This document defines the public governance boundary for evidence handling, status language, and claim discipline in ZPE Video.
Canonical anchors:
- Repository:
https://github.com/Zer0pa/ZPE-Video - Contact:
architects@zer0pa.ai
Governance baseline:
- Technical claims must be evidence-backed.
- Runtime artifacts, proof artifacts, and explicit phase decisions outrank prose if they conflict.
- Contradictions are retained and logged rather than rewritten away.
- Negative results are first-class artifacts.
- A local or narrow improvement does not count as a repo-level win if the governing gate remains red.
Concrete examples: Phase 08 closed as comparator_gate_failed against
AV1/VVC/learned baselines; Phase 09.4.1.1.2 closed as
zpe_packet_beaten_by_commodity_format on fair-baseline archive query;
Phase 09.4.1.1.2.1-A closed as kill when the mean-importance control
matched the ROI lane. Every kill verdict is preserved in full under
docs/transparency/ alongside the single defended
wedge (Candidate B, perception-receipt cross-writer hash stability).
| Token | Meaning |
|---|---|
always-in-beta | The repo ships products when they have utility. What installs today works; what installs next month may be materially better. Cadence is continuous, not milestoned. Not an apology, not an excuse. |
defend | A claim passed the plan-contract acceptance test with explicit kill criteria and independent-method verification. |
kill | A claim failed its plan-contract kill criterion. Recorded verbatim; not softened. |
bounded_signal_only | A phase produced real local signal but did not clear its own acceptance gate. Neither defend nor kill; recorded as-is. |
retire_surface | A bounded investigation was completed and the tested surface should not receive more tuning under the same contract. |
mixed_snapshot | A proof set is historically valuable but not a clean current run-of-record. |
The repo is allowed to claim:
- exact phase outcomes with citation to PLAN + SUMMARY + machine-readable result
- exact metrics from explicit artifacts (a file path, not a rewritten number)
- exact file and proof routes (every path in a claim must resolve via
ls) - exact current blockers
- one narrow defended commercial wedge (perception receipts; see
docs/WEDGE.md) with cited evidence
The repo is not allowed to claim:
- broad product superiority from a narrow defended surface
- generalized superiority from a retired or killed surface
- proof freshness that the artifacts do not actually have
- "primitive-native" or "Compass-8" product-architecture framing for this
codec; this codec does not use Compass-8 directional encoding (see
docs/_reorientation/2026-04-17/NOVELTY_CARD.md)
Use these routes for governance disputes:
- Claim/evidence dispute: open a GitHub issue with the Evidence Dispute template
- Policy or scope concern: open a GitHub issue and cite the exact file and sentence at issue
- Security or conduct escalation:
architects@zer0pa.ai
If a public-facing document and a run artifact disagree, the run artifact and explicit phase decision are the source of truth until the conflict is resolved.