vyndr/specs/order-zero-consensus-ruler.md

Order Zero — CONSENSUS RULER + ENDPOINT VERIFICATION

Date: 2026-08-01 · Phase 1 measured against the live prod feed with the real key; Phase 2 built challenger-first — the live ruler is byte-identical.

Gates: tests 4,022 passed / 322 suites · next build exit 0 · keyed verification run on prod · challenger delta recorded.

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PHASE 1 — KEYED VERIFICATION

Run via GET /api/internal/propline-verify (internal-key gated, read-only, no cache/ledger/grade writes). Breadth reuses proplineAdapter.fetchRaw — the exact live request — so this measures what the pipeline actually receives.

1.1 WNBA is NOT thin at the feed. It was starved by our own allow-list.

MLB 3,138 props / 20 events · WNBA 160 props / 4 events. Never pooled.

	MLB	WNBA
books/prop in the feed	3.61	4.21
books/prop after ALLOWED_BOOKS	0.57	1.20
props INVISIBLE (zero admitted books)	2,033 (64.8%)	46 (28.8%)

WNBA has BETTER feed breadth than MLB (4.21 vs 3.61). The answer to the order's question is unambiguous: WNBA was allow-list-starved, exactly as MLB was — not thin at source.

That does not by itself explain WNBA's anti-predictive result, and I am not going to claim it does. It removes one candidate explanation ("no market to measure against") and leaves the ruler bend as a live hypothesis to re-test after the fix. Nothing here promotes WNBA out of abstention.

The headline number for MLB is not the mean — it is that we cannot see 64.8% of the MLB slate at all.

1.2 Exchange reality — PARTIALLY confirmed, and two candidates are dead

Reference-book presence, as a share of props:

book	MLB	WNBA
smarkets	27.1%	0%	exchange
novig	22.2%	46.3%	exchange
kalshi	14.9%	8.8%	prediction market
bovada	9.2%	16.3%	offshore, PropLine's own no-vig fallback
pinnacle	0%	0%	the classic sharp anchor
matchbook	0%	0%	exchange
polymarket	0%	0%	prediction market

Confirmed: exchanges do carry real props — smarkets 873 quotes, novig 730, kalshi 1,369 on MLB. The hypothesis was not empty.

Three candidates are dead for player props: pinnacle, matchbook, polymarket returned zero on both sports. Pinnacle carries 144k markets globally — just not these. We have no sharp anchor for props. Twice measured, both sports.

1.3 The coverage curve — the number that decides the ruler

Strict eligibility: ≥2 reference books posting BOTH sides at the SAME line. One-sided quotes cannot be de-vigged; two books at different lines are not the same market.

reference policy	MLB n≥2	WNBA n≥2
exchange_only	14.3%	5.6%
exchange_plus_sharp (+pinnacle, bovada)	14.3%	5.6%
exchange_plus_us (+DK/FD/MGM/BR)	28.1%	46.3%
takeable_only	12.6%	30.6%

Adding pinnacle and matchbook/polymarket changes nothing — they are 0%.

Of props we can actually GRADE (those with an admitted book), consensus is available on 80.5% of MLB (923/1,146) and 54.9% of WNBA (79/144). That is the operative number: the 15% figure is diluted by props we cannot see at all.

1.4 DFS is the trap, quantified

prizepicks covers 82.3% of MLB props and sleeper 68.1% of WNBA — the highest coverage in the entire feed. Admitting DFS "for breadth" would have looked like the single biggest improvement available and would have bent the ruler in a new direction. Fixed-payout, deliberately shaded, flat juice. Permanently excluded from all pricing.

1.5 Endpoint verification — works / partial / no, FOR OUR TIER

endpoint	verdict	evidence
/v1/sports	✅ WORKS	54 sports, all active
/v1/markets/resolution-summary	✅ WORKS	2,085,840 props graded in 30d
/events/{id}/context (MLB)	✅ WORKS, FREE	venue, roof_type, is_indoor, both probable pitchers + handedness, lineup_confirmed, home-plate umpire, weather
/events/{id}/context (WNBA)	⚠️ PARTIAL	404 — MLB-only today, as documented
/events/{id}/odds/closing	⚠️ PARTIAL — REDACTED	200 with 2,102 outcomes and 0 prices + upgrade_url
/events/{id}/movement	⚠️ PARTIAL — REDACTED	2,102 outcomes, 0 prices, steam: []
/events/{id}/results	❌ NO	403
/exports/resolved-props	❌ NO	403 on all four sport keys

A correction to my own first pass. I initially classified /odds/closing and /movement as WORKS because the bodies were non-empty. They are structure-only redactions — full shape, zero prices, plus an upgrade_url. detectRedaction now counts actual prices and downgrades works→partial, and a test locks it. A non-empty body is not proof of access.

1.6 The $19/mo question — answered, with one honest gap

/exports/resolved-props is 403 for us, so we cannot pull settlements. But /markets/resolution-summary proves they exist to be bought (30 days):

sport	props graded	events
baseball_mlb	1,798,850	363
basketball_wnba	152,960	72
soccer_mls	41,444	35
soccer_liga_mx	15,037	21
soccer_brasileirao / world_cup / UCL / Europa / Conference / …	~60,000 combined	~340
mma_ufc	2,738	39
tennis, golf, rugby	~19,000	~1,150

Soccer settles. ~15 competitions graded in the last 30 days. Our standing "soccer grades into a void" is a Pro-tier ($19/mo) problem, not a data availability problem.

NBA is absent — and that is seasonal, not a coverage gap. It is July; /sports lists basketball_nba as active. I cannot confirm NBA settlement until the season starts, and I am not going to infer it.

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PHASE 2 — THE CONSENSUS RULER (challenger-first, NOT live)

2.1 The three-way split — src/config/bookRoles.js

One allow-list was answering two different questions: "can we show this?" and "can we price against this?" Conflating them is what bent the ruler.

• TAKEABLE — a user can actually bet here. Best price, line shopping.
• REFERENCE — may price the ruler; never surfaced as a place to bet. Selected policy: exchange_plus_us.
• EXCLUDED — DFS pick'em + offshore/intl. Permanently barred from pricing.

Deliberate deviation, stated plainly. The order said remove the 6 phantom entries. I kept them. They returned zero PropLine quotes, but PropLine is not our only provider — the odds-api backup path may carry Caesars/bet365/etc. A book that never appears is never matched, so keeping it costs nothing; deleting it risks silently dropping real books on the backup with no upside. Recorded in PHANTOM_ON_PROPLINE rather than enacted as a deletion. Reverse this if you'd rather.

The honest limitation, recorded in the config itself: including soft US books makes this a MARKET consensus, not a SHARP one. It is a large improvement on one arbitrary book. It is not the sharp closing line the category's leaders are measured against — and §1.2 says we cannot build that one, because no sharp book prices these props.

2.2 The rule — src/services/consensusRuler.js

1. Group by the SAME LINE. Different lines are never averaged.
2. TWO-SIDED REFERENCE quotes only. A one-sided price cannot be de-vigged.
3. MEDIAN of per-book de-vigged fair_prob — median, so one stale exchange cannot drag the ruler.
4. n≥2, or fall back to single-book and label it (source: 'single_book', stamped v1). Never silently mixed — a column holding both is two rulers wearing one name.
5. No reference quote at all → null, source: 'none'. Never fabricated.

2.3 The challenger delta — and a correction I caught mid-run

My first delta run was wrong and I stopped it. I modelled the incumbent as first-row-wins over the raw feed and it reported that an EXCLUDED book was "the market" on 69% of MLB prop-lines, prizepicks alone at 47%.

That is false. normalizeProps applies ALLOWED_BOOKS before dedupeProps runs, so DFS books never reach the incumbent. The allow-list, for all the coverage it costs, does keep DFS out of the ruler. Overstating the incumbent's badness would have been as dishonest as understating it — and more persuasive. Corrected, tested, and re-run.

Corrected results (allowedBooks respected — incumbent is 100% admitted books, no DFS):

	MLB	WNBA
prop-line groups	6,422	853
gradeable (has an admitted book)	1,146 (17.8%)	144 (16.9%)
consensus available	995	87
comparable (both rulers)	923	79
incumbent books	betmgm 586 · dk 538 · fd 16 · br 6	dk 90 · fd 54

Delta (consensus − incumbent, probability points, over side):

	MLB	WNBA
mean	+1.50	−0.29
median	0	0
p10 / p90	−1.6 / +10.0	−2.0 / +1.6
median abs / p90 abs	0.5 / 11.95	0.55 / 2.5
disagree ≥2 pts	24.8%	20.3%
disagree ≥5 pts	17.0%	2.5%

Read it honestly: the median prop does not move at all. The change is concentrated in a right-skewed minority — on MLB, 17% of comparable props move by 5+ probability points, and the skew is one-directional (p90 +10.0 vs p10 −1.6): the incumbent systematically prices the OVER below the exchange-inclusive consensus. WNBA is nearly symmetric and much tighter.

What this does and does not establish. It establishes the two rulers genuinely differ, on a minority of props, in a consistent direction. It does not establish that the new ruler is better — that requires re-running the edge and CLV measurements against it, which is the next order.

2.4 ruler_version stamped at the boundary — APPLIED

ledger_entries.ruler_version (migration recorded as migrations/025_ledger_ruler_version.sql; applied to prod). 1,384 existing rows backfilled to v1_first_book — a statement of fact, not an assumption: every row to date was produced by the first-book rule. 629 of them carry a fair_prob_lock. New rows stamp CURRENT_RULER_VERSION via ledgerService.

NEVER pool edge or CLV across differing ruler_version values. The denominator changed; the numbers are not the same measurement. This is the same no-pooling boundary as model_version, and it is arithmetically forced.

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PHASE 3 — CONSEQUENCE

MLB isotonic p_win remains PROVISIONAL. It was calibrated against the v1_first_book ruler. It does not promote until re-run against the consensus ruler, after this delta is reviewed. Recorded in MASTER-PLAN.

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WHAT IS AND IS NOT LIVE

LIVE: the internal verification endpoint; bookRoles.js and consensusRuler.js as libraries; the ruler_version column and stamp.

NOT LIVE — deliberately: ALLOWED_BOOKS is unchanged, so the served slate is byte-identical. CURRENT_RULER_VERSION is still v1_first_book. No live path calls consensusRuler. No grade, cache or slate changed.

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THE DECISION THIS TEES UP

Widening ALLOWED_BOOKS to the reference set would make 64.8% of the MLB slate visible for the first time — that is the single largest product change available, and it is a config edit.

But it is not free: those props would grade against a market we have never measured our model on, and every edge number reset to v2. That is the next order's decision, not this one's — and it should be taken after the ruler re-run, not before it.

OPEN

1. Ruler policy sign-off — exchange_plus_us selected off the curve. Confirm.
2. Pro tier ($19/mo) — buys settlement for soccer (proven), CLV via /odds/closing, steam via /movement, and /results. Genuinely cheap relative to what it unblocks.
3. The 6 phantom books — kept, against the order's wording, with reasoning above. Reverse if you disagree.
4. /context is free and richer than what we hand-built — umpire, roof, pitcher handedness, lineup confirmation. Wiring it is a later order.