# RE-ADJUDICATION UNDER CUMULATIVE CORRECTION

**2026-08-04.** Counter byte-identical. Nothing recalibrated, because nothing
needed to be.

> **There is nothing to re-adjudicate: the proven set is empty, and has always
> been empty.** Verified three ways below.
>
> **And the cumulative correction did not catch a false positive last session.**
> It caught nothing — there was nothing in the proven set to catch. What it did
> was tighten α from 0.0026 to 0.0013 within one session, which demonstrated the
> mechanism working, not a demotion.
>
> **The real exposure was elsewhere, and it was real: a promotion could bypass
> the cumulative correction entirely.** That hole is now closed structurally, so
> the retroactive pass this order describes can never become necessary.

---

## 1. The registry state, verified (STEP 1 + 2)

```
scripts/proven-status.js  → PROVEN_SET: EMPTY
                             hits LOSES · total_bases INCONCLUSIVE · strikeouts INCONCLUSIVE

featureRegistry           → PROVEN features: ["recent_frequency_prior"]
                             validatedSkills(BOMBER|GHOST|TORCH|FLAME|SCALPEL|SINKER) = {}
                             conditioning entries recorded: 0
```

The single PROVEN *feature* is `recent_frequency_prior` — **the incumbent counter
itself**, proven by the S78 ablation showing it is ~100% of the champion's
resolution. It is the baseline every challenger is measured against, not a
conditioning interaction, and demoting it would leave the model with nothing to
grade from. **No conditioning entry has ever reached PROVEN**, so there is no
archetype-slot to re-run and no grade that depends on a demoted feature.

**STEP 3 (demote) and STEP 4 (recalibrate) are therefore vacuous — correctly.**
`readjudicateAll([], …)` returns `NOTHING TO RE-ADJUDICATE — the proven set is
empty`, which is the honest output rather than a no-op glossed over.

## 2. The hole that WAS open, and is now closed

The order's underlying worry — *make sure the standard applied from the start, so
no retroactive correction is ever needed* — was well founded. Two audits:

**(a) `promote()` did not require the cumulative denominator.** It checked n,
lift and CI, but nothing stopped a future session from testing eight hypotheses,
correcting by eight, and promoting on a p-value that would not survive the
programme's real denominator. **That is exactly the hole that makes a
"re-adjudicate everything" pass necessary later.**

Now structural — `isSufficient` refuses evidence that:
- carries **no** `bonferroni_tests` at all;
- was corrected against **fewer** tests than the cumulative count;
- has a `p_value` that does not clear `0.05 / bonferroni_tests`.

```
no correction recorded                    → refused
per-session (8) when cumulative is 38     → refused
cumulative (38) but p = 0.01 > 0.0013     → refused
cumulative (38) and p = 0.0005            → accepted
```

The same rule guards `recordConditioning(status: PROVEN)`. Locked by test.

**(b) Two of four analysis scripts still corrected per-session.**
`pitcher-prove-k.js` and `tb-solo-and-interactions.js` used
`SOLO.length + INTERACTIONS.length`; both now use the cumulative ledger, as
`cluster-prove.js` already did. **Cumulative correction is native across every
analysis path.**

## 3. Standing re-ablation (STEP 5, second line) — built

`src/services/model/reAblation.js`. Pure and injectable: it takes evidence and
returns auditable verdicts, performs no measurement, and reaches no database, so
the decision rule cannot quietly drift from the gate's.

Every verdict records **both p-values and both test counts**, so a demotion can
be re-derived by anyone:

```
original_p_value · original_bonferroni_tests · original_corrected_alpha
current_p_value  · cumulative_bonferroni_tests · cumulative_corrected_alpha
verdict + reason
```

**A feature promoted at α=0.05/20 and re-tested against α=0.05/60 can demote on
the same p-value.** That is not unfair — the bar rose because the programme has
since had more chances to get lucky, and holding old results to the old bar is
how a lucky draw becomes permanent.

**No fresh measurement is `PENDING_RETEST`, never a demotion.** Absence of a
re-test is not evidence a feature stopped working, and demoting on it would
punish whichever stat happens to be off-season.

Three ways a proven feature can stop being true are documented in the module: it
was never true; the game changed; or the bar rose.

## 4. Net effect on the proven set

**Zero.** Nothing survived because nothing was there; nothing demoted; nothing
recalibrated; no ledger event was emitted, because emitting "recalibrated after
re-adjudication" when nothing changed would itself be a false signal of rigour.

Frozen clusters were **not exempted** — they were examined and contain no proven
conditioning. The counter is byte-identical.

## 5. Going forward

- **Cumulative correction is native** on every analysis path and **required** for
  every promotion.
- **Standing re-ablation is available** and should run whenever a proven entry
  exists and fresh sample arrives.
- **The bar only rises.** Current cumulative count 38, α = 0.0013. Every new
  hypothesis tightens it for everything after — so re-testing standing candidates
  is now mathematically the disciplined choice over inventing new ones.
- **The first promotion this programme ever makes will already have been held to
  the cumulative bar**, which is the outcome this order was actually asking for.

**Not recommended:** treating the empty proven set as a problem to solve by
lowering the bar, or emitting a public "re-adjudication" event for a pass that
changed nothing.