The Repair Yield per Energy (RYE) Metric: A Universal Efficiency Law for Adaptive Self-Repair Systems

Repair Yield per Energy (RYE) quantifies how much verified functional restoration a system achieves per unit of energy invested. The metric is defined for any adaptive self-repairing process including biological tissues, machine learning models, cyber-physical infrastructure, and decentralized networks. This paper introduces a formal definition of RYE, a standardized measurement protocol, and a pragmatic law stating that stable systems under resource constraints tend to maximize RYE over time through adaptive selection of minimal effective corrections. The framework includes domain-agnostic equations, reproducibility checklists, benchmark templates, and proposed open-data reporting standards designed to accelerate cross-disciplinary validation across AI, bioelectric, and decentralized repair ecosystems.