NODEDC_MISSION_CORE/docs/adr/0030-ravnoves00-reference-source-before-transfer.md

ADR 0030 — RAVNOVES00 reference-source maturation before transfer

Date: 2026-07-27

Status: accepted

Context

Mission Core has completed A0–A8 on the immutable RAVNOVES00 source and has a source-catalog audit for the later E36 transfer gate. The immediate product objective is not open-world autonomy or cross-route generalization. It is a bounded near-industrial transport product operating at low speed in a known location on known routes, with simple tasks such as movement from point A to point B.

Attempting second-source transfer now would split effort before the source-scoped perception architecture, evidence workflow and operator product have reached a useful quality level. A new route and another camera view can be recorded later, after the current reference path is stable enough to make that transfer test meaningful.

Decision

1. RAVNOVES00 is the only active physical reference source for the current product-maturation cycle.
2. E36 and TEST007 are deferred. The existing E36 catalog audit remains valid historical planning evidence, but transfer is no longer the current critical-path gate.
3. No new physical route or camera capture is required until RAVNOVES00 reaches the source-scoped product acceptance defined below.
4. All changes remain append-only immutable LAB results over the same RAVNOVES00 source. Accepted generations are never rewritten.
5. The next gate must define and freeze a reviewed development/validation split inside RAVNOVES00 before any new quality tuning.
6. The target is at least 90% on each task-relevant validation dimension: object-versus-background decision correctness, camera↔geometry association correctness and current-versus-stale state correctness.
7. The 90% target is source-scoped. It is not a claim of universal detector accuracy, cross-site generalization, safety certification or open-world autonomy.
8. Average quality cannot waive hard invariants: source accounting remains complete, missing evidence remains unknown, false free-space claims remain forbidden and degraded input must fail visibly.
9. The same reference cycle may extend reusable product controls, evidence viewers, LAB templates and comparison workflows under the existing Design Guideline and component architecture canons.
10. A second capture becomes the transfer gate only after the source-scoped release candidate is accepted and the operator explicitly authorizes new collection.

Product envelope

The current product assumption is intentionally bounded:

• known or pre-mapped industrial location;
• declared routes and simple logistics missions;
• low-speed motion and conservative stopping on uncertainty;
• no adversarial environment, tactical autonomy or strategic replanning;
• no implication that a 90% perception score alone authorizes actuation.

This narrower envelope reduces unnecessary complexity, but it does not remove the requirement for explicit unknown/stale states, watchdogs, command expiry or independent physical safety controls.

Consequences

• The active critical path moves from E36 transfer to RAVNOVES00 reference-source quality and product closure.
• The immediate next experiment is a source-scoped acceptance-contract LAB, not another data collection or another transfer audit.
• Future quality iterations may change algorithms, models and thresholds only through new immutable profiles and results evaluated against the frozen validation split.
• Product UI work is justified when it exposes a reusable task, method, evidence, result or comparison contract. Run-specific decorative or temporary interfaces remain forbidden.
• Generalization remains explicitly unproved until a later independently recorded source is admitted and replayed.