Evidence discipline

scope: generic · severity: technique · confidence: proven · subsystem: method

A bring-up runs for months and every conclusion is provisional. What survives is evidence, not verdicts.

Rules

Separate observation from conclusion, always, in writing. “dmesg shows X” and “therefore the driver is broken” are two different claims with two different lifetimes. The first stays true.

Date everything, and prefer absolute dates. “last week” is unreadable in a month, and an agent reading your handoff has no idea when you wrote it.

A status without evidence is not a status. “WiFi works” decays into a lie. “WiFi: associated, survived 40 rekeys and 20 suspend cycles on 2026-08-21, zero restarts” stays useful and is falsifiable.

Record refuted hypotheses, with what refuted them. They are as valuable as the confirmed ones and are otherwise re-tested by the next person — or by you, in three weeks. If the refutation was weak, say that too.

A tool should print evidence, not a verdict. ph-daily-audit.sh does this deliberately: a tool that prints PASS invites you to skip reading the output, and a wrong PASS is worse than no tool.

Keep the raw capture. A summary you cannot re-derive is a summary you cannot re-audit. On taimen the stock-Android camera captures are kept in-tree specifically because they are unreproducible without reflashing stock.