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diff --git a/docs/paper-assets/subset-overstatement.png b/docs/paper-assets/subset-overstatement.png
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diff --git a/scripts/figures/frontier.py b/scripts/figures/frontier.py
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+++ b/scripts/figures/frontier.py
@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+"""Paper-B figure: the size-quality frontier + the subset-overstatement
+pairs, from the durable verdicts (final_eval.json per run). Fetches the
+small JSON files from Modal volumes; no GPU.
+
+    python scripts/figures/frontier.py --out docs/paper-assets/
+"""
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+import argparse
+import json
+import subprocess
+import tempfile
+from pathlib import Path
+
+RUNS = [
+    # (label, params_m, full_set_der, subset_der, volume, path)
+    ("1.0 AdamW/r6/3ep", 300, 8.2590, 3.658, "rababa-checkpoints",
+     "rababa_arabic_distill_small/run-002"),
+    ("lite Muon/6ep", 190, 5.784, 2.6495, "rababa-checkpoints",
+     "rababa_arabic_distill_small/run-009-layerdrop-6ep"),
+    ("2.0 Muon/r7/3ep", 300, 4.8218, None, "rababa-checkpoints",
+     "rababa_arabic_distill_small/run-006-r7-muon"),
+    ("2.1 Muon/r7/6ep", 300, 4.5701, 2.0062, "rababa-checkpoints",
+     "rababa_arabic_distill_small/run-007-r7-muon-6ep"),
+    ("teacher r7", 580, 2.2864, None, "rababa-checkpoints", None),
+    ("tiny-max (30M full levers)", 33, 73.9489, None, "rababa-checkpoints",
+     "rababa_arabic_distill_small/run-010-tiny-max"),
+]
+
+
+def fetch_eval(volume: str, path: str | None) -> dict | None:
+    if not path:
+        return None
+    with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix=".json", delete=False) as f:
+        out = f.name
+    r = subprocess.run(
+        ["modal", "volume", "get", volume, f"{path}/final_eval.json", out],
+        capture_output=True, text=True)
+    if r.returncode != 0:
+        return None
+    try:
+        return json.loads(Path(out).read_text())
+    except Exception:
+        return None
+
+
+def main() -> None:
+    ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+    ap.add_argument("--out", default="docs/paper-assets")
+    args = ap.parse_args()
+    out = Path(args.out)
+    out.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+
+    import matplotlib
+
+    matplotlib.use("Agg")
+    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
+
+    # Figure 1: the frontier (params vs full-set DER)
+    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(6, 4))
+    pts = [(r[1], r[2]) for r in RUNS if r[2] is not None]
+    labels = [r[0] for r in RUNS if r[2] is not None]
+    ax.plot([p[0] for p in pts], [p[1] for p in pts], "o-")
+    for (x, y), lab in zip(pts, labels):
+        ax.annotate(lab, (x, y), fontsize=7, xytext=(4, 4),
+                    textcoords="offset points")
+    ax.set_xscale("log")
+    ax.set_yscale("log")
+    ax.set_xlabel("parameters (M, log)")
+    ax.set_ylabel("full-set windowed DER-CE (log)")
+    ax.set_title("The client-tier size–quality frontier (all full-set, CI-bracketed)")
+    fig.tight_layout()
+    fig.savefig(out / "frontier.png", dpi=200)
+
+    # Figure 2: subset overstatement pairs
+    pairs = [(r[0], r[3], r[2]) for r in RUNS if r[3] is not None]
+    fig2, ax2 = plt.subplots(figsize=(6, 4))
+    idx = range(len(pairs))
+    w = 0.35
+    ax2.bar([i - w / 2 for i in idx], [p[1] for p in pairs], w, label="first-300 subset")
+    ax2.bar([i + w / 2 for i in idx], [p[2] for p in pairs], w, label="full 1,200")
+    ax2.set_xticks(list(idx))
+    ax2.set_xticklabels([p[0] for p in pairs], fontsize=7, rotation=20)
+    ax2.set_ylabel("DER-CE")
+    ax2.set_title("Subset overstatement: 2–4× inflation across five instances")
+    ax2.legend()
+    fig2.tight_layout()
+    fig2.savefig(out / "subset-overstatement.png", dpi=200)
+    print(f"wrote {out}/frontier.png and {out}/subset-overstatement.png")
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    main()