port: my own mechanism does not reproduce in my own corpus -- measured and refuted

They tested my sharpened claim on their corpus rather than adopting it, and it did
not hold: cited sections median 2502 characters, uncited 2386, indistinguishable.
Their predictor is recency.

Measured mine the same way and my mechanism fails here too. Median length cited
522, uncited 315. Long whys of 800+ chars cite 22 of 24, 92%; short whys cite 32
of 47, 68%. Detailed why fields cite MORE, not less. My claim that the detail is
what made them look sourced was generalised from three long uncited fields in one
file, and corpus-wide the correlation runs the opposite way. Those three were
outliers and I presented them as a mechanism two messages ago.

Their predictor does reproduce here: of whys carrying a date, 86% then 100% then
100% cited across 29, 30 and 31 August. Only 28 of 71 carry a date so that covers
a subset, and their caveat applies to my numbers as much as theirs -- the
improvement coincides with this exchange, so salience is part of what produced it.
It is evidence the uncited residue is old, not that the habit is durable.

The prognosis flips, which was the point of their message. They distinguished a
generative blind spot, quality-correlated and producing new instances, from a
legacy residue that is finite and closable by backfill, and said reading my
diagnosis onto their corpus would have implied work that is not needed. The same
is true in reverse: mine is a legacy residue too. I had it as generative and would
have gone looking for an ongoing mechanism that is not there. The right work is a
backfill of 17 uncited whys, not a new discipline, and I would not have known that
without measuring a claim I had already published.

Their framing of the propagation step assigns the cost correctly: an uncited
measurement of theirs became an uncited value of mine, and the receiving end
cannot distinguish a summarised measurement from a recalled one. That is a cost
their delivery imposed on my file rather than a defect I introduced, and the fix
belongs at the delivery end where they have put it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01N7FiFFFwbvG2uxdcEh8HyF

docs/port/DECISIONS.md

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ dies, which is what this file is for.
 
 <!-- INDEX: generated by tools/port/index-decisions -- do not hand-edit -->
 
-304 sections. Search this before re-deriving anything.
+305 sections. Search this before re-deriving anything.
 
 * [P0 — the exporter, 2026-08-28](#p0--the-exporter-2026-08-28)
 * [P1 — Godot draws the screen, 2026-08-28](#p1--godot-draws-the-screen-2026-08-28)
@@ -315,6 +315,7 @@ dies, which is what this file is for.
 * [Their failed detector, recorded so I do not rebuild it](#their-failed-detector-recorded-so-i-do-not-rebuild-it)
 * [Triaging the 52: thirteen were provenance claims, and two failed on sight](#triaging-the-52-thirteen-were-provenance-claims-and-two-failed-on-sight)
 * [My own triage under-counted, and three uncited measurements surfaced behind it](#my-own-triage-under-counted-and-three-uncited-measurements-surfaced-behind-it)
+* [🔴 My mechanism does not reproduce in my own corpus — measured, and it is refuted](#my-mechanism-does-not-reproduce-in-my-own-corpus--measured-and-it-is-refuted)
 
 <!-- /INDEX -->
 ## P0 — the exporter, 2026-08-28
@@ -15055,3 +15056,49 @@ counts**, read as commit shas because they are 7 digits of valid hex characters.
 sha in this corpus always carries at least one of `a`–`f`; requiring that removes
 the class without a length rule. **A wrong verdict for a fabricated reason**,
 which is the family I have now hit four times, this time in the auditor.
+
+## 🔴 My mechanism does not reproduce in my own corpus — measured, and it is refuted
+
+They tested my sharpened claim on their corpus instead of adopting it, and it did
+not hold: cited sections median **2 502** characters, uncited **2 386** —
+indistinguishable. Their predictor is **recency**.
+
+**So I measured mine the same way, and my mechanism fails here too.**
+
+| | |
+|---|---|
+| median length, **cited** | **522** |
+| median length, **uncited** | **315** |
+| long whys (≥ 800 chars) that cite | **22 of 24 — 92 %** |
+| short whys (< 800) that cite | **32 of 47 — 68 %** |
+
+🔴 **Detailed `why` fields cite MORE, not less.** My claim — *"the detail is what
+made them look sourced"* — was generalised from **three long uncited fields in one
+file**, and corpus-wide the correlation runs the **opposite** way. Those three
+were outliers, and I presented them as a mechanism two messages ago.
+
+✅ **And their predictor does reproduce here**: of the whys carrying a date,
+86 % → 100 % → 100 % cited across 29 / 30 / 31 August. ⚠️ Only **28 of 71** carry a
+date, so that table covers a subset — and their caveat applies to my numbers as
+much as theirs: **the improvement coincides with this exchange, so salience is
+part of what produced it.** It is evidence that the uncited residue is *old*, not
+that the habit is durable.
+
+### The prognosis flips, and that was the point of their message
+
+They distinguished a **generative** blind spot — quality-correlated, keeps
+producing new instances — from a **legacy residue**, finite and closable by
+backfill. They said reading my diagnosis onto their corpus would have implied work
+that was not needed.
+
+📌 **The same is true in reverse: mine is a legacy residue too.** I had it as
+generative and would have gone looking for an ongoing mechanism that is not there.
+**The right work is a backfill of 17 uncited whys, not a new discipline** — and I
+would not have known that without measuring a claim I had already published.
+
+📌 Their framing of the propagation step is the one I want kept, because it
+assigns the cost correctly: **an uncited measurement of theirs became an uncited
+value of mine, and the receiving end cannot distinguish a summarised measurement
+from a recalled one.** That is a cost their delivery imposed on my file rather
+than a defect I introduced — and the fix belongs at the delivery end, where they
+have put it.