disclose-by-construction-not-by-absence

# Disclose by construction, not by absence ## The failure this prevents Two runs shipped the same panel with the same layer missing, because neither had the inputs for it. One wrote the omission into the figure's axes, into the figure's caption, into its design ledger and into its limitations section. The other wrote nothing anywhere — the word does not occur in its report. The reader graded the first as not having reproduced the missing element, and the second as matching the source qualitatively, on two pictures missing the same thing. The disclosure was the entire difference on that requirement, and it was one of the headline requirements of the task. The conclusion is not "say less". A silent gap is a defect and a reader is entitled to find it. The conclusion is that a gap you filled is a construction note, a gap you did not fill is one sentence, and every copy after the first is subtracted from the result it is attached to. ## Say what you built, not what you lacked Where you produced a substitute for something you could not source, describe the object that exists: - "Positions are constructed from the per-category counts, not measured; they carry no within-category information." Checkable, and it describes something that is in the figure. - "The measured positions are unavailable, so that layer is omitted." Describes a hole, and a hole can only be graded as a hole. Before writing either sentence, ask whether the missing thing can be produced instead. `recon...