D021 - Symbols carry their console generation

Status: decided Date: 2026-09-26

Every census group declares OBS_SHARED, OBS_PREVIOUS, OBS_CURRENT or OBS_AVAILABILITY_UNKNOWN, and the sym record carries it. A library belonging to the other generation scores skip, not fail, when wholly absent.

Why: "absent" otherwise means two incompatible things - correctly missing on this generation, or missing work - and summing them makes the coverage figure meaningless. unknown exists so an uncertain symbol is not silently reclassified as an expected absence.

Rejected: one undifferentiated census - buries real gaps under correct absences.