SEND, RECEIVE, EXTRACT, READ/WRITE HTTPHEADER, PARSE URL, OPEN, CONVERSE, CLOSE) -- zECS needs HTTP (design first) #4767 WEB $18).
• Daily: Oct 12, 2 workers ~$124 → 14 mainframe PRs merged; Oct 13, 1 worker $76 → 12 merged ($6 per merged mainframe fix all-in; orchestrator ~20%).
• Estate-specific port blockers (keyword-attributed, ±25%): CardDemo 40, CBSA 17, GenApp 11, zECS 5, DBB 3, async credit card 2 → ~1.3 → 0.6 → 0.4 → 0.25 per program in port order (zECS the exception: new API areas).
• Discovery vs. closure: issues opened ≈ closed on 2026-10-13 (11/11); opened > closed Oct 8–12 (much of it sibling-sweep filing, not estate discovery).

Proposal. A pipeline stage (scheduled, like the evidence refresh) that joins:

1. the churn spend ledger (handoffs/churn-state.json usage.log: model, tokens, cost_usd, issue, run_id) and churn-runs/*/meta.json; agy runs with their real quota cost, not $0;
2. the port-blocker ledger from Ledger: tag port blockers (det / forge / facade / harness) by the estate that exposed them, beside field_testing.json's defects #5051 (estate, side, class, programs blocked, new_class, refused_by_name) and field_testing.json defects (scan side);
3. GitHub issues/PRs (opened/closed/merged, links issue → PR → run);
4. the evidence records (programs proven whole per estate).

Outputs (bot-written to the generated branch, per #4963, never to main):

• econ.json: the joined, versioned dataset (one row per fix: estate, class, cost, runs, model, wall time, PR, merged date).
• A rendered infographic page (HTML + SVG) for the public site/README:
  • cost per fix: distribution + trend over time, split by model;
  • blockers per estate, cumulative, and blockers per ported program in port order (the convergence curve);
  • new-class vs repeat blockers per estate (the key convergence signal);
  • cost to bring an estate whole ($ and days per estate, per program);
  • discovery vs closure (backlog), with estate-found vs sibling-filed separated;
  • throughput per worker (1 vs 2 workers);
  • a projection for the next estate (blockers, $, days) with its error band.
• CI/report staleness check like field_testing.py report.

Honesty rules (must be on the page, not in a footnote nobody reads):

• Costs are list-price agent cost; owner review time, CI minutes and subscription pricing are not included (say what is and isn't counted).
• Ledger coverage starts 2026-10-11; entries with no cost are counted and shown as missing, not zero.
• Attribution is from the Ledger: tag port blockers (det / forge / facade / harness) by the estate that exposed them, beside field_testing.json's defects #5051 ledger only; no keyword guessing in the published numbers.
• Development estates (CardDemo, CBSA, …) are training data; first-try numbers on fresh estates (Epic: first-try proof rate on fresh estates -- trials, input generation, the attempts-to-proof histogram #3803) are reported separately, with the caveat that public code may be in model training data.
• Refusals by name are counted as refusals, not as fixes.

Done when.

• The stage runs on schedule from the ledgers above and publishes econ.json + the infographic on the generated branch.
• The page shows all charts listed, with the counting rules stated on it.
• The next fresh estate's actual blockers/cost can be compared against the page's projection.

Depends on #5051 (estate-tagged port-blocker ledger). Related: #4963 (bot output to the generated branch), #3803 (fresh-estate trials), docs/language_status/cics_field_testing.md.