3.1 adds StaticFinding.rung beside evidence_level rather than renaming it. The existing evidence_level carries `static_corroboration`, emitted by the flat IR overlay -- a path Req 4.4 demotes to the suspicion band. Restating that as model_corroborated would claim a CPG arbitrated something it never saw, and rewriting every legacy finding to suspicion would be a product-visible regression nobody asked for. So `rung` defaults to suspicion and is raised only by ladder.at_rung(finding, verdict), which is the structural form of Req 5.4: nothing rises above suspicion without a Verdict behind it. The witness travels with the rung, because a rung without its evidence is just a louder assertion. It reaches markdown, JSON and SARIF. 3.2 is the judge, and it is defined as much by what it lacks. Three exhaustive outcomes: the model entails (report it, never call the model), the model contradicts (drop the claim, record why), the model cannot decide (report suspicion). The LLM gets one bounded typed question with tools=[] so it cannot search for the site, asked only about the residual the graph cannot settle -- whether a sanitizer on a REAL flow suffices. Its answer can only confirm a flow the CPG already found; it can never conjure one. Req 8.5 is asserted structurally: a test parses judge.py and fails on any AST name like k_runs/majority/vote/average/acceptance/floor/budget, any for/while loop, or an import from the deleted round machinery. That test first matched the word "votes" in the module's own docstring, which is why it now inspects code rather than text. Verified live against a real CPG, not only scripted rows: vuln rung=model_entailed request.args["name"] -> db.execute(...) fixed rung=suspicion no source reaches this sink model calls made: 0 Both sides arbitrated by the graph with the LLM never consulted -- the thing the prior architecture could not do at any price. 678 passing, mypy/ruff clean, gates byte-identical, zero orphaned modules. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T7XD7x5KonMdmGRkp63EQG
30 KiB
Implementation Plan: model-grounded-detection
Guidance for the implementing agent
Read this before starting. It exists so you never have to reverse-engineer a decision this spec already made.
- The failure mode to avoid. The prior work logged eighteen defects, three of them the same shape: a fix applied to one instance while the class of the bug stayed. When you fix a retry, a key, an error path — ask "where else is this shape?" and fix all of them in the one change. That single discipline prevents most of the escalations that happened here.
- The gate baseline is sacred and is your safety net.
benchmarks/measurements/2026-09-06-gate-baseline.txtholds the byte-exact output ofpython -m openultrasast.{gate,map_gate,pair_gate}. Run all three before and after any change and diff against it. If a gate moves, you changed something that was never supposed to change — stop and find it. The wholelearning/package is absent from the gate path (the gates import onlypairs,benchmark,findings,mapping,preprocess,rank,complexity.map), so its deletion cannot move a gate; a moved gate means you touched a retained path by mistake. - RED first, always. Write the failing test, watch it fail for the right reason, then implement. One
commit per task with selective
git add. Push when a group's independent review passes. - Zero-dependency core.
pyproject.tomldependencies = []never changes. Joern, the LLM endpoint and the execution tier are capability-detected, never imported at module load. Copy the exact pattern insemantic/extra.py::has_semantic_extraandsandbox/probe.py::resolve_sandbox_probe— probe, don't import. - Redaction on every prompt and persisted artifact (
redaction.redact_secrets). Non-negotiable. - Two phases can end the design cheaply. Phase 1 (subtraction) is reversible via git and gate-protected. Phase 2 (the Joern spike) is a go/no-go: if Joern cannot produce a deterministic verdict on the injection family at acceptable cost, the design stops there, exactly as the candidate ceiling could have stopped the prior spec. Do not build groups 3–6 until phase 2 is green.
The coupling map (for the subtraction, group 1)
These are every touchpoint of the code being removed. Handle all of them in group 1; do not discover them by running into import errors.
learning/package — imported by:cli.py(thelearningsubcommand group +_run_family_detectors_learning*helpers +from .learning.families import FamilyTaxonomy+from .learning.proposer import Proposer),pairs.py(the hunter-scoring path —_evaluate_hunter_pair,_family_metrics,_hunter_outcome,build_pair_signals, function-local imports oflearning.{families,scoring,classify,rounds}at lines ~519, 1151, 1166, 1184),semantic/seed.pyandsemantic/loo.py(the teacher-rule import fromlearning.split), andlearning/endpoint.py(retained — re-homed, not deleted).
- Mechanism/evolve loop —
improve/evolve.py,improve/validator.py,semantic/mechanisms.py,semantic/variants.py,semantic/variant_search.py,semantic/prove_budget.py,semantic/loo.py,semantic/seed.py, andsemantic/__init__.py(re-exports).cli.pyhas the--mechanism-candidatessurface and_mechanisms_export. config.py—LearningConfig,_load_learning, and thelearningfield onResolvedConfig.reports.py— thelearning=keyword on the report writers and_append_learning; the SARIFfamily/detector/verifierproperties (keepfamily, dropdetector/verifier).pairs.pyis gate-load-bearing viapair_gate(the overlay/inventory path,_evaluate_overlay_pair/_evaluate_inventory_pair). The hunter-scoring path is the learning coupling and is not on the gate path. Remove the hunter path and its learning imports; keep the overlay/inventory path untouched; confirmpair_gatebyte-identical.
What is retained and re-homed (do not delete)
learning/families.py → model/taxonomy.py; learning/candidates.py → model/candidates.py;
learning/endpoint.py → model/endpoint.py. semantic/obligations/ stays (its facts feed the dominance
queries in group 4). The gates, redaction.py, pairs.py overlay/inventory path — unchanged.
Group 1 — Subtract and audit (gate-protected, no Joern yet)
-
1.1 Port the security vocabularies out before deleting their modules
- Create
src/openultrasast/model/specs.pyand move into it, as data, the knowledge the deleted modules carry:_GUARD_PATTERNSand the guard-kind vocabulary fromsemantic/variants.py; the sink token tables (frombenchmarks/pairs/catalog_gen.py::_SINK_TOKENSandsemantic/facts.pySinkFacts) as the seedTaintSpecsource/sink/sanitizer lists per family; a reference to the obligation facts (semantic/obligations/facts.py) for theDominanceSpecoperations/dischargers. This is data movement, not logic — the CPG queries that consume it come in groups 2 and 4. - Observable:
model/specs.pyimports nothing fromlearning/,improve/,semantic/variants,semantic/mechanisms; a test asserts every family in the taxonomy has aTaintSpecor aDominanceSpecseed, and that the guard vocabulary is preserved verbatim.model/specs.pyis read-only data — no LLM and no future optimiser writes it, and a test asserts the module exposes no writer (Req 7.4, the verifier boundary). - Requirements: 1.2, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4
- Create
-
1.2 Re-home the three retained modules
- Move
learning/families.py→model/taxonomy.py,learning/candidates.py→model/candidates.py,learning/endpoint.py→model/endpoint.py. Update their imports and every importer.candidates.pykeeps its behaviour exactly (it is the suspicion-band feeder, Req 8.4) — its tests move with it and stay green. - Observable: the moved modules import no other
learning/module;test_candidate_enumeration.pypasses unchanged against the new path; the taxonomy loads and every family resolves. - Requirements: 4.4, 7.1
- Depends: 1.1
- Move
-
1.3 Detach the retained paths from the removed code
pairs.py: remove the hunter-scoring path (_evaluate_hunter_pair,_hunter_outcome,_family_metrics,PairEvalResult.per_family,build_pair_signalssplit arg, thek_runs/hunterplumbing) and itslearning.*imports; keep_evaluate_overlay_pair/_evaluate_inventory_pairand thecontext_filesmachinery.cli.py: remove thelearningsubcommand group,_run_family_detectors, the_learning*helpers, the--mechanism-candidatessurface and_mechanisms_export; keepscan,benchmark,improve(rule-status only),pairs(overlay),mcp/indexfor now (audited in 1.6).config.py: removeLearningConfig/_load_learning.reports.py: drop thelearning=kwarg,_append_learning, and the SARIFdetector/verifierproperties (keepfamily).semantic/{seed,loo}.py: remove the teacher-rule import fromlearning.split.- Observable:
python -m compileall srcclean; the three gates byte-identical to the baseline; the full suite still collects (failures expected only in tests that pin removed behaviour, addressed in 1.5). - Requirements: 1.3, 1.4, 11.2
- Depends: 1.2
-
1.4 Remove the noise architecture and the mechanism/evolve loop
- Delete
learning/{rounds,acceptance,proposer,journal,canaries,verifiers,difficulty,scoring,classify, detectors,split,publish,slices,predicates,judgments}.py(everything underlearning/except the three modules re-homed in 1.2, which are already gone from the directory), then remove the now-emptylearning/package. Deleteimprove/evolve.py,improve/validator.py(mechanism parts — keep rule-status validation ifimproveis retained by the 1.6 audit),semantic/{mechanisms,variants,variant_search,prove_budget, loo,seed}.py, and their re-exports insemantic/__init__.py. - Guardrail: run this after 1.1–1.3, so every vocabulary is ported and every importer detached. If a delete breaks an import, the fix is in the importer (a 1.3 miss), never a re-addition of the module.
- Observable: an import-graph check (a test that walks
astover everysrc/**/*.pyand asserts no import names a removed module) passes;compileallclean; three gates byte-identical; the extra-free matrix and the full matrix both collect. - Requirements: 1.1, 1.2, 1.2b, 1.3, 1.4
- Depends: 1.3
- Delete
-
1.5 Reduce the test suite to surviving behaviour
- For every deleted module, delete the test files that existed only to pin it (
test_learning_*,test_mechanism_*,test_obligation_*only where it tested the lever not the checker,test_pair_*hunter-scoring cases, etc.) in this same change. For every surviving test, confirm it maps to a surviving requirement of this spec or a still-shipping feature; delete any that map to nothing, and delete outright any test that asserts a shape "does nothing", greps--help, or passes with its capability absent. - Observable: the suite is smaller than 832 tests; a one-line-per-cluster note records the before/after
count and the requirement each removed cluster served; the pinned floor (gate-baseline, redaction,
per-slice honesty,
test_candidate_enumeration) is green. - Requirements: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5
- Depends: 1.4
- For every deleted module, delete the test files that existed only to pin it (
-
1.6 The module audit manifest
- Add
model/audit.pythat classifies everysrc/**/*.pyasload_bearing(reachable from a gate, the scan CLI, or a surviving requirement),standalone_capability(its own CLI/users — e.g.mcp.py,skills.py), ororphaned(no importer, no entry, no requirement). Remove the orphans. Givefusion.py,mcp.py,skills.py,harness_ext.py,hunter_harness.pyan explicit keep-or-remove line each with its reason. Commitbenchmarks/measurements/2026-09-08-module-audit.json. - Observable: the manifest classifies every module; a test asserts no module classified
orphanedremains in the tree; the five named subsystems each have a recorded decision. - Requirements: 1.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4
- Depends: 1.5
- Add
Group 2 — The Joern spike on one family (go/no-go)
-
2.1 The CpgBackend seam, out of process
src/openultrasast/cpg/capability.py::has_cpg()— Joern on PATH (probejoern-parse --help), thehas_semantic_extrapattern exactly.cpg/backend.py:CpgResult(a builtcpg.binpath + arun(query, params)->JSONcallable);JoernBackend(subprocess:joern-parse <root>thenjoern --script cpg/queries/<name>.sc, parsing stdout JSON, every step timeout-bounded, fail-closed toNone);NullBackend(available()False,build()None);resolve_cpg_backend(). Never import a JVM binding; the subprocess is the only Joern touch-point in the codebase.- Observable: with Joern absent,
resolve_cpg_backend()is theNullBackendandbuild()returns None; a scripted fake backend (canned JSON) exercises the parsing without Joern; the seam has no import of any non-stdlib module at load time. - Requirements: 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 11.3
- Depends: 1.6
-
2.2 The injection taint query and its verdict
cpg/queries/taint.sc— a CPGQL script parameterised by aTaintSpec(sources, sinks, sanitizers) that emits, per candidate, the JSON{sink, source, path, sanitized: bool}.model/taint.py::verdict(cpg, spec, candidate)→ENTAILEDwhen a source→sink path exists withsanitized=false,CORROBORATEDwhen a path exists but a sanitizer may apply, elseNone. InjectionTaintSpecfrommodel/specs.py.- Observable: on a fixture with
os.system(request.args['x'])the verdict isENTAILED; on the parameterised-query fixed twin it is not; the query script is deterministic. - Requirements: 5.1, 5.2, 6.1
- Depends: 2.1, 1.1
-
2.3 Determinism, and the go/no-go reading
test_two_runs_over_one_cpg_give_an_identical_verdict_sequence. Run the injection taint verdict over the injection slice, regenerate the entailment ceiling for injection, and write the reading into the Implementation Notes: does Joern produce a deterministic verdict at acceptable per-target cost and time? If not, stop the design here and record why.- Observable: the determinism test passes repeatedly; the injection entailment number is committed against the 2.2%/multi-hop baseline; the notes state go or no-go.
- Requirements: 6.4, 6.5
- Depends: 2.2
Group 3 — The ladder and the judge
-
3.1 The evidence ladder as the verdict type
model/ladder.py:Rungenum (suspicion/model_corroborated/model_entailed/execution_confirmed),Verdict(rung, family, witness, contradiction). Findings carry the rung in markdown, SARIF and JSON.- Observable: a finding at each rung round-trips through every output format with its rung intact; nothing
is reported above
suspicionwithout aVerdictestablishing it. - Requirements: 5.1, 5.3, 5.4
- Depends: 2.3
-
3.2 The judge: one bounded question, checked against the model
model/judge.py::judge(candidate, cpg, spec, *, client, model)— if the model entails, reportmodel_entailedwith no LLM call; else ask the LLM one typed question (source expression / guard / family) with no tools; then check the answer against the CPG — contradiction drops the claim (records why), corroboration advances tomodel_corroborated, neither leavessuspicion. Reusemodel/endpoint.py.- Observable: an entailed candidate makes zero LLM calls; a claim the CPG contradicts is dropped with the contradiction recorded; a claim the CPG supports advances; there is no rounds/acceptance/floor/evolve code left to import.
- Requirements: 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 11.4
- Depends: 3.1
Group 4 — Absence and the rest of the taxonomy
-
4.1 Guard dominance for the absence families
cpg/queries/dominance.sc+model/dominance.py::verdict(cpg, spec, candidate)—ENTAILEDwhen an obligated operation is dominated by no discharger while its siblings are, seeded from the obligation facts. This is the arbiter for the classes that never crash (access_control).- Observable: on the ThreatByte/VAmPI absence fixtures the vulnerable handler is
ENTAILED(guard absent) and the fixed twin is not; a handler with no obligated operation yields no verdict. - Requirements: 6.2, 7.3
- Depends: 3.2
-
4.2 The remaining TaintSpecs and the ceiling regeneration
- Fill
TaintSpecs for path, deserialization, untrusted_destination, output_encoding, prototype, and the config constant-abstraction arm (model/taint.py). Regenerate the full entailment ceiling per family and per slice and commit it; name where each family falls back tosuspicion. - Observable: the entailment ceiling artifact carries every web/logic family with its entailed/corroborated split; the number is higher than the flat-IR 2.2% and the fallbacks are named.
- Requirements: 6.3, 6.5, 7.2
- Depends: 4.1
- Fill
Group 5 — Corpus calibration and reporting
-
5.1 The corpus as the model's calibration set
model/calibrate.py— over the vulnerable-parent/fix pairs, run the model on both sides and record whether it distinguishes them; a pair it cannot split is a named model gap (with the reason), not a miss. Provide the CVE-history harvest seam (recipe → parent/fix, the fix diff read as oracle).- Observable: the calibration report lists model gaps by family with reasons; a pair the model splits is recorded as covered; per-slice with the real-world slice deciding.
- Requirements: 9.1, 9.2, 9.4, 11.1
- Depends: 4.2
-
5.2 Reporting: per-slice, overfitting gap, rung
model/report.py— per-slice numbers, the overfitting gap beside every headline, the evidence rung on every finding; no cross-slice aggregate without its per-slice rows. Re-home the surviving per-slice honesty discipline (it was in the deletedscoring/publish).- Observable: the report carries a row per slice and refuses a bare aggregate; the overfitting gap is published; every finding shows its rung.
- Requirements: 9.3, 11.1
- Depends: 5.1
Group 6 — The execution tier stub (deferred)
- 6.1 The execution_confirmed rung and the Clearwing adoption seam
- Wire
Rung.execution_confirmedas an optional escalation reached only where the model cannot decide (memory/C first), behind a capability probe for the Clearwing fork. Do not reimplement any sandbox machinery; the seam calls the adopted tool. Not required for any web/logic class at v1. - Observable: a memory-family finding the model leaves at
suspicionis the only kind eligible for the execution tier; with Clearwing absent the rung is simply never reached and a reason is recorded; no web/logic path depends on it. - Requirements: 10.1, 10.2, 10.3
- Depends: 5.2
- Wire
Task-plan review notes
- Group 1 is the largest and the only one with no new capability — it is pure subtraction, ~5,000 lines removed, gate-protected at every step. It must land and pass an independent review before group 2 begins.
- Group 2 is a go/no-go. If task 2.3 reads no-go on Joern, groups 3–6 do not start; the model layer either finds another CPG engine or the design returns to the maintainer. Building past a red 2.3 is the exact mistake this whole spec was written to stop.
(P)parallelism is deliberately absent: the subtraction is sequential by dependency, and the Joern spike gates everything after it. Do not fan out.
Implementation Notes — group 1 (2026-09-08)
Landed as one change. Gate baseline captured before the first edit and re-checked after every step; the three
gates are byte-identical to 2026-09-06-gate-baseline.txt at the end, as Req 1.4 and 11.2 require.
What the subtraction cost and bought. 99 source modules -> 81; 832 tests -> 646 (642 passing, 4 skipped);
the whole learning/ package (16 modules, ~4,100 lines) plus six semantic/ modules removed. mypy clean over
82 files, ruff clean, core dependencies = [] untouched.
Sequence that made it safe. Vocabularies ported first (1.1), importers detached second (1.2-1.3), deletion
third (1.4). Every import break during 1.4 was therefore a detachment miss in the importer, fixed there — no
module was ever restored to satisfy one. Two such misses appeared, both handled as a class rather than an
instance: semantic/obligations/{operations,shapes}.py both imported trailing_name from the deleted
variants.py, so the helper was re-homed to semantic/ir.py (its natural place — it is a pure helper over
CallSite.name) and both importers updated in the same edit.
Deviations from the design, each recorded with its reason.
improve/evolve.pyandimprove/validator.pywere stripped, not deleted. The design's Removed list named them whole, but each is a mix: the mechanism lever (removed) and the deterministic rule-status improve loop thatousast improvestill runs from benchmark evidence. That loop has no LLM in it, predates the noise architecture, and is not what this feature supersedes; deleting the files would have taken a retained capability with them.test_subtraction_completenow asserts the lever's absence by symbol, so it cannot creep back.- The
learningCLI group becamemodel candidates. Deleting the group outright would have orphanedmodel/candidates.py— the retained suspicion-band enumerator — by removing its only entry point, and Req 3 would then have flagged it for deletion. The offline ceiling report survives asousast model candidates. thinkingmoved from[learning]to[models]. It is a model setting, andLearningConfigwas removed; its coverage moved totest_model_endpointrather than being dropped.- Three helpers were re-homed rather than lost:
Region(promoted from_Region, since the detector module that owned the type is gone),labeled_familyandlabeled_spans(from the deletedrounds/scoring).labeled_familyno longer falls back to the LLM classifier — an unlabeled pair is honestlyunknown, the same discipline the evidence ladder applies to a claim the model cannot arbitrate.
A measured gap, named rather than papered over (Req 9.2). Task 1.1's observable asked that every family
have a TaintSpec or DominanceSpec seed. It cannot today: the retained sink facts have no sink whose CWE
routes to path, output_encoding, untrusted_destination or prototype — the same hole the entailment
ceiling diagnosed ("closed literal sink table: misses per-family sinks"). Rather than weaken the test, it now
asserts the seeded set and the gap set exactly, so neither can change silently, and task 4.2 must update it
when it authors those sinks.
Test reduction (Req 2), by cluster. 34 files deleted whole: 21 test_learning_* (rounds, acceptance,
scoring, classify, detectors, proposer, journal, canaries, verifiers, publish, split, cli, scan, pairs_path,
cutoff, reliability, aggregation, classifier_report, pairs_evidence, round evidence x2, thinking), 4
test_mechanism_*, test_variants, test_variant_search, test_loo, test_obligation_export,
test_mechanism_reports, test_fixture_difficulty. Partial trims where a file mixed retained and removed
behaviour: test_semantic_pipeline (3 mechanism tests of 12), test_degradation_matrix (3 rows for removed
capabilities), test_pair_corpus (the hunter scorer), test_obligation_check (the known_fix assertion,
which depended on the deleted store — the id contract, suspicion rung and tags it also covered are kept),
test_index (the bakeoff test). Two files re-homed with their subject: test_learning_families ->
test_model_taxonomy, test_learning_endpoint -> test_model_endpoint.
The audit (Req 3) found exactly one genuine orphan: vectorstore.py, a store bakeoff harness with no
production caller and no CLI entry, alive only through its own test — removed with it. The five named
subsystems each carry a decision: mcp, skills, fusion, harness_ext, hunter_harness are all
standalone_capability (own entry point or protocol), joined by stage_processors and slot_contract, which
the zero-dependency guard in test_gate pins. Manifest committed at
benchmarks/measurements/2026-09-08-module-audit.json; a test asserts the tree still matches it.
Group 2 (the Joern go/no-go) has not started. semantic/engines.py already exposes joern_available, which
the CpgBackend capability probe in task 2.1 should build on rather than duplicate.
Implementation Notes — group 2 (2026-09-08)
Verdict: GO. Joern is installed at ~/joern/joern-cli (maintainer chose a permanent install). Artifact:
benchmarks/measurements/2026-09-08-joern-go-no-go.json.
| injection slice | |
|---|---|
model_entailed on the vulnerable side |
54% (27/50) — against the flat IR's 2.2% |
| ... on minimal-fix pairs only | 61.5% (16/26) |
| pairs distinguished (vuln entailed, fix clean) | 32% overall, 38.5% on minimal-fix pairs |
| determinism (Req 6.4) | every verdict identical on re-run |
| cost | median 32s/pair, max 58s, 30 min for the slice |
| CPG build failures | 1 (a C translation unit that does not parse standalone) |
The engine is not the constraint. Every gap below is in our own data model, which is exactly the result
that justifies adopting a CPG rather than building one. The 23 misses split three ways: 11 sinks not in the
fact tables (Django ORM objects.raw, self.query, GraphQL resolvers), 11 where the sink is modelled but no
source reaches it, and 1 build failure — counted separately so it can never read as "no vulnerability".
The finding that changes the design. Classifying what the 50 injection fixes actually do:
shape introduced at the sink guard kind of the added lines
other_or_validation 37 none 24
bound_parameters 10 parameterized_call 11
argv_list 2 null_test 7
sanitizer_call 1 allowlist_test 5
The dominant injection fix is a validation guard on the path — allowlist, type coercion, bounds or null
test — not a sanitizer call and not a sink-shape change. Taint reachability can never separate those pairs:
the flow still reaches the sink; what changed is that a guard now dominates the path. So the arbiter is
taint + dominance, not taint alone — the same primitive task 4.1 builds for access_control, with the guard
vocabulary ported verbatim in task 1.1 as its lookup list. Two planned mechanisms collapse into one, and
task 4.1 should be built before the remaining TaintSpecs rather than after.
Five bugs the live engine exposed, none visible offline. Two of them inverted a verdict rather than weakening it, which is why each was fixed as a class:
- A sink was its own sanitizer — facts carrying a shape qualifier (
parameterized,literal_format_arg) describe a safe form of the sink call, not a cleansing call. Flattened in,executebecame both the injection sink and its own sanitizer and nothing could ever be entailed. Fixing the class immediately caught C's entireprintffamily. labeled_familyhad lost its deterministic CWE fallback in group 1 (my error) — the injection slice resolved to zero pairs. Restored, still with no model call; the census again matches the committed ceiling exactly.- Taint alone entailed both sides of the canonical SQL pair, so the model arbitrated nothing → the
safe-shape test, using the
safe_shape_sinksthat bug 1 had preserved. - Joern's
call.argumentincludes the receiver, so a one-argument interpolated call looked like a two-argument bound one — the exact inversion of the shape test. Fixed withargumentIndexGt(0). - The source model was framework-only, while 39/50 pairs receive untrusted input as a function parameter. Parameter sources are now opt-in (right for a function-level pair whose boundary is the trust boundary, wrong for a whole repository) — and required for the comparison against the flat-IR baseline to be like-for-like, since that baseline counted them.
Corpus caveat, and why the differential is reported per stratum. Only 26 of 50 injection pairs are genuine
minimal-fix pairs; 12 are different programs (local-python-vulnerable is 7% similar with 83 changed lines;
owasp-java-cmdi pairs BenchmarkTest00007 against BenchmarkTest00090) and 12 are large rewrites. Where
the fixed side is a different program, both sides flagging is a corpus property, not a model failure — a raw
distinguished_rate would be measuring corpus quality and reporting it as model quality.
A correction to a claim made mid-run. The Flask-shaped source table (no request.POST/request.GET) is a
real gap but a minor lever here: adding Django patterns would gain a source for exactly one pair in this
slice. The larger levers are the missing sinks and guard dominance.
Next, in this order: 4.1 guard dominance over the tainted path; 4.2 the missing sinks (Django ORM,
GraphQL, and the four families with no sink fact at all); then the two remaining safe-shape forms, argv-list
and shell=False.
Implementation Notes — group 3 (2026-09-08)
3.1 — the rung is a new field beside evidence_level, not a rename of it. The existing
evidence_level carries static_corroboration, emitted by the flat IR overlay. Req 4.4 demotes that path
to the suspicion band, so restating its value as model_corroborated would claim a CPG arbitrated something
it never saw, while rewriting every legacy finding to suspicion would be a product-visible regression
nobody asked for. So StaticFinding.rung is added, defaults to suspicion, and is raised only by
ladder.at_rung(finding, verdict) — which is the structural form of Req 5.4. The witness travels with the
rung, because a rung without the evidence that justifies it is just a louder assertion. The rung reaches
markdown, JSON (asdict, so automatically) and SARIF. evidence_level is now redundant in intent and should
be retired once the model layer covers every path; that is a follow-up, not a silent change.
3.2 — the judge, and what it does not contain. Three outcomes, exhaustive: the model entails (report it,
never call the model), the model contradicts (drop the claim, record why), the model cannot decide (report
suspicion, honestly). The LLM is asked exactly one bounded, typed question, with tools=[] so it cannot
search for the site, and only about the residual the graph cannot settle — whether a sanitizer on a real
flow is sufficient. Its answer can only ever confirm a flow the CPG already found; it can never conjure one.
Req 8.5 is asserted structurally rather than by prose: a test parses judge.py and fails if the AST contains
any name like k_runs, majority, vote, average, acceptance, floor or budget, or any for/while
loop at all, or an import from the deleted round machinery. The first draft of that test matched the word
"votes" inside the module's own docstring, which is the reason it now inspects code rather than text — the
docstring is allowed to name the machinery it replaced.
Verified live against a real CPG, not only against scripted rows:
vuln rung=model_entailed witness=request.args["name"] -> db.execute("select * from users ...
fixed rung=suspicion contradiction: the model resolved no flow: no source reaches this sink
model calls made: 0
Both sides arbitrated by the graph with the LLM never consulted — which is the entire point of the arbiter, and the thing the prior architecture could not do at any price.
678 tests passing, mypy and ruff clean, three gates byte-identical, zero orphaned modules.