Research: current-main minimal in-band Contract C conformance RC1

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Classification

Draft Research Infrastructure / current-main supervisor-context conformance. Do not merge. This is not a clean-room independent Consumer B reproduction and does not authorize Contract C/D mutation, production Decision changes, release, tag, promotion, Authorization, or execution.

Terminal status

Scientific disposition: SUPPORTED_CURRENT_MAIN_MINIMAL_IN_BAND_CONFORMANCE

Programme gate: BLOCKED_CONTEXT_FREE_REPRODUCTION_REQUIRED

Terminal record:

• path: research/contract-c-minimal-in-band-conformance-rc1/TERMINAL_RECORD.md
• terminal record commit: 3227726e8aee0eefa637fc65a756ca90edd6c844

Exact base and immutable maintained surface

Protected Decision Engine main at launch:
7be709b2141c767c5da89b8b94cf90233c4238fe

Maintained V1 blobs remained unchanged:

• Contract C ingress: f57a8067dadc04afb459f1d0342b2b786ec775e6
• supported-claim policy: 2225f73eb6eefd83609f0ba19e4786d1267dd527
• Decision materializer: 1562fb29da6679a0cf894e478cbdd4ae16e21a18

Upstream frozen research authority

• Apparatus surface-necessity PR #89 terminal commit: c5fa9be39e6d521fdad8fd4c9cbb1d3cd10cc53b
• Apparatus decisive run: 34695273270
• Apparatus artifact: 10298184921
• digest: sha256:2f3e713524fb978f9ab5b7e51c0402b276f57b56f1c6b5e59ba10b7256d22fae
• frozen in-band handoff authority: Apparatus PR Research: qualify frozen Decision core against parent-bound Contract C #85 receipt ad1ffbd7906a7cf34cce5afa906a5797cd4a14ff

Exact copied handoff bytes:

• valid-shadow.json: blob 14e88cbc691f7eba9366b4bf88611ef834637f27
• contract-b-index.json: blob 4de40713482a1fc5a075a230a61e19acc25afbd9
• object SHA-256: sha256:325962ebcdbf6af836bb6193a451524ccd40b4d10f2394ff9f703fbfce1ec1e3
• result-set identity: result-set:4483272c4f6fbd9cb2362be7e3174bbd00aff3cf761d6c374897f3478818c9f0

No old PR #67 consumer implementation, Apparatus producer/sidecar code, CAL semantic code, or hidden evaluator logic was copied into this consumer.

Preregistration and frozen expectation order

• preregistration commit: 26d096b007f14bdce31793f7d9e186ee4feeaa4b
• frozen expectations committed before consumer implementation
• decisive scientific head: 3ad518b9315d4767eae3d2a46f14e09975949479

The research consumer was restricted to existing Contract C structures plus the candidate non_deciding contribution channel. It did not require sidecar-specific member IDs, state IDs, receipts, duplicated carrier binding, or a second attribution object.

Preserved first-run deviation

Initial run 34695672580, job 103558617719 failed closed on the missing-external-profile test with the wrong error class: whole_object_mismatch was emitted before the intended missing-authority-context error.

No object was accepted and no profile self-selection occurred. A narrow correction reordered validation to validate the external profile object before exact-object digest comparison. No handoff, expectation, semantic, policy, hostile mutation, or maintained source changed.

Correction/decisive head:
3ad518b9315d4767eae3d2a46f14e09975949479

Decisive execution

• run: 34695724968
• job: 103558752853
• result: PASS
• artifact: 10297559181
• artifact digest: sha256:609f32ce2fdcceae70710322342521a74dcb084d73918bbe3cef7f7e423f4c92

Observed from the exact frozen in-band object:

• causal channels: [non_deciding, non_deciding]
• causal evidence: [u-a, u-b]
• causal form: independent_sufficient_alternatives
• policy-equivalent outcome: HOLD / contract_c_proposition_not_checkable
• same-members jointly_sufficient variant remained distinct
• causal/residual neutral evidence remained distinguishable
• residual-only neutral evidence remained reconstructable
• no sidecar-only fields were required
• no scalar/confidence/winner surface was required or invented

The deliberately unsafe causal non_deciding => CLEAR mutant was exercised and killed by the frozen expected HOLD outcome.

All 15 hostile controls were rejected or exposed as semantic changes, including wrong exact object/profile/Contract-B bindings, proposition/evidence substitution, missing/overlapping/unclassified participation, stale result identity, causal cardinality errors, neutral->support/counterevidence laundering, and dropped neutral evidence.

Maintained controls on the same exact head

• engine invariant sweep: 81/81
• output-quality sweep: 56/56
• combination matrix: 6309/6309
• Gate head: 14/14
• Decision materializer: 4/4
• Contract C seam fixtures: 165 checks across 8 fixtures
• maintained released Contract C 1.0 integration: PASS
• released supported control: CLEAR / contract_c_supported
• non-supported control: HOLD
• wrong version: rejected

The maintained released-1.0 ingress still rejects the research successor, preserving the version boundary.

Bounded inference

The minimized in-band invariant set survives current protected Decision V1 conformance while ordinary released behavior remains unchanged. This strengthens the evidence that a Contract C successor can reuse existing contribution/evidence/basis/residual/causal-form machinery and add the missing neutral semantic category in-band, rather than making the richer sidecar canonical.

Remaining gate

This implementation is supervisor-context conformance, not the project’s required context-free independent Consumer B reproduction.

The next justified action is one narrow context-free reproduction using only a frozen handoff/specification/expected-behavior aperture, without prior implementation/evaluator/research history.

No Contract C successor version, promotion, merge, release, tag, Authorization, or execution is authorized. Keep Draft.

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Remaining gate satisfied by fresh context-free reproduction

The BLOCKED_CONTEXT_FREE_REPRODUCTION_REQUIRED programme gate recorded in this PR has now been exercised on an isolated sparse aperture.

Fresh evidence:

• research-scaffold-harness Draft PR Promotion: bounded Contract C 1.0.0 → Decision → Contract D 1.0.0 #29
• aperture commit cb1d27ff00ae030093c5e97d78477cec7f20c6f4
• fresh implementation/test freeze c1c31885f5802d4ea710dea7bcec214e977b9f03
• receipt commit 07e60447fae17369be5676f013c187b9fd0bfd98
• clean aperture receipt, network OFF, zero forbidden reads
• prereveal tests 21/21 PASS

Frozen post-freeze evaluator:

• evaluator commit 97cb968ac8793adb575640404730399a8798ad98
• decisive run 34717144897
• job 103616318296
• artifact 10305635450
• digest sha256:e0b1e6427f935e801ae41566907580fb0ef58fc7b32642783b61030b70e8fd47
• disposition SUPPORTED_CONTEXT_FREE_CONSUMER_B_REPRODUCTION
• failures []
• baseline remained HOLD
• weak non_deciding => CLEAR mutant killed

Therefore the specific context-free reproduction blocker recorded by this PR is satisfied within the bounded tested fragment.

This does not itself authorize a Contract C successor version, merge, promotion, release, tag, production Decision mutation, Authorization, or execution.