Closes the harder-fixture-tier ticket: a real verify_quotes
tightening lifts the falsification-hard rate 4/12 → 6/12, bench-gated,
ForkScore's bench-Δ goes positive on it — the loop is closed
end-to-end.
arborist/qa/verify.py: _numeric_signature(text) extracts comma-
stripped digit-runs ('8,849' and '8849' collapse; '300' stays
distinct from '300000' ← '300,000'). _check_each_with_paraphrase
gains a gate: a span that token-covers the source ≥ paraphrase_coverage
but asserts a digit-number the source lacks (modulo thousands-comma)
is no longer paraphrase-grounded — it goes to unverified. Catches the
near-miss the lexical coverage check is blind to ("Water boils at 50
degrees" against a source saying 100 token-covers 100% because
'50'/'100' aren't >4-char content tokens). Narrow by construction:
fires only on the paraphrase fallback (verbatim/span/entity/claim-
lattice paths untouched), only on a digit-number. A rounding-
paraphrase demoting here is the honest verdict — it isn't a verbatim
grounding.
Hard pack: lifts 5f-fal-hard-004 (50 vs 100) and -007 (300 vs
300,000) to UNGROUNDED → falsification-hard rate 4/12 → 6/12 = 0.5.
The other 6 over-grounds (4 HYBRID_ENTITY + 2 recombined-no-number
STRICT_PARAPHRASE) and the Formulate hard pack are unaffected —
headroom for a bigger order/dependency-aware verifier upgrade, an
optional follow-up, not a #000046 blocker.
Bench gate: make bench-qa (n=3 × 75 questions × 3 modes = 675 cells)
before / after. STRICT-rate quote 0.53→0.50, pointer 0.23→0.25,
lattice 0.44→0.45 — all within the 5-pp noise floor. Per-row diff
(675 common cells, 74 changed audit_mode): the only clearly
gate-attributable QA shift was the fictional "our cold fusion
breakthrough" year-claim demoting STRICT→HYBRID (×3 samples) — a
correct demotion; every other transition was quote→quote /
claim_lattice→claim_lattice LLM re-answer variance. No regression on
legit answers. Artifacts: bench/qa_results/2026-05-11T13-42-38Z (before)
and ...T14-19-51Z (after) — gitignored; summarized in qa-modes-bench.md
Addendum 5 + ticket-000046 §5 Phase 3.
Worked example: fork_score on the real change — parent {5f/
falsification: 4/12} → child {5f/falsification: 6/12} → γ·Δ5f =
(1/6)/5 ≈ +0.033 > 0 (positive; a single improvement of this size is
MARGINAL by the ÷5 dilution, the test pins the full-lift-to-1.0 case
at ACCEPT).
Tests: 5 new in tests/test_verify.py (numeric_signature normalization
+ subset-matches-comma-variant + disagreement-rejected +
gate-is-narrow + number-present-still-verifies);
test_5f_falsification_hard_pack_below_ceiling re-pinned 4/12 → 6/12.
make test 2339 passed, 28 skipped.
#000046 → closed; #000012 §8 §4 + TICKETS.md row + falsification-hard
_meta / hard-004,007 notes + Makefile 8/12→6/12 comments updated.
(Makefile also carries an uncommitted chain-check-SQL improvement from
the concurrent session — NOT in this commit; staged only the
#000046-comment hunks.)
russell@unturf.com
724f433790