# CALIBRATED_SILENCE_SPEC

**Type:** Doctrine (load-bearing specification, not philosophical framing)
**Authority:** Tier 1 Kill-Criterion Adjudication, 2026-04-17, Session E-S02; Clarke, Kroening, Ouaknine, Strichman 2004 (BMC Completeness Threshold); Lakens 2016 (TOST equivalence testing); Altman & Bland 1995 (BMJ); Metaxa et al. 2021 (Auditing Algorithms).
**Invocation:** Step 5 of SKILL.md. Runs BEFORE any silence emission. A silence emission that fails this spec is structural FAILURE of the secondary keystone.

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## Core specification

Calibrated silence is the replacement affordance for the retired "positive-nothing-found" signal. Every silence emission MUST carry all FIVE required fields. Missing any field = repair before emit.

### Required field 1 -- Bounded surface S

Explicit enumeration of the watch-surface bound at Step 1: which Blind-Spot findings, Scoring axes, Reopen records, and defect classes were in scope for this run. Silence outside S carries NO epistemic weight. S is a list of concrete artifact IDs and defect-class IDs, never a prose gesture like "the audit as a whole."

### Required field 2 -- Seeded catch rate R

Pulled from the most recent indistinguishability-passing calibration record within the staleness threshold. Per-class catch rates are included, not just an aggregate. R is a LOWER BOUND on real catch rate (Bieman 1996; Jia & Harman 2011).

### Required field 3 -- Equivalence-test result

TOST-style equivalence test (Lakens 2016) of observed defect rate in S against a pre-registered tolerance band derived from the seeded-mutant catch rate. Silence is licensed ONLY inside the equivalence band. Altman & Bland 1995 is cited at the bottom of every emission: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" -- the TOST converts absence into a calibrated statistical claim on S.

### Required field 4 -- Residual ceremonial-risk note

Explicit prose statement of what is OUTSIDE S and therefore unobserved. Verbatim restatement of the Power 1997 / DiMaggio-Powell 1983 institutional limit: silence outside S may be ritual rather than verification. Concrete enumeration of known out-of-scope defect classes.

### Required field 5 -- Taxonomy-completeness disclaimer

Explicit statement that the seeded-mutant taxonomy bounds the failure modes the Monitor can imagine (Metaxa et al. 2021). Names the taxonomy version used and acknowledges novel failure modes remain invisible.

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## Retirement note (load-bearing)

"Positive-nothing-found" was retired as a current affordance on 2026-04-17 per Tier 1 Kill-Criterion Adjudication (Session E-S02). Clarke et al. 2004 establish that positive-nothing-found is meaningful only when a Completeness Threshold CT can be computed; open-domain research audit has no finite Kripke model and no computable CT. The phrase MAY appear in anti-pattern / forbidden-phrasing / retirement contexts (e.g. this paragraph); it MUST NOT appear as a current affordance anywhere in the Monitor's output.

## Forbidden phrasings

- "RAM's output is defect-free."
- "No defects exist."
- "Positive-nothing-found on the audit" (as a current claim rather than historical-retired reference).
- Any silence emission lacking bounded surface S.

## Downstream contract

The calibrated-silence report is consumed by Reopen Authority Enforcer on the SAME reporting surface as findings reports. Surface parity is load-bearing: if silence is demoted to a footnote or moved to a different channel, the institutional decoupling of existence from findings collapses.
