D108 - A report and a corpus differ, and only the corpus carries machine origin

Status: decided Date: 2026-09-26

A report (OBS|) is what the probe emits alone; its only origin is build. A corpus (OBSCORPUS|) is what the driver produces from a session, with machine identity - target, GPU, firmware, whether it is real hardware - asserted by the operator through drive --part and denormalised onto every line. What the probe observes about itself travels as ordinary records.

Why: the probe cannot certify its own machine; inside an emulator a version query returns the emulator's choice. Self-reported identity would be an assumption presented as a measurement.

Rejected: the probe stamping its own firmware and target.