Methods · provenance
Where did that number come from?
Every public claim in the family binds to the exact chain that produced it. If a number cannot
name its chain, it does not ship.
The chain, link by link
- Source capture. Raw inputs are captured with hashes and license lineage — Gridiron Signal's public sources registry and Hardball Signal's pinned capture receipts are the working examples.
- Model version. The exact model identity (for example cfb-v0.3.0 or a frozen calibration id like core-war-v1-d44f19f241e65f95) rides with every value it produced.
- Release identity. A deployment is a named, immutable thing — a Pages deployment hash, a release commit, a version badge — recorded in the producing repo's release notes.
- Artifact hash. Published artifacts carry content hashes so a consumer can prove bytes match what the producer signed off on.
- As-of date. Data-through boundaries are absolute dates, never “recently.”
How this site practices it
Every status row on SIGNAL carries a source strip: which artifact supplied it, by which mode (public artifact, build capture, manual manifest, or a governed hybrid), the SHA-256 of the captured producer bytes and any separate supplement where applicable, and the absolute moments SIGNAL captured and observed it. The pipeline, in one line:
fetch the producer's artifact → hash the bytes → validate the named fields → normalize a valid capture → record the capture attempt → publish an observation only when normalized evidence changes; transport outage + still-valid prior capture → bounded fallback; parse, schema, or hash contradiction → STATUS UNAVAILABLE
- What a 200 does not prove. A responding page proves hosting, nothing more. SIGNAL parses the named fields of each artifact and treats a parse, schema, or hash contradiction as STATUS UNAVAILABLE even when the page responds. A malformed new artifact never revives a prior value as though it were merely stale. No state on this site is ever derived from reachability.
- Transport fallback is narrow. Only a fetch outage may reuse the newest governed prior capture, and only inside its age bound. The failed attempt remains recorded; an old badge never masquerades as a newly captured one.
- Older never clobbers newer. When a fetch fails, the fallback is whichever governed record was verified most recently — never a stale hand-typed value resurrected over fresher captured truth.
- A manual supplement is separate evidence. When a producer artifact omits a public status field, a governed supplement may fill only that named gap. It carries its own reason, timestamp, source reference, and hash; it never impersonates producer bytes or becomes authority for fields the producer already supplies. A fresh producer capture never renews that separate clock: when a supplement controlling a freshness claim exceeds the active age bound, SIGNAL clears its manual claims and fails the product status closed.