# DRAFT ADJUDICATION — Popper Engine rivals stage, tranche 1

**STATUS: DRAFT — awaiting orchestrator countersignature. Not a registered verdict.**

Scope: the 12 archived Family B (Grok 4.5 expert) rival responses for batch r3-b1,
conjectures 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 16, 17, 18, 19 (24 rivals total).
Protocol: `docs/DESIGN_POPPER_RIVALS_STAGE_20260806.md` §3. Inputs read: the 12
files in `docs/generated/popper_rivals/r3-b1/grok/`, the corresponding 12
`docs/generated/popper_rivals/evidence/r3-b1-*.md` blocks, the registration doc
`docs/generated/popper_v2_rung3_registration_20260804.md`, and the frozen
instruments in `popper_v2_rung3_pinned_instruments_{a,b}.json`. All tests below
were executed read-only against the live census DB (`docker compose exec -T db
psql`), 2026-08-06. No files other than this one were touched; no git actions
taken. Files newly archived since this pass began (r3-b1-21, 23-27, 31-35 —
tranche 2) are explicitly OUT OF SCOPE and were not opened.

**How to read the verdicts** (protocol §3): RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA (test ran,
cuts against the rival) · RIVAL-LIVE (plausible and undischarged — either no test
could be run on held data, or a test ran but did not discharge the rival, or a
test ran and the result actually leans toward the rival) · RIVAL-DEFECTIVE (not
distinct from the registered mechanism, or misstates held evidence on its face).
A rival that is NOT-COMPUTABLE converts to LIVE, never to refuted, per the design
doc. Per-conjecture grade: STRENGTHENED iff both rivals land
REFUTED/DEFECTIVE; INTERPOLATION-ONLY iff either rival is LIVE.

---

## r3-b1-01 — NAMAMI dated-fraction <1%, ≥1 order of magnitude below every comparator

**Registered mechanism:** harvest-method artifact — "NAMAMI's list-page
enumeration schema does not parse a date column at all." A flat, specific claim
about one named layer (our/the harvester's list-page schema), no self-conceded
exception clause.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent w/ our evidence? | Grok's computable flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Dates are truly absent from NAMAMI's underlying data for every state — contributing institutions never supplied them at all, not a parsing gap on our end. | YES — locates the gap one layer further upstream (source data never existed) than the registered claim (our list-page schema doesn't parse an existing column). Genuinely different, falsifiable story. | Yes, no misstatement. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | A portal-wide technical/policy configuration blanks the date field on all state-faceted **list** outputs specifically, regardless of the harvester's own parsing choice. | YES — portal-side deliberate suppression vs. our-own-tool's parsing omission; different locus, different fix. | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**Why both flags reverse, and the test:** NAMAMI has its own detail-page
enrichment pathway, already run for a small pilot (Sikkim/Goa/A&N/Chandigarh —
all outside training and holdout). `raw->>'namami_detail_fetched'` marks exactly
this. That IS "a richer per-record view" / "a non-list interface" in the terms
both rivals' own tests ask for — we hold it already, no external access needed.

```sql
SELECT raw->>'namami_detail_fetched', date_precision, count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 GROUP BY 1,2 ORDER BY 1,2;
```
Result: list-page-only rows (`detail_fetched` false/absent) = 4,845,289, **100.000%
unknown, 0 dated**. Detail-fetched rows = 11,974, of which **210 (1.754%) carry a
resolved (century-precision) date**, 11,764 unknown. The same portal, the same
underlying institutions' holdings, produces a nonzero dated fraction the instant
the detail page (rather than the list page) is read.

Per **r1's own criterion** ("if dates appear in details but were missing from
list enumerations, this favors the proposed harvest-parse mechanism") and per
**r2's own criterion** ("if [a non-list interface shows] higher dated fractions,
this favors the proposed list-page parsing omission") — both rivals' own stated
tests, run on data we already hold, cut decisively against them and for the
registered mechanism.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED.** Both rivals distinct, both computable (contra
Grok), both refuted by the same natural experiment.

---

## r3-b1-03 — Binding-waste fragment mean date [1150,1450], distinct from Genizah

**Registered mechanism:** binding-waste reuse and a Genizah-style deposit trove
are proposed to be distinct real-world chronological populations. Training:
MPO (mean 1280.61, n=17,234/22,909 dated) and Fragmentarium (1280.29,
n=6,946/7,126) converge within 0.3 years; Ktiv/Genizah fragment subset (1471.71,
n=4,272/43,017, only 9.9% dated) sits ~191 years later.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Dating-completeness/selection artifact: binding-waste cataloguers date nearly everything into the medieval window; Genizah's low (9.9%) dated rate retains a later-biased subset. | Yes. | Yes, quotes 9.9% accurately. | true | true | MIXED — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** (executed, not dispositive) |
| r2 | Geographic/cultural production-chronology difference (European vs Near-Eastern peak periods), unrelated to reuse-vs-deposit process. | Yes. | Yes. | true | **downgraded in practice** | No matched cross-source stratum exists — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed** (our best held-data proxy for "highest-precision dated
subset": restrict to `date_precision='exact'`, the only finer-than-century grain
we hold):
```sql
SELECT source_id, date_precision, count(*), avg(date_start)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id IN (64,46,18) AND target_unit='fragment'
GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: MPO(64) exact-only n=564, mean **1496.45** (vs its pooled/century-heavy
mean 1280.61 — century subset alone is 1273.08, n=16,636); Fragmentarium(46)
exact-only n=6,946, mean **1280.29** (unchanged — "exact" is ~97.5% of its dated
total, i.e. it has almost no century-grain rows to separate out); Ktiv/Genizah(18)
exact-only n=425, mean **1526.88** (vs its pooled 1471.71).

This is a **genuine split, not a clean confirmation either way**. Under the
"highest-precision" cut, MPO's gap to Genizah **shrinks** from 191 to 30 years
(exactly rival 1's predicted direction), while Fragmentarium's gap to Genizah
**widens** from 191 to 247 years (exactly the registered mechanism's predicted
direction) — and, more importantly, **MPO and Fragmentarium stop agreeing with
each other** (1496.45 vs 1280.29, 216 years apart) once matched on precision,
even though their pooled means agree to within 0.3 years. Neither rival's own
favor-criterion ("gap disappears" vs "gap persists") is cleanly satisfied,
because the test surfaces a third finding: the training-side "two independent
sources converge" evidence is itself sensitive to how much of each source's
pooled mean is carried by century- vs exact-precision rows. **Flagged for
orchestrator attention** — this bears on the base conjecture's own evidentiary
robustness, not just on rival 1's standing.

**r2 test executed** (script/language stratification):
```sql
SELECT source_id, script, count(*), avg(date_start) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id IN (64,46,18) AND target_unit='fragment' AND date_start IS NOT NULL GROUP BY 1,2;
-- + same on `language`
```
Result: each of the three sources is compositionally near-homogeneous. Fragmentarium's
`script` field actually carries **language** values in this harvest (90.4% "Latin",
remainder Middle Dutch/German/French/Greek/Hebrew/etc. in small counts);
MPO's `script` field carries **paleographic hand-style** labels (Textualis,
Protogothica, Kursive...) — all Latin-script conventions, no language/region axis
at all; Ktiv's fragment subset is **100% `language='heb'`, blank `script`**. There
is no populated stratum shared by more than one source (no "Judeo-Arabic" bucket
inside the binding-waste sources, no "Latin-European" bucket inside the Genizah
subset) to run a matched within-stratum comparison. The query ran; the data
needed to execute rival 2's actual comparison does not exist in what we hold.
**Missing datum:** a shared, populated place-of-origin/region or script variable
cross-cutting all three sources — none exists.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** Both rivals distinct and both were
genuinely tested; neither discharged. r1 in particular surfaces a real wrinkle
in the training evidence worth flagging separately from the rival-grade itself.

---

## r3-b1-04 — Korea (korcis) medium_class mix stable ±10pp as source grows

**Registered mechanism:** organic-growth/no-regime-change claim, with its own
named exception: "absent **a change in the classification pipeline itself** or
a sharply different period of material being added." Baseline (this measurement
IS the baseline): unknown 64.56%, manuscript 16.05%, woodblock 12.65%,
movable_type 6.74% (499,003 rows total).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Still-incomplete bulk classification pipeline: large volumes sit as `unknown` pending a future reclassification batch; current stability just means no batch has hit yet. | **Close call, resolved YES** — see note. | Yes. | true | true | Cohort split found; **favors the rival** — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** (flagged, non-routine) |
| r2 | Medium labels come from a fixed/rule-based classifier whose output distribution is constant "by construction," independent of true content. | Yes — a construct-validity problem (classifier insensitive to real content even once fully applied), different failure mode from r1's completeness/timing problem. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**Distinctness note on r1 (flagged for orchestrator):** the registered text's own
exception — "absent a change in the classification pipeline itself" — is about
the RULE changing. Rival 1's mechanism is about the rule staying fixed while its
application to a growing backlog is incomplete at any snapshot — a different
logical condition (coverage vs. methodology-change) on close reading, though the
surface vocabulary ("reclassification," "pipeline") is close enough that this
was reversed once during drafting. Recorded transparently so the orchestrator
can re-check.

**r1 test executed** — korcis has a genuine two-day `created_at` ingestion split
(477,144 rows 2026-07-24; 21,859 rows 2026-07-25):
```sql
SELECT date_trunc('day',created_at), medium_class, count(*) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id=50 GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Day-1 shares ≈ baseline (it IS 95.6% of the corpus, by construction). Day-2 (the
smaller, later cohort): **unknown 83.93%** (+19.37pp vs. the 64.56% baseline,
**outside** the registered ±10pp band), **manuscript 0.69%** (−15.36pp,
**outside** band), woodblock 7.96% (−4.69pp, inside), movable_type 7.42%
(+0.68pp, inside). Two of four categories breach the band in the later cohort.

Per **rival 1's own criterion** ("if later-classified cohorts show markedly
different medium shares... pushing overall shares outside ±10pp, this favors the
rival") — this is exactly what the data shows. This is stronger than an ordinary
undischarged LIVE: **the executed test's result affirmatively favors the rival**,
not merely fails to refute it. Recorded as RIVAL-LIVE per the protocol's only
available category (no "rival confirmed" verdict exists in §3), but flagged
prominently for orchestrator attention — this may warrant more than routine
interpolation-only treatment. Same underlying korcis day-2 cohort anomaly recurs
independently in r3-b1-09's r1 test below (§r3-b1-09) — worth reading together.

**r2:** not computable — no access to korcis's classification rules/model, and no
independently-labeled (manual/content-driven) held-out sample of raw Korean
content to compare against. **Missing datum:** classifier internals or an
independent ground-truth label set.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** — and the weakest-margin STRENGTHENED
candidate rejected in the batch, given r1's test result actively favors the
rival rather than merely failing to discharge it.

---

## r3-b1-05 — ContainedText-per-manuscript ratio is source-specific (codicological-culture mechanism)

**Registered mechanism:** real codicological/manuscript-culture differences in
how many texts get bound per volume (pinakes 6.53, fihrist-tei 2.43, mlgb3-live
1.01, cbeta-works exactly 1.00 — the registered evidence **itself** already
flags cbeta's 1.00 as "very likely a structural [harvester] artifact," so that
one source is common ground, not contested).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Cataloguing-depth/data-model atomization artifact — projects differ in how finely they split composite manuscripts into child rows. | Yes (scope is broader than the already-conceded cbeta point — it also contests the pinakes/fihrist/mlgb3 gradient). | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Selection effects — each catalogue samples a different mix of multi-text vs. single-text manuscripts. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 missing datum:** independent, externally-attested per-manuscript text
counts (outside scholarship/codicological descriptions) to compare against our
own row counts — not held.
**r2 missing datum:** an external (non-circular) single-work-vs-multi-work
classification per manuscript; our own contained-text count cannot be used to
build this without begging the question.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** Both rivals distinct, both genuinely
untestable on data we hold.

---

## r3-b1-06 — FANKHA institutional-attribution completeness (69.86%) is materially lower than every comparator

**Registered mechanism:** "A catalogue-construction/harvest-completeness fact
about this one union catalogue specifically (which aggregates contributions from
many institutions with uneven metadata practice), not a claim about Iranian
manuscript production or survival."

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Contributing institutions' own metadata feeds are incomplete; FANKHA's own aggregation/harvest process adds no further loss. | **Close call, resolved YES** — see note. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | FANKHA deliberately documents privately-held/unlocated/dispersed items *by editorial policy*, unlike comparators that filter such items out. | Yes — intentional scope-policy vs. incidental completeness shortfall. | Yes. | true | true | Decisive — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**Distinctness note on r1 (flagged for orchestrator, same pattern as 04-r1):**
the registered parenthetical already names "uneven metadata practice" among
"many institutions" — close enough to r1's own wording that this was reversed
once during drafting before landing on DISTINCT (the registered text reads as
descriptive scene-setting about what a union catalogue is, not a committed,
exclusive causal claim the way rival 1's "not by any special incompleteness in
the union catalogue's own... process" is). Recorded transparently.

**r1 missing datum, plus a live plausibility problem:** we hold no
pre-aggregation per-institution feeds — and, per our own ingestion
documentation (`apps/scriptome/services/fankha_census.py`), **FANKHA is not a
live database aggregating institutional data feeds at all**: it is Dirayati's
45-volume PRINTED union catalogue (NLAI, 2011–2015), digitized via OCR from a
third-party mirror. There is no "contributing institutions' data feed" layer of
the kind rival 1's mechanism presupposes; holding-library information arrives as
an inline **siglum** abbreviation in running prose, resolved (or not) against a
lookup table. This doesn't misstate a specific number (so it isn't ruled
DEFECTIVE on that ground) but it materially weakens r1's plausibility as a live
hypothesis — noted for the record.

**r2 test executed** — cross-tabbed `holding_resolution_status` (a field written
by our own resolution step, confirmed in `fankha_census.py:resolve_holding_library`)
against attribution:
```sql
SELECT (repository_id IS NULL) AS unattributed, raw->>'holding_resolution_status', count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=29 GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: all 97,397 unattributed records (30.14%, matching 100−69.86%) carry one
of three purely **technical resolution-failure** statuses: `siglum_not_in_table`
(90,268 — the siglum printed in the text has no entry in the lookup table),
`conditional_unresolved` (4,456), `no_copy_number_field` (2,673 — the copy entry
never printed a siglum at all). **Zero** records carry any private/unlocated/dispersed-type
status; no such category exists anywhere in the field's vocabulary (confirmed
against the source code, not just the data). Per rival 2's own criterion ("if
unattributed records lack such flags and appear otherwise similar to attributed
ones, this favors the proposed harvest-completeness mechanism") this is a clean
refutation.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 undischarged, notwithstanding r2's
decisive refutation).

---

## r3-b1-07 — SfarData ≥2-scribe-attestation share (5.38%) is a stable structural baseline, band [3%,9%]

**Registered mechanism:** a real, stable base rate of multi-scribe production,
with its own named confound: "a sharp **future jump** in this rate would more
likely indicate a **change** in the cataloguing project's own recording practice
than a shift in historical production patterns." (Training: 5,912 attested
records, 318 with a 2nd attestation = 5.3789%.)

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Constant (not changing) under-recording: cataloguers systematically enter only the primary scribe; the *current, unchanging* baseline is deflated by convention, not by a future practice-change. | Yes — targets a **level** bias, distinct from the registered claim's own confound, which is specifically about detecting a future **change**. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Selection into *which* manuscripts get any scribe-cataloguing depth at all, not a property of the underlying production base rate. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true, but degenerate — see below. | No cohort variation exists. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 missing datum:** independent codicological re-examination or high-resolution
image analysis of currently-single-attestation manuscripts — not held.

**r2 test executed:**
```sql
SELECT date_trunc('day',created_at), count(*) FROM scriptome_scribeattestation WHERE source='sfardata' GROUP BY 1;
```
Result: **all 6,375 rows carry the identical `created_at` date (2026-07-30)** —
a single bulk harvest, zero wave/cohort variation. Checked `provenance` JSON for
an alternative wave marker (role_rule, circumstance_rule, source_row_number,
external_id) — all are constant methodology tags, not date/phase markers.
Checked `raw` keys on the parent SfarData ManuscriptRecord for an internal
cataloguing-date field — none exists (`scribe_records`, `date_precision`,
`library`, `material`, `date_start`, `scribe_row_count`, `microfilm_imhm`,
`region`, `callmark`, `script_type`, `_scriptome_harvest`, `location`, `date_end`
— none is a wave/entry-date marker). The query ran and returned a real,
informative answer (no signal exists), which is why this is filed under
"executed" rather than a pure non-attempt — but it cannot discharge the rival.
**Missing datum:** genuine multi-wave ingestion timestamps, or SfarData's own
internal per-record cataloguing-wave/entry-date field — neither is captured by
our harvest (a single-shot copy operation).

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.**

---

## r3-b1-08 — NAMAMI extent_leaves populated <1% of records vs. comparator's 97.6%

**Registered mechanism:** harvest-method-completeness — same list-page-schema
claim as r3-b1-01, for the extent/folio-count field. Same structure, same two
rivals, same natural experiment applies.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Extent data truly absent from NAMAMI's underlying data everywhere, not a parsing gap. | Yes (same reasoning as 01-r1). | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Portal-wide suppression of the extent field on list outputs specifically. | Yes (same reasoning as 01-r2). | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**Test executed** (same query family as r3-b1-01):
```sql
SELECT raw->>'namami_detail_fetched', (extent_leaves IS NOT NULL), count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: list-page-only rows = 4,845,289, **0 populated (0.000%)**. Detail-fetched
rows = 11,974, of which **11,862 (99.06%) have extent_leaves populated** — an
even sharper contrast than r3-b1-01's date test. Per both rivals' own
favor-criteria (identical wording to r3-b1-01's), this decisively favors the
registered list-page-parsing-omission mechanism over either upstream-absence or
portal-wide-suppression.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED.**

---

## r3-b1-09 — Exact-precision-dating rate is source-specific and stable (±15pp) as each source grows

**Registered mechanism:** "reflects each source's own cataloguing tradition and
instrument, not source size" — the only alternative the registered text itself
rejects is a source-SIZE effect, not a fixed-protocol effect. 8 sources, rates
10.76%–72.53% (the 72.53% case, sfardata, is itself flagged in the registered
evidence as a scope caveat — a dated-manuscript-selected corpus by construction).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Kept stable by the continued operation of the *same fixed automated dating rules*, not by a deep tradition/instrument property — an arbitrary pipeline-consistency artifact. | Yes — no self-conceded exception in the registered text to absorb this. | Yes (accurately cites the 72.53% flagged case). | true | true | MIXED/split across sources — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Differential selection of already-dated/easily-datable material into each corpus, not differences in precision-assignment once selected. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed.** Of the 8 sources, only 2 have genuine multi-day
`created_at` spread (the other 6 — mpo, sfardata, fankha, fihrist-tei, hmml,
digital-scriptorium — each loaded in a single bulk-harvest day, confirmed by
direct query, so no cohort signal exists for them at all):
```sql
SELECT date_trunc('day',created_at), date_precision, count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id IN (18,50) GROUP BY 1,2;
```
**Ktiv-nli (18)**, 13 daily cohorts spanning 2026-07-24 to 08-05: per-day exact
rate ranges from 1.81% to 18.33% — real variance, but **every single day stays
inside** the registered ±15pp band around the 10.7554% baseline (band ≈
[0%, 25.76%]). No cohort breaches it. This does **not** show rival 1's predicted
signature.

**Korcis (50)**, 2 daily cohorts: day-1 (07-24, 477,144 rows, 95.6% of corpus)
exact rate 55.28% (inside the [41.47%, 71.47%] band around baseline 56.4724%).
Day-2 (07-25, 21,859 rows, the smaller/later cohort) exact rate **82.66%** —
**outside** the ceiling by 11.2 percentage points. This **does** show rival 1's
predicted signature, per its own criterion ("if late cohorts... produce rates
that [drift from] the baseline... this favors the rival"). This is the *same*
korcis day-2 cohort anomaly already found independently via r3-b1-04's r1 test
(§r3-b1-04) — the two findings corroborate each other and should be read
together.

Net: 1 of 2 testable sources supports the rival, 1 does not; 6 of 8 sources are
untestable in held data. **Genuinely mixed, not dispositive** — recorded as
RIVAL-LIVE, with the korcis half flagged as concrete positive support (not a
mere failure-to-refute).

**r2 missing datum:** external, independent secure-vs-range-only dating
classification per source (outside bibliography) — not held.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.**

---

## r3-b1-16 — NAMAMI distinct-institution density does not exceed 103/1000 in any complete state

**Registered mechanism:** legacy-of-local-collecting-culture, explicitly NOT a
scale effect (checked and rejected: largest state by record count has one of the
lowest densities; 2nd-largest has the highest). Training range: West Bengal 1.10
to Odisha 51.60 (ceiling set at ~2x the training max).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Portal-side institution-name normalization/deduplication artificially caps the distinct count below the true landscape size. | Yes — neither alternative (scale effect) the registered text itself rejects. | Yes. | true | true, partial — see below. | Leans against, not dispositive. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | A hard/soft portal registration-ceiling (authority list) caps institutions per state around 100, unrelated to real culture. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed.** We cannot access a "before the portal's own cleaning"
version of institute names (`raw->>'institute_raw'` is the only institution
field NAMAMI exposes per record — confirmed by a full key listing, no separate
institution-ID field exists to cross-check against). We CAN apply a further,
independent light normalization (case-fold, trim, collapse whitespace, strip
trailing punctuation) as a directional proxy — if a lot of trivially-collapsible
variation remained, that would suggest room for a much larger true count.
```sql
-- per training state: count(distinct institute_raw) vs count(distinct <normalized institute_raw>)
```
Result (all 11 training states): normalization changes the distinct count by
**0% to 4.3%** (Himachal Pradesh, the largest shift: 3,188→3,052 distinct,
density 9.856→9.435/1000; most states 0–0.6%; three states show exactly zero
change). Density stays far below the 103 ceiling under either count in every
state. This leans against rival 1 at the "trivial formatting variation" level —
there is little low-hanging fruit for a portal-side cleaning step to have
already collapsed — but it is **not dispositive**: our normalization cannot
detect more sophisticated portal-side merging (abbreviation/transliteration-level),
so the rival is not refuted, only weakened at the margin we can measure.

**r2 missing datum:** NAMAMI's own institution-registration/authority list — not
harvested, and there is no evidence the portal exposes one publicly.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r2 alone guarantees this regardless of r1's
partial result).

---

## r3-b1-17 — Log(rank)–log(count) OLS slope in [-3.0,-0.3] in every complete state (heavy-tailed, level-independent)

**Registered mechanism:** a generic real-world accumulation-process claim,
deliberately independent of a state's overall concentration level. Training
slopes span -0.567 (Himachal Pradesh) to -2.355 (West Bengal), all inside band,
R² mostly >0.93.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Fitting/aggregation artifact — OLS on ranked count data with many singleton institutions is mechanically forced into this (wide) band regardless of any real process. | Yes — a statistical-artifact-of-method claim vs. a real-phenomenon claim. | Yes (accurately cites -2.71). | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Administrative-centralization: a few dominant official institutions plus a long local tail, not a generic accumulation process. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 test executed** — refit excluding all singleton (n=1) institutions, all 19
complete states with ≥2 institutions (11 training + 8 complete holdout;
Puducherry's degenerate n=1 case is already out-of-scope per the registered
conditional and excluded here too):
```sql
-- rank institutions per state, regr_slope(ln(n),ln(rank)) FILTER (WHERE n>1) vs unfiltered
```
Result: in the 11 large states (500-institution cap), there are **zero**
singletons in the top 500, so the fit is unchanged. In the 8 smaller states with
< 500 institutions total (7–29% of their own institutions are singletons), the
slope moves modestly toward zero but **stays inside [-3.0,-0.3] in every single
case** — largest shift Delhi -2.7132→-2.4721 (still 0.53 short of the -3.0
edge); West Bengal -2.3548→-2.1621; Punjab -2.6883→-2.4580. No state crosses
either boundary.

**r2 test executed** — refit excluding the top-3 ranked institutions per state,
re-ranking the remainder, same 19 states:
```sql
-- rank institutions per state excluding rank<=3, re-ranked from 1, regr_slope on the remainder
```
Result: slope stays inside band in every case; tightest margin Himachal Pradesh
-0.5038 (down from -0.567, but still 0.20 clear of the -0.3 edge); Delhi -2.4689,
West Bengal -2.1820. Institution identities confirm a genuinely mixed top-3
composition across states (state museums and government research institutes —
"Orissa State Museum," "Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute," "Andhra
Pradesh Govt. Oriental MSS Library" — alongside Jain mandirs, monasteries and
named private collections), so "removing the officials" is a meaningful
operation, not vacuous.

Per both rivals' own criteria ("if slopes remain inside the band under all
reasonable alternatives, this favors the proposed accumulation mechanism" /
"...even after removal of the official top ranks, this favors the proposed
generic accumulation mechanism") — both alternative refits leave every state
inside band. Clean refutation of both.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED.**

---

## r3-b1-18 — At least one small single-city UT exceeds the training top-1 max (25.49%)

**Registered mechanism:** a single-city administrative unit has a structurally
narrower institutional landscape, concentrating holdings more heavily.
Untestable on training by construction (all 11 training states are large
multi-city states); confirmed twice on holdout: Delhi 51.47%, Puducherry 100.0%.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Facet-boundary/administrative-classification artifact: ANY smaller facet inflates top-1 share mechanically, regardless of the real landscape. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run (no sub-state geography held). | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Historical accident: these two particular UTs happen to house a famous specialist mega-institution; not a general single-city property. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true, partial | Substantively informative — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** (well-supported) |

**r1 missing datum:** NAMAMI/our schema carries no city or district sub-field
for any record (confirmed via a full raw-key listing: only `holding_state` /
`holding_state_id` exist) — "city-level sub-regions inside multi-city training
states" cannot be constructed from held data. Contextual note only: among the
11 training states, the smallest by record count (West Bengal, 178,918) also
has the highest top-1 share (25.49%), a suggestive small-N tendency, but
confounded by WB's own named mechanism (the Asiatic Society) and not a clean
test of this specific rival.

**r2 test executed** — the "test additional single-city units" half of Grok's
own proposal is not yet available (only Delhi and Puducherry have landed as
single-city UTs), but the "examine institution identity/type across all landed
states" half is fully computable:
```sql
-- top-1 institution + share, every landed NAMAMI state facet
```
Result (31 states): **Jammu & Kashmir — a genuinely multi-city holdout state**
(87,755 records, Srinagar/Jammu/Leh) with **no single-city status at all** — has
top-1 = Shri Ranbir Sanskrit Research Institute at **29.63%**, itself above the
25.49% training threshold. A dominant specialist institute alone, independent of
single-city-ness, is sufficient to push even a multi-city state over the
threshold. This is real, non-trivial support for rival 2's mechanism — though it
does not show single-city-ness is unnecessary for the far larger shares at Delhi
(51.47%) and Puducherry (100%), so the more plausible reading is that both
factors interact rather than either alone being the whole story. **Flagged
alongside the r3-b1-04/09 korcis finding as one of the batch's more
substantively informative LIVE results**, not a routine shrug.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.**

---

## r3-b1-19 — No holdout institution exceeds HP's Tibetan-institution volume (~53,700), unless a recognized Tibetan-exile center

**Registered mechanism:** record volume concentrates at institutions tied to
real diaspora/community presence. Training: HP's Library of Tibetan Works and
Archives holds 53,697 tradition='tibetan' records (77.28% of HP's total is
tradition='tibetan'). Holdout (J&K, the pre-registered live sub-test): top
Tibetan institution (Basgo Serzang Monastery) holds 951 — real but far below
threshold.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Differential cataloguing/digitization-intensity artifact — HP's mega-institution digitized aggressively; other states simply under-catalogued their Tibetan material into the portal. | Yes. | Yes (accurately cites ~53,700, 951). | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Differential `tradition='tibetan'` labeling completeness — the tag is applied more rigorously at HP, under-applied elsewhere; a tagging artifact, not a real volume difference. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 missing datum:** independent published-inventory / secondary-literature
estimates of the physical size of Tibetan collections at HP's institution and at
J&K's top institutions — external, not held.

**r2 test executed** — cross-referenced tagged counts against untagged-but-signalling
records, in both the training mega-state and the live-test holdout state:
```sql
SELECT raw->>'holding_state', count(*) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id=51 AND raw->>'holding_state_id' IN ('15','14') AND tradition != 'tibetan'
  AND (script ILIKE '%tibet%' OR language ILIKE '%tibet%' OR title ILIKE '%tibet%'
       OR raw->>'script_raw' ILIKE '%tibet%' OR raw->>'language_raw' ILIKE '%tibet%'
       OR raw->>'title_raw' ILIKE '%tibet%' OR raw->>'subject_raw' ILIKE '%tibet%')
GROUP BY 1;
```
Result: **0 rows in both states.** tradition='tibetan' tagged counts: HP 250,035
of 323,468 total; J&K 15,666 of 87,755 total (both far above the 951-record top
single institution — the label is not concentrated in one place at all,
contrary to nothing in particular, just confirming scale). There is no
population, in either state, of records carrying an explicit Tibetan-language/script/title
signal that was left untagged. (Sanity check: J&K's top tradition='tibetan'
institution reproduces the registered value exactly — Basgo Serzang Monastery,
951.) **Caveat, stated plainly:** this substring proxy would miss a record whose
Tibetan character is signalled only by a marker that never contains the string
"tibet" (e.g. a bare script label like "Bhoti" or "Uchen" with no other cue) —
a real but partial limitation, not a fatal one, since it is exactly the search
Grok's own test asked for ("records that... match Tibetan paleographic or title
patterns"). Per rival 2's own criterion ("if labeling rates are comparable...
this favors the proposed real-diaspora mechanism") this refutes it, with the
proxy caveat on record.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 undischarged, despite r2's refutation).

---

## Closing summary — 12 conjectures, draft grades

| Conjecture | Rival 1 verdict | Rival 2 verdict | **Draft grade** | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| r3-b1-01 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Detail-fetch natural experiment refutes both upstream-absence and portal-suppression stories. |
| r3-b1-03 | LIVE (mixed/executed) | LIVE (no matched strata) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Precision-stratified test is genuinely mixed; also surfaces a robustness wrinkle in the training convergence itself. |
| r3-b1-04 | LIVE (executed; favors rival) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Korcis's day-2 cohort breaches the ±10pp band on 2 of 4 categories — a positive hit for the rival, not just undischarged. |
| r3-b1-05 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Both rivals need external scholarly ground truth we don't hold. |
| r3-b1-06 | LIVE (not computable) | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | r1 (contributor-feed incompleteness) stays undischarged even though r2 (deliberate scope policy) is cleanly refuted by the resolution-status field. |
| r3-b1-07 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (degenerate cohort) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | SfarData's entire corpus loaded in one harvest day — no wave signal available for either rival. |
| r3-b1-08 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Same detail-fetch natural experiment, even sharper contrast (99.06% vs 0%). |
| r3-b1-09 | LIVE (mixed across sources) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Ktiv-nli cohorts stay in-band; korcis's day-2 cohort breaches it — split result, not dispositive. |
| r3-b1-16 | LIVE (leans against, not dispositive) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Light renormalization barely moves the count, but can't rule out portal-side merging we can't detect. |
| r3-b1-17 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Slope survives excluding singletons and excluding the top-3 institutions in all 19 testable states. |
| r3-b1-18 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (well-supported) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | J&K — a multi-city state — also exceeds the training threshold behind a single dominant institute, real support for the mega-institution story. |
| r3-b1-19 | LIVE (not computable) | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | r1 (cataloguing-intensity) stays undischarged even though r2 (labeling artifact) is refuted by the zero-untagged-signal finding. |

**3 of 12 STRENGTHENED (01, 08, 17); 9 of 12 INTERPOLATION-ONLY (03, 04, 05, 06,
07, 09, 16, 18, 19).** Zero rivals ruled DEFECTIVE outright — the two closest
distinctness calls (04-r1, 06-r1) are flagged explicitly above and were each
reversed at least once during drafting before landing on DISTINCT; the
orchestrator should re-check both.

---

## Every executed test — query gist and result (15 rivals tested)

| Rival | Query gist | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01-r1 / 01-r2 | `date_precision` × `namami_detail_fetched`, source-wide | List-only: 0/4,845,289 dated. Detail-fetched: 210/11,974 (1.75%) dated. | REFUTED both |
| 03-r1 | Mean `date_start` restricted to `date_precision='exact'`, 3 fragment sources | MPO 1496.45(n=564); Fragmentarium 1280.29(n=6946); Ktiv 1526.88(n=425) — split result | LIVE |
| 03-r2 | `script`/`language` breakdown, 3 fragment sources | Each source ~monolithic in script/language; no matched cross-source stratum exists | LIVE |
| 04-r1 | `medium_class` share by `created_at` day, korcis | Day-2 cohort (21,859 rows): unknown +19.4pp, manuscript −15.4pp vs. baseline — outside ±10pp band | LIVE (favors rival) |
| 06-r2 | `holding_resolution_status` × attribution, FANKHA | 100% of unattributed rows carry technical resolution-failure statuses; 0% carry any private/unlocated/dispersed flag | REFUTED |
| 07-r2 | `created_at` spread, sfardata scribe attestations | All 6,375 rows share one date (2026-07-30) — single bulk load, no cohort variation | LIVE (degenerate) |
| 08-r1 / 08-r2 | `extent_leaves IS NOT NULL` × `namami_detail_fetched`, source-wide | List-only: 0/4,845,289 populated. Detail-fetched: 11,862/11,974 (99.06%) populated. | REFUTED both |
| 09-r1 | `date_precision` share by `created_at` day, ktiv-nli (13 days) and korcis (2 days) | Ktiv: all 13 daily cohorts inside ±15pp band. Korcis day-2: 82.66% vs 56.47% baseline — outside ceiling. | LIVE (mixed) |
| 16-r1 | Distinct `institute_raw` (exact) vs. light-normalized, 11 training states | Normalization changes distinct count by 0–4.3%; density stays far under the 103 ceiling either way | LIVE (leans against) |
| 17-r1 | Log-log OLS slope excluding n=1 singleton institutions, 19 states | Every state stays inside [-3.0,-0.3]; largest shift Delhi −2.71→−2.47 | REFUTED |
| 17-r2 | Log-log OLS slope excluding top-3 institutions (re-ranked), 19 states | Every state stays inside [-3.0,-0.3]; tightest HP −0.50 | REFUTED |
| 18-r2 | Top-1 institution + share, all 31 landed NAMAMI states | J&K (multi-city) top-1 = 29.63%, above the 25.49% training threshold, driven by one specialist institute | LIVE (well-supported) |
| 19-r2 | Tibetan-signal-but-untagged records, J&K vs. HP | 0 rows in either state carry Tibetan free-text signal without the `tibetan` tag | REFUTED |

## Every NOT-COMPUTABLE rival — missing datum (9 rivals)

| Rival | Proposed test | Missing datum |
|---|---|---|
| 04-r2 | Apply classifier rules to held-out raw content; compare manual vs. automatic labels | Classifier internals/model, or an independently-labeled held-out sample — neither held |
| 05-r1 | Compare our contained-text row counts to externally-attested per-manuscript text counts | Independent scholarly/codicological text counts — not held |
| 05-r2 | Restrict to independently-known single-work vs. multi-work manuscripts | External (non-circular) single/multi-work classification — not held |
| 06-r1 | Compare pre-aggregation contributor feeds to the final union catalogue | No pre-aggregation feeds exist to check — FANKHA is a single-compiler OCR'd printed catalogue, not a live feed-aggregating database |
| 07-r1 | Independent paleographic re-examination of single-attestation manuscripts | Independent codicological/image-based re-examination — not held |
| 09-r2 | Restrict to independently-known secure-date vs. range-only manuscripts per source | External bibliography-based dating-certainty classification — not held |
| 16-r2 | Compare observed density to NAMAMI's own institution-authority/registration list | NAMAMI's institution-registration list — never harvested, not known to be exposed |
| 18-r1 | Recompute top-1 share for city-level sub-regions inside multi-city training states | City/district sub-geography for NAMAMI records — field does not exist in our schema |
| 19-r1 | Compare portal-to-physical holdings ratio using independent inventory estimates | Independent published inventories of physical Tibetan collections — not held |

---

## Items needing an orchestrator ruling before countersignature

1. **r3-b1-03-r1's mixed result** (MPO's exact-only mean moves toward Genizah's
   while Fragmentarium's doesn't) is not just a rival-adjudication finding — it
   puts real pressure on r3-b1-03's own training-side headline claim ("two
   independent sources converge"). Recommend the orchestrator decide whether
   this needs a note on the base conjecture separate from the rival grade.
2. **r3-b1-04-r1 and r3-b1-06-r1's distinctness** were each reversed at least
   once during drafting (registered text uses language close enough to the
   rival's own that non-distinctness was seriously considered both times).
   Both are recorded here as DISTINCT with the reasoning shown in full — please
   re-check both calls specifically.
3. **r3-b1-04-r1 and r3-b1-09-r1 both surfaced the same underlying anomaly**:
   korcis's 21,859-row day-2 ingestion cohort (2026-07-25) differs sharply from
   the bulk of the source in both `medium_class` mix and exact-dating rate.
   This is a single fact discovered twice via two different conjectures' rivals
   — worth a standing note (possibly a korcis-specific data-quality flag)
   independent of this batch's grades.
4. **No rival was ruled DEFECTIVE.** Given the brief's emphasis on not being
   lenient, this is flagged explicitly so the orchestrator can sanity-check the
   absence of any DEFECTIVE verdict rather than read it as an unreviewed
   default.
5. **r3-b1-18-r2's J&K finding** (a multi-city state also exceeding the
   training top-1 threshold, apparently institution-driven) may be worth
   registering as its own discriminating test for a future batch rather than
   leaving it as incidental context, since it was found opportunistically while
   testing a different rival.

**END OF DRAFT — awaiting orchestrator countersignature.**

---

## COUNTERSIGNATURE — orchestrator rulings on the five flagged items (Fable, 2026-08-06)

1. **r3-b1-03 base-evidence wrinkle — ANNOTATION ORDERED.** The precision-stratified
   result (MPO's exact-only mean moving toward Genizah's while Fragmentarium's does
   not) is recorded as a dated annotation on r3-b1-03's record: the "two independent
   sources converge" training evidence is now under registered pressure, and the
   r2-b2 reformulation of this family must stratify by dating precision at minting.
   Survival status unchanged (kill-conditions govern survival; annotations govern
   honesty).
2. **Distinctness calls — 04-r1 RATIFIED DISTINCT** (rule-change vs coverage-lag are
   different logical conditions; the registered exception named only the former).
   **06-r1 RECLASSIFIED: RIVAL-DEFECTIVE.** The rival's mechanism and its own test
   presuppose a contributor-data-feed layer; our held ingestion documentation
   (fankha_census.py) establishes FANKHA is a digitized PRINTED union catalogue
   (Dirayati, 45 vols, NLAI 2011–2015) with no such layer — the rival misstates the
   source's data-generating architecture on its face. The defensible SPIRIT of the
   rival (incompleteness originating upstream, in what the compiler could learn per
   collection, rather than in our harvest) is logged as an ADMISSIBLE REFORMULATED
   RIVAL for the r2-b2 round; the submission itself is defective.
   **Consequence: r3-b1-06's grade rises to STRENGTHENED** (r1 defective, r2 refuted
   on held data).
3. **korcis day-2 cohort anomaly — STANDING FLAG OPENED.** The 21,859-row 2026-07-25
   cohort (divergent medium_class mix and exact-dating rate vs the 2026-07-24 bulk)
   becomes a korcis data-quality item: to be characterized before any further
   korcis-grounded per-source claim is minted; until resolved, r3-b1-04 and -09
   carry this annotation.
4. **Zero-DEFECTIVE outcome — resolved by ruling 2**; the scorer's conservatism
   (protocol: not-computable → LIVE, never worse) was correct behaviour, and the
   countersign pass is where the DEFECTIVE class gets applied on held documentation.
5. **r3-b1-18's J&K finding — REGISTERED as a candidate discriminating test** for
   the concentration family in r2-b2: mega-institution-driven vs unit-size-driven
   top-1 shares, testable prospectively on future-landing units.

**FINAL TRANCHE-1 GRADES (countersigned): STRENGTHENED — r3-b1-01, -06, -08, -17.
INTERPOLATION-ONLY — r3-b1-03, -04, -05, -07, -09, -16, -18, -19.**
8 rivals refuted on held data, 1 defective, 15 live (their discriminating tests
enter the r2-b2 queue). Family B = Grok 4.5 expert; Family A deferred (unfunded).

Countersigned: Fable (orchestrator), under the operator's standing delegation.
