Field guide 21 · Honesty

Reading the Labels

A proof surface earns nothing by blurring what is real. Every card, demo, and data point on this estate carries one of five labels — a claim about how real it is, and therefore about how you can check it. Here is the decoder.

ILLUSTRATIVEexplains an idea SYNTHETICreal mechanism, made-up data PREVIEWrecorded / not yet re-verified BETArunning, still changing LIVEproduction · check it now → verifiability increases left to right
● Live

Production systems, checkable by you, right now.

A LIVE label means the thing is running in production and you can verify it independently this minute — like the public chain audit behind the hub's Synthetic ⇄ Live receipt toggle, fetched by your browser, not quoted by us. If a LIVE claim can't be checked from outside, it doesn't get the label.

◐ Beta

Real and running — interfaces and scope still moving.

BETA systems (like the Ishtar console) are genuinely operational but changing; demo tenants use demo data. What you see works; what it looks like next month may differ.

◔ Preview

Shown from a recording or awaiting live re-verification.

PREVIEW marks surfaces we show before their live claim has been re-checked — a recorded run, or a capability pending its verification pass. It is the honest middle state between "watch this video" and "check it yourself."

◇ Synthetic

The mechanism is real; the data is invented.

The tool-call demo hashes synthetic receipts with real SHA-256 in your browser; the sample gallery includes a deliberately broken record. No real customer, call, or payment appears — but the cryptography you're testing is the production mechanism.

◻ Illustrative

Explains an idea; claims nothing about any deployment.

Field guides like this one, scenario sheets, and the pilot-economics calculator are ILLUSTRATIVE: they teach the shape of the thing. They are never evidence, never a customer result, never a performance claim.

● The rule behind the labels

Real data or nothing: nothing on this estate simulates being live. When a live source is unreachable, the surface says so instead of showing a plausible fake — an unreachable ledger renders as an honest failure, not a cached impression of success. That policy is itself part of what's being sold.

The labels describe this estate's publication posture as of the date in the footer of each page; per-card status rows carry last-checked dates. Not a certification, customer result, or performance claim.
summit·cognitive   Decision Assurance Infrastructure  ·  demo.summitcognitive.ai