orchestrate-submission-validatorlisted

# Orchestrate: Submission Validator **Evidence tier: first-hand build (August 2026).** Grounded in a completed Orchestrate submission that was audited to destruction — 48 logged defects, 9 measured-and-rejected optimisations, 17 certification scripts. Every number below was measured on that system. Nothing here claims access to HackerRank's internal scoring. ## The rule **Any generated artifact is stale until proven current, in the same breath as the code that generates it.** ## What this caught in a real build `output.csv` was **28 rows different** from what the committed code produced. It had been generated three commits earlier. Nothing in a file listing shows this — the file exists, has a sane size, and opens fine. Found by regenerating to a temp path and comparing hashes. Never by looking at it. ## The procedure ```bash # 1. Regenerate to a TEMP path -- never overwrite the artifact you are checking python code/main.py --out /tmp/regen.csv # 2. Hash both sha256sum dataset/output.csv /tmp/regen.csv # 3. Identical? current. Different? stale -- regenerate before shipping. ``` If your entry point has no `--out` flag, **add one**. A pipeline that can only write to one hardcoded path cannot be verified without destroying the thing being verified. ## The checklist - [ ] `git status --porcelain` empty for tracked files - [ ] Artifact regenerated to a temp path and hash-compared - [ ] The artifact was produced by the **current** commit - [ ] Package rebuilt **after**